Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Self-paced online Math: EPGY/ALEKS/IXL/Mathletics

4 Self-paced online Math curricula:

http://epgy.stanford.edu/
http://www.aleks.com/
http://www.mathletics.asia/
http://uk.ixl.com/

ALEKS has a free trial. http://www.aleks.com/free_trial 2 months for parents, I think less for teachers. I used the free trial. My children are 7 and 5. Both were able to progress through their Grade 3 modules in about 30 hours of effort. Not sure if my kids are brilliant or the material is easy or both. The material seems comprehensive though. The software requires you to mess around with java but once its running, it does a good, workmanlike job of presenting and explaining the topics.

I have only had brief exposure to Mathletics. It seems more oriented towards the teacher assigning work. The put a lot of work into animations and the kids seem to like it. At first blush it seemed either too easy or too hard, not tuned to a middle ground. Also has a feature of competition with other kids, live, worldwide.

I am even less qualified to judge EPGY. It seems well regarded, more expensive, and correct me if I'm wrong but seems bound to a particular schedule.

Would love to hear from other parents who can compare the above. Will search for existing discussion threads.

I believe that the ALEKS free trial allows use for up to 3 hours over a 48-hour period, not two months.

They let both my kids use it for 2 months. Trial ends this week.

However my teacher reported something like 48 hours. Unless ALEKS changed their policy in the last 2 months, maybe we are both right, and it depends which of the two paths at http://www.aleks.com/free_trial one chooses.

Their deals seem to come and go. I've noted a pattern where they extend the trial period early in the school year.

OP, you sould rightly frustrated. I have not been impressed by any online math instruction. It can work as supplement or as a toy, but not to replace instruction. Instruction happens best in person. Do you have some time each week to site with your kids? You might want to look into getting some Singapore workbooks instead if you feel as though the schools can't or won't educate your kids appropriately.

Aha, that might explain it. I did double-check the parents' free trial option again just before posting. It must be come-and-go with the longer trials, based on a marketing cycle or maybe even changes in usage.

I agree 100%. I was underwhelmed with ALEKS, though ColinsMum helped to educate me a bit on its features which helped a bit. ALEKS doesn't have enough instruction for my taste, just brief explanations. Something like ALEKS or IXL couldn't suffice as a full curriculum due to the lack of instruction. I also think explicit instruction with a human teacher (who could be online, but obviously not automated) is best for developing math understanding, even in children who can learn quickly and fill in many of the blanks.

EPGY seemed a bit better from what I could see of preview information on their site. Others have posted regarding some disorganization at EPGY and it is more expensive, but maybe worth a look. I'd still prefer a printed curriculum such as Singapore Math.

I've used Singapore and EPGY extensively with my kids and IXL and ALEKS and Khan briefly. I've also used free worksheets from homeschoolmath.net. All at roughly the 3-6 grade levels.

I do not understand the hype about Khan. It's nice that it is free and the lecture format looks cooler than the older software, but the game-i-fication is a disaster with kids with any perfectionist streak and cannot be turned off. It was the first thing we looked at (because it was free) and it got us interested in paying a little for something better. So maybe it has a purpose as an introduction to the space.

I agree with the comments that IXL and ALEKS are fine for exercise drill, but are not comprehensive curricula.

We've settled on a combination of EPGY and Singapore. The open enrollment option works about to about $13/mo. The UI has one or two quirks, but you figure them out and move on. We haven't experienced any disorganization, but then again we have not yet gotten to the courses with human tutors.

Singapore's word and challenge problems are great -- a good introduction to Math Olympiad type problems. The mental math books are really helpful too. The curriculum itself is a bit less comprehensive than EPGY and it requires more hands-on instruction. You'll still need to do a little in-person instruction with EPGY, but it's the most standalone of the options we've tried. The fact that it often explains why your specific answer is wrong is a nice (and, of what we've looked at, unique) touch. So the combination works well -- essentially EPGY for bread and butter, Singapore for enrichment.

We used IXL when our kids were very little, like 3 and 4 years old. Then it got too boring. We've done some Singapore Math mixed with Kumon, the latter to improve math facts and rapid calculation. With my 4th grader, we are also doing Bright Kids- I bought their Algebra online one, and it seems very good. It briefly explains things and he picks it up very quickly.

Thanks for all this advice. My ds is very mathy and not being taught/ challenged/even amused at school. We are starting to do some memorizing (as he recalculates EVERY time) - but what he loves is conceptual math. I want to find resources beyond drill sheets (since I can furnish those myself) but am lost as where to go for the deeper stuff. (Sorry...not trying to hijack).

We did Aleks over the summer to fill in some of the odd gaps my older DD had and help my younger DD realize that rushing through work and making silly mistakes isn't a good idea. We've also enjoyed some of the problems on Alcumus as fun challenges - it was the first time my older DD saw math that she could do but made her think.

We've used EPGY and liked it overall, but we haven't tried any of the others (yet). EPGY is kind of expensive compared to some of the others but is not tied to a schedule (except that for the courses we've taken you have to start at the beginning of the month, which is a little odd considering the following). You pay a registration fee (~$35) and then can pay by the quarter (~500 right now, for 3 months) and can keep working on the course until you finish--if you aren't done by the end of the quarter, you can pay for another and keep going. If you finish the course before the end of the quarter, you can start the next course right away even if it isn't the beginning of the month--which is why I don't get why they make you start the first one at the beginning of the month, but whatever. The only written stuff we've come across so far (except for what DD chooses to write down as notes) is there is (usually??) a practice final exam that you can print out. So it is done online except for that. We've found a few bugs here and there but nothing awful. We have to pay for the tutored version because we don't meet the requirements for the other versions, but haven't really used the tutor although they seem to be very available and helpful. I really like how it adjusts so that if you miss a certain number of questions in a particular topic, it can review the lecture and give you more problems to work out, but if you don't miss any it moves on more quickly. We had been trying to work through an algebra text together before that, but it took time for me to read ahead before we went through the material and plus the text kind of jumped around so I would have to explain a topic that they would get to later--kind of frustrating, and DD hated the repetition. But I think it might
be good to have more written problems--maybe we'll check out Singapore math in the future.