Math for reluctant students, OR more than you ever wanted to know about MathWhizz.com lol (review)

[midnightwriter]

I posted my initial review here .

DD (9) has been now using it almost daily for 9 weeks. MathWhizz claims to be adaptable to the level and progress of the users, thus being sort of a 'personal tutor'. The parent is not supposed to help the child.

Before mathwhizz, she tried various approaches (Miquon, Math U See, random worksheets) but wasn't happy with them, had low confidence, was reluctant to devote more time to math,  but was driven to "know it better". Her formal math instruction before starting MathWhizz was exteremely limited, but her understanding of mathematical concepts was pretty decent.

When she started MathWhizz, she had to go through an assessment. MathWhizz uses the concept of 'math age'. Math Age is not meant to correlate with grade level, but is an internal measure, specific to the program, that measures progress within the program. When one does the trial with the program, one is not able to see the child's math age, unless one subsribes (I'm not fond of this tactic).

DD tested with math age of 7.63. After 9 weeks of usage, her initial math age at assessment mysteriously rose to 7.93. I guess the program has its issues.

When students do exercises, they earn credits that they can use in the 'shop' to purchase pets, toys, plants and pet food. They can also decorate their study room and their bedroom.

There's a warning that pets must be fed at every log in, or they will be taken away, but after contacting customer service, it turns out they can be fed at every third log-in, and there WILL be a warning if they are going to be taken away. Since DD was logging in several times a day, the feeding issue was becoming more stress enducing than fun, but now as she knows the pets won't be just taken away without warning, she feels better about it.

She LOVES the exercises, and has been very motivated to keep on going. Her math age grew to 9.23, which is a little bit higher than her chronological age at this point. I'm not sure how much external validity this concept holds, but it has been motivating for her to see her progress, especially in a form of a bar graph. She's also learned A LOT, and is retaining well. (The program claims that one will increase one's math age by 1.6 over the course of the year, if used as recommended.)

Now, the main criticisms:

1. Each exercise is at least 10 questions. There's no 'I don't know' option, or 'Too hard' Option (like in dreambox.com). This means that if DD doesn't know the answer, she has to keep entering SOMETHING into the answer box, while knowing that her answer is wrong. She's a perfectionist, and she finds this very demoralising.

The program claims that it offers multiple explanations of the topics, if a child has difficulties with understanding the concept. In practice, this would be a child answering 10 questions incorrectly, before the program would offer a different way of explaining the concept, in a different exercise. This was not an option for DD, and I often end up explaining the concepts for her. We've never encountered any alternative explanations.

2. Some of the exercises do have a 'help' button, but it would be only 1% or less of the exercises she'd done so far. She's done close to 200 exercises. It would be nice if each exercise had a help button, or at least an option to access alternative explanations, or even the original explanation. The original explanation is not accessible while one is doing the exercise.

3. I wasn't able to find out what grade level she is doing there. I did receive a response from the customer service, and they attached a massive spreadsheet, but it was unreadable. Each exercise listed in the spread sheet is assigned a code, and is then correlated to the level of Core Areas (or something like this), but it is impossible to figure out which exercises are which, as I don't see any codes in my parents' dashboard. A friend who uses the program wasn't able to figure it out either. I guess it is possible, but definitely not user friendly, and would require hours of searching for exercises, checking their correlating skills, and then their correlating grade levels. I requested to receive this information for the grades I was interested in, but it wasn't an option.

4. There are frequent glitches in the program. For example, for some time, when DD fed her pets, it wouldn't get 'registered', and each time she logged in, she was told that they were hungry. A minor issue, but frustrating. And then the issue of the 'age at assessment' growing bit by bit (it grew twice already). Weird. I might ask about it at some point, especially if it grows more.

5. The program claims that one's weaker areas are given more attention, as getting the exercises more frequently. I did a little analysis of frequencies, and this is not really the case. As the result, DD's weakest areas is 'data management' and 'fractions', while in reality these are her strongest areas, and she is not getting challenging exercises in them. It feels like she is almost held back. So definitely, the program is not very sensitive this way. Not that I would expect a program to be THAT adaptable, but hey, this is the claim that they are making.

6. I really don't like how their trial system is set up. When you sign up, you only get 4 or 5 exercises, in addition to the assessment, and have no access to the assessment's results. This is compared to two weeks of Dreambox.com, with full access to the assessment results.

7. When DS (6.5) started his free trial, the first exercises was to drag balloons to their locations on the nubmer line, while counting up by 3s. There were 6-10 balloons in each question, and 10 questions all together. He pretty much died with all this dragging, and the repetitive questions, especially as this was a bit difficult for him. In comparison, Dream Box, which DS is now doing, would gently quit an exercise if the student is not getting the right answers several times in a row. The exercises are also not as long on Dream Box, which is a much better fit for a younger child.

8. There are games that a student can play, but there are no previews of those games, and it costs credits to play. Definitely not a hit with DD. My friend's child tried the games, and was quite underwhelmed with their quality.

9. This is nitpicky, but her room is not big enough to keep all her pets, and the graphics do not accommodate multiple pets well. There are also no furniture options, or additional room options. Right now she has 5 or 6 pets, and wants several more, but is not sure where to put them.

10. The cost of the program. Homeschool buyers co-op runs the 50% special, so it is worth checking into, before paying the full price.

11. Initially I had difficulties with the customer service, but it was all straightened out, and since then, the customer service has been prompt and polite.

Now, the things that are working for us:

1. I like that I can preview DD's 3 next exercises, and actually work though them, without affecting her scores. This give DD a preview, and gives her a chance to practice too, especially for the timed excercises (rapid recall). She is a perfectionist, and gets anxious during timed exercises. But since she is able to practice on the parent dashboard, she has become more confident in her rapid recall skills.

2. I like that I can send messages to DD within the program, and she can write back to me. She loves getting mail from me.  

3. There's an option to add a 'buddy', so that you can later challenge that said buddy to complete an exercise faster than you. DD doesn't like the challenges, but I can imagine this being fun to other kids. When she adds buddies, she can see their total scores, and their daily scores, and this is somewhat motivational to her.

4. There used to be weekly announcements of 'whizzer of the week', and it was motivating for DD to try to beat the previous whizzer, credit vise. This has been discontinued, I assume for the summer holidays.

5. Overall, the program has been a success, as DD has learned a lot, is much more confident about her skills, is more positive about math, and enjoys doing the exercises.

Edited by midnightwriter - 8/8/11 at 9:53pm

[tankgirl73]

Thanks for this great review!  My daughter (4.5yo) tried the trial a little while ago and we were underwhelmed, for many of the same reasons you describe.  The assessment was tortuous -- for some reason I couldn't fathom, some of the assessment questions were just a question, but some of them were 'repeat this activity 10 times', just like the practice activities.  When you have ten turtles and they're reciting numbers 30 to 40 and you have to click whether they got it right or not, and you have to do it TEN TIMES, it gets pretty darn annoying, when you're just supposed to be doing an assessment especially!

But then after the assessment, when she was doing the activities, she was given the VERY SAME turtle activity, even though she'd done fine with it in the assessment.  

She loved her 'room' and the idea of buying stuff and decorating it, but the actual math practice we found to be lacking.  I don't think Dreambox is perfect either, but it's much better than this (IMO) and so we went with that.  My older son (13) is using Mathletics and TenMarks for computer math practice.

[midnightwriter]

We haven't used Dreambox as much, as DS is not as driven about math, as DD. He enjoys it, though, and is learning a lot. He's doing mostly K level  as when he started he wasn't even sure about number names--he is bilingual and this complicates things for him. I think Dreambox is excellent for younger kids, while MathWhizz is awful for younger kids, and gets much better for kids who test into 7.6 or so. My understanding is that most children will test with a higher math age, than their chronological age, so I'd think that MathWhizz starts being fun around 6.5-7. At the very least when the very basics are already mastered.

I really like how Dreambox presents numbers visually with the beads, and trains one's eye / mind to quickly recognse the numbers.

When DD9 tried Dreambox, though, after using Mathwhizz for a couple of weeks, she wasn't into it. It also mysteriously assessed her WAY below her level, and she was bored and not used to their presentation style. There was a frog jumping exercise that even I couldn't figure out! (which frog I needed to click on, not the math part). She found it watered down, compared to MathWhizz.

O.M.G. I forgot about the turtle counting in MathWhizz assessment. How could I?  That was when DS still didn't know his numbers up to 10 well, and they wanted him to recognise numbers up to 20, over and over again.

DD briefly looked at IXL for math practice. I do like the format, she is not that much into the practice part.

We  are not as interested in math practice / drilling, and what she gets from MathWhizz is enough for now. I like that mathwhizz does 'teach' the concepts, so it is not just practice. 'Teach' in quotation marks, but it does introduce each new concept before starting it. She can also use the 'replay' feature in mathwhizz, where she can re-do the already completed exercises for extra practice.

Thinking about it, I wish some 'replay' was built into the program, so that a student couldn't move on without completing some replay exercises, or doing more f the 'test-style' exercises.

Originally Posted by tankgirl73 

Thanks for this great review!  My daughter (4.5yo) tried the trial a little while ago and we were underwhelmed, for many of the same reasons you describe.  The assessment was tortuous -- for some reason I couldn't fathom, some of the assessment questions were just a question, but some of them were 'repeat this activity 10 times', just like the practice activities.  When you have ten turtles and they're reciting numbers 30 to 40 and you have to click whether they got it right or not, and you have to do it TEN TIMES, it gets pretty darn annoying, when you're just supposed to be doing an assessment especially!

But then after the assessment, when she was doing the activities, she was given the VERY SAME turtle activity, even though she'd done fine with it in the assessment.  

She loved her 'room' and the idea of buying stuff and decorating it, but the actual math practice we found to be lacking.  I don't think Dreambox is perfect either, but it's much better than this (IMO) and so we went with that.  My older son (13) is using Mathletics and TenMarks for computer math practice.