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Comment by julienchastang | Hacker News Reader

Is there any evidence, from the academic literature or otherwise, that math games improve educational outcomes? (Sorry, I know that sounds like a wet blanket statement and I am not discouraging the OP from trying to make an impact here. I am just curious.) Also, I tried to play a couple of games (e.g., https://www.mindlygames.com/game/skip-counting-by-5-dino-soa...), but it has been stuck "loading" for the entire duration of how long it took me to write this comment.

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Sure. I used to work in education policy, and this was the most reliable source I can recall of peer-reviewed studies on impacts of educational curricula/interventions. Plugged in elementary school games for you:

https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Search/Products?searchTerm=game&...

1. Play is how basically every other mammal learns.

2. Learning comes easier to people when it's fun, because they're more engaged and receptive.

That said, I don't think these games in particular look anything close to optimal. To be fair though, I can't load them either - stuck at 98%.

If you'd be willing to share what type of device you're on that would be super helpful. Thanks for the feedback!

Firefox on an M1 mac.

Hi! Any chance you could let me know what type of device your using? We tested on a few after your comment and this might be a really helpful piece of info for us. Thanks for letting us know it isn't loading for you!

MBP (a recent one), chrome browser.

Couple of things here didn't work; firefox 102.4.ESR and chromium on linux go to '100%' on Dino Eggs and hang there; works on same PC using chrome and on a random Win10 box with Chrome.

Dino's eggs also popped up two '40' choices for a Q where answer was 40 - but one of them said wrong answer (as reported by 5YO experimental subject).

This is great info, much appreciated :) !

Firefox windows (in order.. seems like the first one starts the chain):

- Error decoding audio: menuMusic - The buffer passed to decodeAudioData contains invalid content which cannot be decoded successfully.

- Uncaught (in promise) DOMException: The buffer passed to decodeAudioData contains invalid content which cannot be decoded successfully.

- Uncaught Error: Audio key "menuMusic" missing from cache`

Thank you! This helps a lot!

Ok! I think we found the issue and it's with our music files on firefox. Should be fixed now! Thank you so much for catching this.

Can confirm it works now :) Feature: Might I suggest you remember toggling music/sound off across games.

The key thing is that they encourage kids to willingly spend time learning. https://www.wired.com/2012/06/dragonbox/ is a good article on the author's experience with a similar game and their kid

Thank for sharing, that's a great article!

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