Homeschool World Forum

[DJaccb]

I would like to invite everyone to use www.emathfacts.com to practice their children's math facts.

The website covers basic math facts - addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Numbers 0 to 12 are included.

This is a website that I wrote while home schooling our children. While I enjoy homeschooling I did not look forward to going through flash cards with our children several times a week.

I am a programmer and I was looking for a project that involves some new Microsoft tools. The program is written using Silverlight and the application is hosted on Microsoft's cloud computing platform called Azure. Silverlight is a plug-in (like Flash) that Netflix uses to show their movies.

Currently www.emathfacts.com does not have any advertising nor does it charge a fee. You can use all the lessons without creating an account. If you want to keep track of your child's progress you can create a free account.

Right now I am looking for people to use the application and let me know what they like (or not) about the software.

Cheers,

Dave Jacob
_________________
Dave Jacob
www.emathfacts.com

[4given]

My first suggestion is offering a sample, if possible. I am not keen on creating an account, whether free or not, before I am certain a site will be useful. Thanks!

[DJaccb]

All the exercises can be used without first creating an account. Also there are no limits on how many times you can use the lessons.

I agree with you that people do not want to go through the trouble with first creating accounts before using a new web site.

At www.emathfacts.com click on the button called 'Start eMathfacts'. Next the Silverlight application will load and you can choose any of the exercises in the middle of the screen. No accounts are necessary.

I created accounts for my children so I can check up on them and make sure they did their 100 math facts. Before I had accounts they would occasionally close the program before I verified they completed their math facts. A modern version of 'my dog ate my homework'.

With having an account I was able to log back on and see that my children did their work since a record for each lesson is being stored in a database. This might not be the best reason behind creating accounts but it is the reason I did it.

Dave
_________________
Dave Jacob
www.emathfacts.com

[evodio]

Try this one: www.algebrafree.com It has a complete course in algebra one with in video and text. All free

[mathops1]

After you finish practicing your skills on www.emathfacts.com, try out www.mathops.com too. Click the "Free Lessons" video for access to online algebra lessons and videos with teenage honor students explaining the math and hundreds of printable worksheets.

Those basic skills are necessary, so make sure you use emathfacts.com too.
_________________
Kathy Ferguson
www.mathops.com

[miska5298]

My son uses emathfacts.com every morning. We do math as our first subject and it's a great warm up for him before he does Saxon. It's helped him a lot and he likes trying to beat his previous time. I love this and have told other home school moms about it. I really appreciate this program. Thank you!

[susanrm]

I was excited to see these free resources and perhaps use them and/or link to them on my website. I have feedback for Dave, though.

Dave, you have put so much work into this site, and it's very usable. Great programming.

I wouldn't use it to teach or practice math facts, though, and here is why:

The problem practice consists of mixed-up problems. Yes, they are separated by size of number, which can be useful and better than many worksheets out there. (The downside is that ordering it like this can imply that larger numbers are "harder" than smaller numbers.) However, I learned a few years ago that the best type of worksheet is designed like a sprint, which Yoram Sagher invented. This is a sheet of math facts practice that teaches at the same time. For example, you might see the following problems:

5 x 9
50 x 9
500 x 9
5000 x 9

or
6 x 5
7 x 5
8 x 5
9 x 5
5 x 6
5 x 7
5 x 8

etc.

In other words, you are providing the opportunity for students to notice patterns for themselves and get very fluent in mental math facts by applying these patterns. Randomly ordered math problems don't offer this.

If you were to offer more sprint-like practice, I would be THERE in a minute. It's a lot harder to create these, though, which may be why there is only one offering out there on the marketplace.

Beemath looks like worksheets that could just as easily be sent home on paper. Ideally, a math website offers practice that can't be done on paper, like http://www.thinkingblocks.com.

algebrafree.com looks promising for students without access to a teacher and/or supplementary practice.

Thanks everyone!

[six]

Dave , went to explore but was stopped by a page to add microsoft silverlight. I don't do microsoft, I use linux and I am an advocate for shareware and freeware. It needs to be cross platform compatible.

I have found
http://www.khanacademy.org/login
to be useful, it starts at the beginning and goes to the higher maths
if you need worksheets it lets one print the next ten problems in the area of study

as a linux user I have found a lot of free software http://sourceforge.net/ most can be used on windows systems

[Theodore]

[lisayvonne]

Thanks for sharing