"First in Math" is a website that allegedly teaches math through games. The company has apparently been wildly successful in selling its product to schools, on the grounds that it makes practice fun, and "kids love computer games!"
Both of my kids have been told to use "First in Math" as homework; Older Daughter at Natural Friends, a private school, and now Younger Daughter at Fragrant Hills, a public school. When Older Daughter got the assignment, I told her to ignore it, and we spent the time doing Singapore Math. Younger Daughter just got the assignment and wanted to give it a try, so I watched her play the games on the web site.
Ugh, what a complete and total waste of time. Younger Daughter was playing a game where you're supposed to add 2 numbers to get 10. For instance, you'd look at "3 + ___ = 10", and you could press buttons associated with the numbers 5, 6, 7 and 8.
Younger Daughter had absolutely no idea what she was doing, so she was just randomly pressing buttons and getting rewarded with little audio riffs. Here's the epic fail — if you give a wrong answer, there's no provision for explaining why your answer was wrong, or giving you a chance to find the right answer. You just get an audio riff and a little button that you can press to play again. If you press the button, you're set up with a completely different problem, which you can again answer randomly, and so on.
If you give the right answer, you get a slightly different audio riff and a little graphic that says "Cool!" or "You're Hot!" or "Way to Go!", but if you give the wrong answer there's no graphic, just the "play again" button. In other words, it doesn't actually tell you that the answer was wrong, it just neglects to give praise.
Younger Daughter's got the day off tomorrow, so I'm digging out the Singapore Math books. It's way past time to get started on them.
If you need a computer game that might help and goes WITH Singapore Math, the Sonlight company sells something called "Vroot and Vroom" with their Singapore programs. It's very brightly-coloured and is I think actually made in Singapore etc. It is not good at explaining why one has a wrong answer, but I honestly found that to be a downside of the SM program and a bit PLUS for Teaching Textbooks. But during the younger years, oh yeah, we used Singapore!
ReplyDeleteWell, do check it out; it might be something fun to use as a reward on occasion. Hope your school year is going well. :)
PS. Ok, how odd is that. I just realized I recommended Sonlight in my last blog post. I don't get compensated for the reviews or even use their base curriculum; maybe I should considering how much I enjoy the stuff I *DO* order...
ReplyDeleteAhh...First in Math. Our local elementary school tried out this program last year. They sent home a leaflet encouraging its use and set up accounts for all the kids at school.
ReplyDeleteI ignored it because it didn't look worthwhile. When my son did try it finally (pressured from school, I imagine) it did prove to be a complete waste of time so I told him not to do it anymore.
Shortly after that we found out that the teachers were monitoring their students usage, announcing the names of those who used it the most, providing rewards to classes that had the most overall usage, etc.
I went ballistic at that point.
I told the school that they had no right to monitor our out-of-school computer usage, to interfere with my ability as a parent to limit my son's screen time (for what was really a game, not educational work), and to infringe upon our privacy by announcing usage publicly. I have to credit our principal who worked hard to get the right people together, but none of them ever admitted to understanding what I was talking about.
But the program, which had been billed as a year-long effort, was dropped shortly after my big meeting with the school officials.
Matthew, could you talk to the powers-that-be in my district?
ReplyDeleteThere's definitely a monitoring aspect. I expect that one of the ways First in Math sells itself to schools is by promising to generate data. What school could turn that down, in this day and age?
Let's not forget not all kids have internet access in their homes. I know these are probably mostly upper middle-class schools adopting these programs, but if even one kid goes home to a house without a computer, the school is putting more hurdles in front of that kid becoming successful and confident. How bad would you feel watching your classmates be praised for playing a game when you couldn't?
ReplyDeleteThey used to tell us at my high school that we could stay after school and use the computer lab. My friend almost flunked English because all homework had to be typed, and he refused to quit his after-school theater group so he could use the computer lab.
@FedUpMom - there are laws regarding privacy of academic records and my school system has policies on top of that. I think I was able to get the school system to start worrying about whether they were breaking those rules (in my opinion they clearly were).
ReplyDelete@Megan - that's a good point, although probably not so much a problem in my county. The closest we've run into that is that this year in Social Studies, the teacher wants the kids to watch BBC World News America every couple of weeks and make notes from it. We don't have cable or a DVR so we're stuck watching live at 6:30pm on a PBS secondary station. It is annoyingly disruptive for us, plus I hate TV news. It seems like the worst way to get anything other than breaking, catastrophic-level news.
Megan, good point. And even if the kid has internet access, what if the parents limit their kids' screen time, as Matthew points out?
ReplyDeleteI've got one for you, FedUpMom. A friend of mine has two children adopted from Guatemala, who are in the same kindergarten class. They just got a homework assignment in which they are supposed to fill out a worksheet about their ancestors. Despite volunteering in the class, she got no warning about this assignment. So here we have a homework assignment that is insensitive, time-wasting, and interferes with parental decisions, all in one!
ReplyDeleteAll good points. We have one computer, it's in our bedroom and it is essentially MINE! I really don't let the kids use it at all. As for TV, we don't have cable or DVR and PBS is not one of the 6 local channels that we do get. The schools need to worry about what goes on at school and leave "home" to the parents. Why should Matthew's family have to stop everything at 6:30 to watch the news? It's ridiculous. They assume that we should all just love the chance to change our lives to accomodate the schools' harebrained ideas. Uggh. Good for you, Matthew! You really put the fear in them about their computer nonsense!
ReplyDelete@ChemProf, that's a good example of bad homework. I would add "developmentally inappropriate" to your list of adjectives. Why are they giving any homework in kindergarten?
ReplyDeleteAdoptive parents have special pet peeves when it comes to homework -- anything about "ancestors" or the "family tree."
"Adoptive parents have special pet peeves when it comes to homework -- anything about "ancestors" or the 'family tree.'"
ReplyDeleteAn out of town friend of mine relayed this story. She is a single mother of an adopted child. The child, then a second grader, was asked to write a piece, describing his mother AND father. Well, the child does not have a father, he is being raised solely by his adoptive mother.
The child attempted to explain this to his teacher. The teacher persisted, announcing, but you must have a father! Can you imagine? You can see how the teacher's goading now crosses the line. The child disintegrated into tears.
Oh, for heaven's sake. In this day and age? You'd think the teacher would have gotten the memo by now. Many kids don't have fathers in their lives, for all sorts of reasons.
ReplyDeleteYou would think.. The assignment almost borders on abuse, because it lacks appropriate sensitivity.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Apparently some of this is actually in the California standards, so that most CA kids do a family tree in first grade (which I'd agree is developmentally inappropriate in addition to insensitive or abusive, depending on how the teacher handles it).
ReplyDeleteKim said:
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They assume that we should all just love the chance to change our lives to accomodate the schools' harebrained ideas.
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Yes, the presumption is that the home is an annex of the school, staffed by helpful volunteers (the parents).