Category: Learning

Posted on

Boldungu in Pictures – Primary School Mathematics

Learn and practice mathematics. Get new questions, review answers and methods for arriving at the answers after trying. Detailed score card for topics, subtopics and questions. Choose topics and learn by doings. Lots of question types and explanation from best teachers.

Boldungu helps learners practice mathematics by providing a collection of questions, answers and explanation of concepts and methods.

As a person interested in improving mathematics scores for any grade, the questions are grouped into quiz sets based on the topics selected. The content is specific to the national curriculum of the selected countries. Unlike traditional text books, learners choose and have as many questions as possible for practice.

Boldungu works as follows:

Quiz Sets

Random fresh questions in groups of 10 makeup a quiz and this provides a short but challenging practice session. Questions come as multi-choice, drag and drop, and free text. They include beautiful graphics.

Linked Answers and Review

Each Question attempted is a chance to revise the answers and alternative methods. Each answer is linked to learning areas where further reading or practice questions can be selected. Lots of new question answering techniques are waiting for you.

Performance Board

Performance board is a simple score card that shows the questions attempted and improvement trends. A five-star rating gives a quick graphical view to allow you choose where to focus.

Recognition

Earn badges, certificates and virtual gifts when you excel in particular topics, subtopics or question formats.

Share Button
Posted on

Interpret Mathematics result before congratulating yourself

Despite the presence of mathematics in the daily lives of most of us, it remains the most complained about subject and a source of serious stress for many. Most lives, be it a cook or a farmer, a carpenter or a mechanic, a shopkeeper or a doctor, an engineer or a scientist, a musician or a magician can be stress free in their day-to-day life if mathematics is well understood and utilized. In this article we share with the boldungu users how to help their learners improve scores and build confidence.

Below are some of the tips and tricks to maximize the benefits by working through the process for each problem:-

Reread some sentences

Avoid the temptation to start answering after reading the question once. Read and read it again to be sure you completely understand what the question is asking for. The aim of rereading some sentences is to confirm that you have fully understood the question. Do not be quick to conclude that it is identical to the one you have seen before. That is why at boldungu, we make available all sorts of questions in some cases with slight but significant variations to ensure the learners is in the habit of understanding the question before putting pen to paper.

Underline some important data in the text

Once you have read the question, it is important to underline some important data. Do not just underline numbers and value, there are words such as more, less, altogether, and others from the math vocabulary such as round off, power of, exponents that must be underlined. The trick with underlining is that it keeps you focused and serves as basis to verify your result.

Make a plan

For longer problems, a detailed plan is needed, for some just pointing to specific method or approach is enough.  At boldungu we relate each problem to specific methods and the reasoning behind.

Divide the problem into subtasks before solving it

This goes in hand with the plan. Larger problems need to be divided in subtask. In some cases there is need for intermediate results before the final results. This will help you to understand the problem before the solution

Interpret the result before congratulating yourself.

Does your answer make sense? This must be in relation to important data underlined above. Is the answer expected to be smaller than one of the data provided? For instance when adding, we expect the final result to be bigger. Before congratulating yourself, you must check the answer if it is approximately correct.

Share Button
Posted on

Did you store mathematics in the School Brain or Real Brain?

When I interacted with one parent during needs assessment for the Boldungu application, she could not understand why, Erica (not real name) – in primary seven vacation   could not estimate the number of floor tiles needed to resurface their living room and yet he had scored not only a distinction in mathematics, but aggregate 4 in total. Taking a good look at most national curriculum for mathematics, they elaborately cover how to workout areas of shapes including areas of combined shapes in form  “L”, “T”, “F”, trapeziums, and parallelograms to mention but a few. In fact they also cover measurements including instruments used to measure length.

As the mother explained, she expected Erica to determine the dimensions of the living room, determine the dimensions of each tile and proceed to calculate the number of tiles needed. As the discussion raged on, we formulated a belief that there is a disconnection between the school brain and real brain especially for mathematics at lower learning levels.  In the majority of the learners mind, the mathematics for school is understood and ends in class using the school brain. Questions outside the school are approached using the real brain, which encounters them as brand new concepts.

One approach to this problem is to try and bring real life questions into the classroom setting. But this does not help much as the learners still seem to store this knowledge in the school brain as long as it is delivered from the school. Our approach at Boldungu is to two fold. First, Boldungu is designed for use outside the classroom.  Secondly, we have weekly activity packages that are structured for practical hands on activities and learners share their results via whatsapp. That way, we hope to bridge the gap between the two brains. We are also working on other tools and technologies to fuse these brains, because we understand that all knowledge covered in the school setting must be applied in the real word.

Share Button
Posted on

Master the mathematics and keep working on it to master it.

Most teachers and parents that have closely worked with learners will affirm that a good number of learners quickly forget mathematics concepts after learning them. They will get 100% on day one, less and lesser marks as the days pass by.  Few days later, the learner gives you a blank stare on the very concept he/she previously excelled on. In the same spirit, that’s why, although a good tool daily school home-works can be deceptive especially when they focus on the work just covered a few hours ago.  Yes, they learnt, and they forgot.

This state of affairs is the leading cause of gradual poor attitude towards mathematics because it dampens progress, confidence and morale for all.  To address this problem, their needs to be an easy way, possibly using technology to allow learners master mathematics and keep working on it. This is part of the issues that Boldungu – for bold learning aims to address.  Provide easy to use tools for schools, parents, teachers and learners to quickly spin up a cycle of questions to regularly test mastery of various concepts and keep learners fully checked.

So far, our toolbox that is helping many learners includes boldungu.com web version and the Boldungu mobile app available at Google Play store. Of course we spend lots of time and expertise from teachers to build and maintain these tools for other generations to come. That is why we change a small fee but make it affordable for weekly, monthly or even yearly payments.

Helping learners to master and perfect mathematics is matter of survival for future workforce because with automation, artificial intelligence and robots, future workers will need more analytical skills. The earlier we prepare our sons and daughters the better.

Share Button
Posted on

Motivate Your child to make friends with mathematics using the boldungu Awards and Badges.

As promised, the boldungu team is taking learning mathematics to another level. Today we launch the awards and badges feature. Let the learners do the math and be motivated by the awards and badges. Some are individual with a specific target, others are on the class level and others competitive for all learners. We are still focusing on primary 3 to primary 7 mathematics. If your child or your friends child or your neighbors child is not learning math with boldungu, its time to signup now at https://boldungu.com. Everybody has chance to make friends with mathematics and unlock dreams.

We have a variety of awards including daily, weekly and monthly awards. Some awards depend solely on the learner while other are competitive based on other learners in the same level, topic or entire system. Awards include Five Star, Excellent Effort, Rising Star, among others

Share Button
Posted on

How Boldungu helps your child be friends with mathematics

When we started the boldungu project, we aimed at just providing quiz sets for home use. It has now evolved into a wonderful companion for most learners.  Because questions are generated on the fly and learners always want to see how the next set of questions will look like, it has made them far more productive and competitive.

Unlike other mathematics  resources  including print textbooks,  we do not just give examples, but every question  we craft has a carefully worked out solution.

This instant feedback has enabled learners to learn and understand the work properly as opposed to just learning to pass test. Learners want to impress themselves as opposed to impressing teachers. 

 Many of  the parents whose learners are consistently using the platform have reported that their children’s attitude towards mathematics has improved. They children now  like mathematics, they like Boldungu – one parent said.  Check it out today at https://boldungu.com for primary 3 to primary 7 mathematics. The content and questions are strictly designed by teachers and experts as per the   National Curriculum.

Share Button
Posted on

Boldungu partnering with schools to deliver Homework

Boldungu is becoming very exciting as some schools have started approaching our team to enroll their students at special prices such that we save their teachers time and resources to print and mark homework every day.

Good enough, whereas boldungu is designed for individual learners and parents, our coupon feature has been fine tuned to allow a group of learners from one school to be identified and allowed special prices.


More interesting, the system allows all learners to be given similar quiz sets built by our advanced algorithms from the topic of choice. We are truly happy to be contributing to the next generation of scientists. Our focus still remains Mathematics for primary 3 to primary 7 because we think this is a very critical foundation stage.

Share Button
Posted on

Start With the Easy Questions – Tip to passing mathematics

Even the most prepared student needs a good strategy to write and pass an exam under the examination conditions.

One trick that is tested and works for sure is to start with the easy questions. Pass through the paper and identify the easy questions and start with them. Firs, the easy questions give you rhythm. Secondly, while working on the easy question you can use the extra brain power to recall some aspects of the hard questions.

Third, should you run out of time, you would have already banked your marks on the easy questions. Of course while spending time on the easy questions, be mindful of the marks allocated to them.

A good strategy can help to eliminate panic, maximize the possible marks from an examination.

Share Button
Posted on

Love Mathematics, it will love you

When we started the boldungu project, many people were asking how the boldungu team is able to have fun with mathematics when most people find mathematics very challenging.

A simple chat with each of the boldungu team members revealed a consistent piece of advice. Get ride of the idea “mathematics is difficult” from your brain. Failure starts from the brain with poor attitude towards mathematics.

One team member argued that every body has the ability to excel in mathematics as long as you take on challenges with all your energy and zeal. “Practice music consistently, you will improve, practice athletics, you will improve and so goes for mathematics” – said another team member..

At Boldungu we make it easy to practice and track your progress. Get boldungu as a web or mobile application from google play store. Love mathematics, it will love you!

Share Button
Posted on

Introducing Boldungu.com – fun with mathematics for primary school children

During the lockdown, I have had time to cleanup one of my old projects. The project initially intended for home use, has proved interesting for the larger public.

While helping out on homework with my children I noticed that children quickly get bored by print textbooks because  of the same questions and content. Besides, children like being children and the books easily get into a very sorry state. The other problem I have found with conventional textbooks is that they have a fixed set of questions on given topic. Whenever we go through a book just a few times, and then use it to revise, children just apply rote learning and recite the book without understanding, applying or remembering the underlying concepts. I ended up spending much time creating variations of the same questions to allow variety and practice. Interestingly,  with a small change in a digit or phrasing , the child struggles to answer of fails to answer something similar to what he or she has been reciting in the book.

Share Button