The Year of the Hare, 2011, was a great year for Math Chimp. Our games selection is growing, users are coming back more and more, and banana futures are up! 2012 looks promising too. We have some great plans to grow content and functionality for our users. We hope you like what we have in store for you!
In this blog post, we look back at 2011 and forward at what’s to come in 2012.
…Looking Back at 2011
First off, we owe a huge thanks to all the teachers, bloggers, and players around the world (especially Colombia!) who provided feedback and encouragement in 2011. Without involvement from our users we wouldn’t know which direction to go, what games to add or what site features to build.
Most Played Game of 2011 – In 2011, the race for most played game was close. This year Cool Math Games – Number Balls had the more plays and ratings than any other game here at Math Chimp. Number Balls is a first-grade math game where students practice the counting sequence. It’s great for classroom instruction. Notable mentions for most played game of the year include Dolphin Dash, and Busy Bees.
Introduction of the Math Chimp Blog – 2011 marked the introduction of our blog. We use our blog to connect with our players at Math Chimp. Though we launched the blog late in the year, we were able to publish posts almost weekly. We plan to continue growing the blog in 2012 and beyond.
Best Site Enhancement… More Games! – We’ve been able to grow our math games catalog to nearly 150 games. We’re much more efficient adding games now than we were last year. In fact we added 120 games in the summer of 2011 alone. This was in part thanks to help from our categorization engine that we use to determine the standard and objective of the games we post. More on that later!
…What’s To Come In 2012
The Chinese zodiac calendar calls 2012 the year of the Dragon. But here at Math Chimp, we declare 2012 as the year of the Chimp! We have a goal of 1,000,000 game players in 2012. It’s going to take a lot of work and help from our friends to get there, but we think we can do it!
Here’s what we have planned for 2012 to keep players coming back.
Games, Worksheets, Videos, and More! – Last year, we improved the pace with which we’re able to find, organize, and post free online math games. But we have bigger plans in store for 2012 — we plan to expand our content base! We’ll focus on video lessons or worksheets or lesson plans or ALL of these! Depending on support and user engagement, we plan to roll out new content throughout the year. Stay tuned!
My Favorites Page – Top on our enhancement list is a “favorites” page for users. On their favorites page, users will see all the games they’re rated as a quick reference. We’ll also suggest new games depending on the games the user has already played and enjoyed.
Content Tagging – As our catalog of games grows, users may want to find games that have a particular characteristic. With tags we can organize a large number of games efficiently so users can find exactly the types of games that they like. Want games optimized for iPad? With tagging that will be possible.
User Involvement – We want to get YOU involved! Yes, YOU, right there! Have you left a comment? Have you rated games? Have you submitted games for us to post?! We want to make you a building block in this community. Though it’ll take time, we want EVERYONE to get involved in building the ultimate free common core resource for teachers and parents.
We want to make Math Chimp as useful as possible! With you, we’ll make 2012 Math Chimp’s best year yet! If there are things you’d like to see in 2012 that we haven’t included, let us know! If you feel strongly about the ideas presented here or other ideas, let us know and we’ll build whichever features users want most.
Find us on Twitter @mathchimp or email us harrychimp@mathchimp.com.
Cheers to a great 2011 and 2012 to come!
- Harry