Deeper Look Into a Virtual Manipulative

Today I visited the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives again to explore. I chose a manipulative that appeared in more than one grade range and will explain some details about it. 

After looking through some of the manipulatives on this website, I noticed that there were little to no kid friendly directions for the students. I had to guess how to use some of the manipulatives. There is a directions area under the parents/teachers area. Each manipulative also has the common core standards linked to it at the top. 

The specific game I reviewed is called Number Line Arithmatic. This manipulative is found under Pre-K-2 and 3-5 Number & Operations. It is great if you only want to show how the number line works when solving an addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. The student is given a computer generated problem and hits solve. The work is done for the student. I do not like that it does not let you choose the numbers for the problem. It also does not allow the student to draw the number line or choose where it should be. I also do not like that they only have one level of problems for a wide variety of grades levels.

I liked this site when I first visited it. Now that I have had an indepth look at it...I would carefully choose what I provide to my students. 

References

Nlvm.usu.edu (2013). National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. [online] Retrieved from: http://nlvm.usu.edu/ [Accessed: 19 Nov 2013].