Get started with our very own seasonal maths games, quizzes, and interactive toys to keep you busy through the frosty Advent.

The Whizz Winter Adventure will be available until 6th January.

Make Your Own Snowman!

If you’ve logged into your maths tutoring account since yesterday, you’ll have noticed The Whizz Winter Adventure in the student bedroom.

Whizzers earn Winter Adventure stars for passing maths lessons. They can spend those stars on our interactive games and quizzes. But Maths-Whizzers can build their own snowman straight away!

The God of Whizz has made his own rather smart-looking snowman (above), but he’s even more excited about our forthcoming feature – the WhizzMe avatar builder!

WhizzMe - WhizzYou?

WhizzMes are coming soon. Every Whizzer will soon be able to create their own avatar – an electronic likeness – with hairstyles, accessories, fancy outfits, and goofy faces.

The Maths-Whizz Team has already made some WhizzMes, which you can check them out on the Whizz Education Our People page.

Watch this space for news about WhizzMe, and get busy with your Winter Adventure games!

We’ve added a bunch of new features and we’ve made some key changes, some at the specific request of our users.

The new Maths-Whizz parent dashboard!

Read on to find out more!

Login to your Maths-Whizz account now and check out the changes!

After some internal conversations about our plans for Maths-Whizz we’ve decided to raise prices for our monthly and annual Maths-Whizz Tutoring Plus subscriptions. The price change will take effect 2nd December 2010.

That’s the cloud. Here’s the silver lining: Parents with more than one child get additional annual subscriptions at £99.99, and if you renew your annual subscription before December, you can lock in the £99.99 rate for your first child.

Why are we making this change? In short, development. We have spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in the last year making changes to your online maths tutor. Maths-Whizz has moved on enormously as a result; we’re proud of the improvements we’ve made and those we plan to make in the near future.

These improvements include: making our server systems more reliable, updating our teaching content, overhauling parent reports, and even adding toys to student ‘bedrooms’.

A little birdie tells me we’re planning to launch a customizable ‘avatar’ for kids, and also provide regular parent update emails with tips for getting the most out of your tutor. We’ll also be offering discounts with other retail partners, so watch this space…

We’ve been investing in your online tutor in the hope that you’ll continue to invest in your child’s education with Maths-Whizz. We think you’ll see the benefits with raised standards in maths.

What’s next? We’ll be sending email alerts to all our Maths-Whizz Tutoring Plus customers with information on the changes.

If you are on an annual subscription you don’t need to do anything. If you are a monthly subscriber you will notice the price change on your statement.

If you’re unclear about any of these changes we’ll be happy to help.

Whizz Education will be exhibiting at stand S8E (floorplan) from the 4th-6th March. The fair Natalies will be on hand to guide visitors through the delights of Maths-Whizz Tutoring and Teachers’ Resource tools, fresh from our awards shortlisting at BETT 2010.

To get a sense of what we’ll be up to, you can check out our Whizz Education exhibitor page or stroll down the ‘Education Show BETT Boulevard‘.

If you’re not sure what The ‘BETT Boulevard’ is (and I wasn’t), the AV Interactive blog helpfully explains:

A selection of exhibitors from the BETT show have been chosen to showcase their products at the Education Show 2010, which runs from 4-6 March at the NEC, Birmingham.
Due to growth in exhibitor demand, BETT Boulevard has been expanded and is now located in the For Your School area. Some of the exhibitors featured in BETT Boulevard include NumberGym Software Rentnote, Whizz Education, Rapid English Consultants and Spysure.

The Education Show 2010 is free to attend and is the UK’s largest exhibition of educational resources, regularly attracting over 15,000 visitors.

UPDATE: Read our belated report on the Birmingham Education Show 2010.

Do excuse the appalling attempt to shed my leather elbow-patched-corduroy-jacketed image for some Snoop-talk. But it’s genuinely worth a look if you want to spread the word about best practice in maths and make some moolah in the process.

Watch this vid to find out more, or check out Whizz Education at Franchise Direct.

Manesh Mistry, man of means in the Maths-Whizz programming department, has created a brand new version of our award-winning Teachers’ Resource, but he needs you to help test it and give him feedback on the latest changes.

Whether you’re a teacher or student, you can help shape the next version of Maths-Whizz.

Email Manesh – manesh[dot]mistry[at]whizzeducation[dot]com – to find out more and get exclusive access to the new version of Maths-Whizz…

Some months ago we introduced the Maths-Whizz student leaderboards. Whizzers have since been able to compare themselves to buddies, schoolmates and every other Maths-Whizz student, based on the points they’ve accrued in Tutor and Replay modes.

The Whizz leaderboard has proved so popular we’ve even fielded complaints from parents whose students were denied crucial extra points that would help them reach the top ten. But getting to the top is tough – the leaders have amassed thousands of points and upstarts have to work hard to beat them.

In response to the extraordinary popularity of the Whizz leaderboard, The God of Whizz (or ‘Duncan’, as his mother calls him) has decided to recognise top Whizzers on the Maths-Whizz ticker. Every Wednesday I’ll post the Top Ten Whizzers on the homepage.

This week students from the US, UK, UAE and India have made it to this most illustrious of lists, but lesser mortals will have the opportunity to shine with some new features that we’re releasing later this month. PLUS – a certain land-dwelling member of the family Testudinidae might make an appearance in the Whizz Shop.

All will be revealed…

He is currently making a series called The Story of Maths, starting at 9pm on Monday 6 October on BBC4. In making the series Marcus has travelled around the world, to take viewers through a 30,000 year history of maths. His journey takes him through the ages and around the world, to Egypt, China, India, Russia, The Middle East, Europe and America. He is expected to examine the development of key mathematical ideas and show how, in a multitude of surprising and innovative ways,  these concepts underpin the science, technology, and culture that shaped our world…sounds worth watching!

As you may be aware we’ve been making lots of updates to our technology recently, by streamlining our back-end and making our systems more efficient we have made some cost cuts…not, thankfully, the sort made by Lehman Brothers Banking! You’ll be happy to hear that we are going to be passing these on you to in the form of price reductions and benefits. From mid-October you will be seeing some great new prices, so keep your eyes peeled for more details!

 

Brand New Website

Our prices aren’t the only things changing at Whizz right now…

Very soon we’re going to have a new website that will be much easier to navigate and more user-friendly. We’re hoping that this will make your whole Maths-Whizz experience even more fun and interactive. Again, we’ll give you more information on this closer to the time, but be prepared for our great new look!

Updated Products

Maths-Whizz itself is being updated too! We’re going to have a brand new interface to go with the new website and loads of fun new features to enjoy. Students are going to be able to choose their own Whizz character from a selection to act as their avatar as they complete lessons and activities.

‘Beat my Buddie’

Students will soon be able to ‘Beat their Buddies’, meaning that they can compete with friends who also use Maths-Whizz once they have completed the same exercise with the Tutor. The Maths-Whizz Parade will enable students to see a list of their buddies which they can add to from the ‘My School’ function listing all the students in your child’s school using the program. It is even possible to see all the students around the world who are using Maths-Whizz.

‘Replay’

We have had lots of feedback about the importance of revision recently and we think the new ‘Replay’ feature might just do the trick. In Replay students can replay lessons they have already completed to try and get a better score, encouraging them to refresh older work to earn more credits.

A great new product…For Schools!

Even more exciting than all that is our brand new product: Maths-Whizz Tutoring for Schools. Over 3,000 schools in the UK are already using Maths-Whizz and after successful trials in June many of those are now adopting the new ‘Maths-Whizz Tutoring for Schools’. Ask your school if they will be using Maths-Whizz Tutoring for Schools.

Maths-Whizz Challenge

Maths-Whizz has just launched its new product for 7-12s in all GAME stores! If your children can’t get enough of Maths-Whizz or have a real penchant for computer games they’ll love Maths-Whizz Challenge. Now they can challenge family and friends and learn maths basics in the process. Just £14.99 in GAME stores across the country and online shops, get your copy now!

Maths-Whizz Challenge is a game for PCs and Macs that helps children aged 7 to 12 with core maths skills in a fun series of challenges and games, and we are very excited to announce that it will be available on Friday 5^th September at GAME stores across the UK.

With Maths-Whizz Challenge kids can pit their Maths ability against their friends and parents and flex their maths muscles over a series of 55 challenges. The interactive animated activities cover a wide range of topics, from Number to Problem-Solving, offering a manageable and stimulating tool for children of all abilities aged 7 to 12.

As with Maths-Whizz Tutoring we will send regular email reports to monitor progress, whilst players unlock more and more possibilities as they successfully complete activities. Players are awarded credits according to their performance on activities, which can be directly transferred to their virtual bedrooms online (but only if they then subscribe to Maths-Whizz Tutoring).

Maths-Whizz Challenge is not a replacement to Maths-Whizz Tutoring or our award-winning Maths-Whizz Teachers’ Resource. With 55 activities, and no exam-style tests or dictionary, it offers just a sliver of the wealth of learning material available online. Maths-Whizz Challenge will give kids of any age a fun boost in the maths basics, but only Maths-Whizz Tutoring will assess, teach and test across the curriculum.

For this reason, we’re offering free Maths-Whizz Tutoring trials to Maths-Whizz Challenge customers. If you’re an existing subscriber with other children not yet on our Tutoring service, you might want to try Maths-Whizz Challenge.

Maths-Whizz Challenge is available at GAME stores and at www.game.co.uk, priced £14.99.