Tangible Play's OSMO
This past month my students and I have been testing out some new tech that I stumbled upon. This little gem is called Osmo and it is made by the genius' at Tangible Play. It is all about merging "the power of physical play with the digital advantages of real-time feedback." It is able to do this by combining engaging games and innovative tech that allows the iPad to see what is in front of it. The short story is that Osmo comes in two parts. The first is "The Base and Mirror" that stands the iPad up and points the forward facing camera down towards the tabletop. The second is the many games that range from algebra, geometry, money, phonics, spelling, computer science, art, you name it! The applications of this tech are only limited by the creativity of the teacher using it.
Being that I teach math to the kindergarten students in my district I have not used the non-math games with students but did have a blast with them myself. The two games that my students and I have been playing around with are Numbers and Tangrams and they are the focus of this post. Tangrams is as it sounds, a set of tangrams. The magic is that with the Osmo base the iPad is now able to see what shapes are where and offer the "real-time feedback" mentioned above on-screen. The game offers a junior (tutorial) level for students to get familiar with the game before puzzles increase in difficulty. The real star however, is Numbers. Numbers has the students using either tiles with dots or tiles with digits to compose larger numbers. Students can translate these number relationships to enhance their depth of knowledge in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The real kicker here is that the game allows students to experiment with the numbers and discover the relationships in an environment that is free of time limits and fear of being incorrect.
I first thought I'd use Osmo as a whole group warm-up where students took turns coming up to the iPad while the others offered suggestions and watched on the smartboard. What I thought would be a quick 10-15 minute warm-up ended up lasting over half of my 90min. math class. Students were so eager to get more and more chances to come up to the iPad that they had NO problem waiting patiently for a turn. Students excitedly cheered on classmates as we fed and freed new fish, added coral to our tank, and unlock new levels. For those familiar with 5 and 6 year olds, those last two sentences should make you instantly understand what makes me so excited about Osmo...kids absolutely love it!
Above is an amazing video of three students using the two Osmo games I just described and below you will find photos I took while using it during that "warm-up." One photo however, stands out. It was taken a day or so after I first used Osmo as a "warm-up." What really blew me away was after only one time playing Numbers my students began to explore adding more than 2 numbers in different ways completely offline and unprompted. The student in the photo is working at a center I call "Math by Myself" where each student has a bin full of different math activities that all center around recently taught skills and standards. This student was using her whiteboard to "recreate" Numbers offline/unplugged!
I am excited to continue to learn more about this product and will be looking for ways to add more Osmos to the Kindergarten classrooms in the district.
