Interactive Sudoku Fun

I worked as a computer programmer for “decades” and ended up as a game developer, implementing educational games on Sony Playstation and Internet platforms. The company had a team of game designers, audio specialists, artists, and technical developers (of which I was one). The games were fun, engaging and taught elementary school level math and language concepts using multi-media tools. It was a very fun job and the product something I was proud of!
Since getting laid off, I have tried a number of professions, including teaching middle and high school math (an unsuccessful, but interesting experience!) and currently, tutor middle through college level math students, which helps understand specific troubles students are having in learning math concepts.
This brings me to the topic of my discussion, which is “using interactive multi-media to teach secondary math skills”.
A search of what is available on the internet came up with the following:
www.ed2go.com a text-book style instruction, with chapter quizzes and small projects. There is a teacher moderator and an on-line forum. www.learningplanet.com though most of the site requires a subscription, I did find some free examples (Math Mayhem, a Shockwave application) The problems had no instruction and limited problems with only “right/wrong” feedback. www.mathgoodies.com, offers instruction and practice problems categorized by topic. Again, the instruction was text-book style and a very limited number of practice problems. I narrowed my search to finding instruction and practice in “factoring 2nd degree polynomials” a subject algebra students encounter with varying degrees of difficulty. I found the following sites: www.factoring-polynomials.com which gave a book-like description on how to factor, but no practice problems. www.quia.com a seeminly endless supply, of multiple choice factoring problems, but with no instruction. www.glory.gc.maricopa.edu a site that explains the “bottoms up” factoring method and gives a couple of examples. The site is very basic and reads like a book without pictures, animation and no practice problems.
One point that was brought up in a sample lesson on ed2go was that learning can be fun, disputing the quote often heard by teachers "We are in school to learn, not to have fun." I think that interactive multi-media can facilitate both learning & fun. To this end I found a site that gave miscellaneous math problems embedded in a caching game www.mathbits.com The game was fun and engaging and revealed a “prize” at the end, which was a PDF certificate. But again, there was no intermediate feedback or step by step instructions on problem solving.
Finally, I found what I was looking for in the Sudoku game on the site www.learningplanet.com I love to play Sudoku, so this was a distraction and off-topic, but after investigating it further I realized it had incorporated the multi-media aspects I was looking for: interactive step-by-step instruction (see “How to Play” for I/A instructions) and pertinent player feedback during game play (time clock, sections light up when completed, interesting graphics, etc). The unlimited game play was also a bonus! This game has the elements I was looking for in teaching math skills: fun, interactivity and intermediate examples and feedback!