Akasha: Custom Application to Support Elementary Geometry Learning First-Grade Children in Colombia

Geometry teaching in elementary schools in Colombia is a challenging task. Students’ problems with this topic have led to below-average performances in the Program of International Student Assessment. To face this challenge, this paper presents Akasha, a personalized software application to reinforce geometry teaching to elementary school children between 5 and 7 years old. Akasha provides ludic activities to identify and characterize polyhedra, polygons, and shape attributes. To further improve the experience, Akasha uses information about users to adjust the difficulty level, and to customize the look and feel of the application. To validate the approach, this study assessed student performance before and after using Akasha in three different schools (public and private) of Bogotá (Colombia). The results suggest that the use of Akasha may have a positive impact on students’ learning, regardless of their social, economic, or technological background.