Smartphones can help improve kids numeracy skills

Smartphone and tablet-based games can help improve literacy and numeracy skills of children, a study done in India has found.

The study was conducted by Qualcomm Wireless Reach and Sesame Workshop in India (SWI) among school children of 5-8 years of age and covered over 4,500 children in 57 schools of Delhi and Bihar.

It also found that the use of games not only improved learning outcomes, but also altered teachers' attitudes toward using new technology for teaching, MoneyControl.com reported.

Children of standard one to three played various games related to identification of shapes, shadows, habitats, numbers and alphabets.

Researchers noted marked improvement in children exposed to tablet-based games.

"Amongst all children who played the games, girls showed 1.5 times more gains in numeracy than boys," it said.

Teachers observed that the children's engagement level in maths and Hindi were higher when games were used in classrooms.

Also, the teachers' attitudes toward the use of multimedia in classrooms improved, the study said.