Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments EPGY math courses; advice needed

Looking for feedback on EPGY.

DS11 finished half of a geometry course last year at a small private school and ended up with the math award in June. Unfortunately, the school moved (way) out of town, and we had to enroll him in a new school. The new one put him in a slow-moving beginning geometry course and he's been unhappy.

On Friday, they finally decided to let him do independent study, and I'm thinking of EPGY. But EPGY seems to require intermediate algebra before geometry. I'm pretty sure that DS's school won't let him do this. They've given permission for second-semester geometry and that seems to be that. After he finishes geometry, they'd probably let him do the algebra course, but not before.

Does anyone know if EPGY will let him start partway through a course? I know that they'll give him a math aptitude test, and/or placement test, but don't know how fine-grained it is.

Advice and insights on EPGY welcome.

I wish I knew, but I encourage you to call EPGY, they seem to be very understanding.

Let us know, ok?
Grinity

DS10 did EPGY math grades 5,6 & 7 this summer and we were vey impressed with the rigor of the program and the tutor DS worked with. I believe because geometry is a second-tier, honors class, they will do the placement test. I have heard of kids at the lower levels being placed mid-way through the course after taking a placement test, but I would check with EPGY before registering. They have been very responsive to us with calls & emails about ques and the tutor even wrote a letter of recommendation for acceleration for my DS.

Know what you mean about the sequence of classes - it appears that they list them as Mo11 Honors Beg Alg, Mo12 Honors Int Alg and Mo15 Geo, with Int Alg being recommended before Geo, although I always thought it was supposed to be the other way around.

Congrats on DS being so strong in math that he is half way throught Geometry at 11. Wow!!

This is encouraging; thanks for replying! I've written to them (just got word about the independent study on Friday), and will probably hear from them next week. I was hoping to get some inside information from people here who've used EPGY, so thanks very much.

Also, the school my other two kids attend is thinking of adding EPGY; has anyone here used it with young children (my DD is 7)?

I WISH the schools here would add EPGY. Have to admit a little bias toward all things Stanford, though, since I worked at the Med Center and lived in the area for 15 years!

I am VERY interested in finding out how others have gotten this into the schools.

We are "trying" to get EPGY or Aleks in the school for ds5 (kinder). Not so sure if we will get it. He is currently working on singapore 2a (3rd grade math) as enrichment at home.

Thank you!

How do your kids like EPGY? Is it engaging for younger kids?

My DD hated EPGY - particularly "that boring man saying blah blah blah." We also had real issues with a particular type of problem needing to be set up and solved in a weird and specific way. (I know enough algebra that I could sort of see that it the setup they wanted did work, but the explanation was "set it up like this and you'll get the right answer.") I finally just did those problems for her - she couldn't memorize the setup by rote, and didn't know enough algebra to learn it by understanding.

We like Khan Academy better.

My DS7 didn't do well enough on the EPGY screening to get in without other test results and since our WISC-IV from last year was spike-y (too much scatter for FSIQ *and* GAI) and since the nice lady wouldn't give me any hint about how high the scores have to be... I didn't send in anything.

I had found about Aleks here and signed him for that (it is cheaper too!). My son hates having to read the explanations, so if I don't keep a close eye on him he tends to try and figure out the lesson by trial and error. Alexsmom, does the boring man saying blablabla mean that they have verbal instructions in EPGY?

Val, if you only need enough to get him up to speed to Stanford's standards for geometry maybe doing a short session of Aleks as afterschooling for those subjects he is missing might be enough? They have a free 2-months trial for homeschoolers (yes, I am cheap ).

Yes. We did Open Enrollment (which doesn't require anything beyond ability to pay), and started DD at 2nd grade. She was doing EPGY as a way of preparing for her skip to third.

The boring man gives you a little lecture when a new topic is introduced. DD is not a hugely mathy kid, but the material she was covering was generally not new to her (hence the skip!), and she disenjoyed having to sit through the explanation. Plus, it was obvious she wasn't paying attention to the explanation, because often she'd have no clue how they wanted her to show her work on the following problems.

Is there a difference between open enrollment and regular EPGY with regard to the boring man?

I think the only difference is that open enrollment doesn't give you an individual mentor on the EPGY end, but I'm not 100% sure.

Hmmmmm... I hadn't realized that open enrollement was an option. Sounds simpler (and way cheaper!) than the "real" thing.

Is the program adaptive -- starts with an assessment and then speeds up/slows down depending on pattern of errors -- or linear? How much repetition do you have to slog through? Can the boring man be turned off to switch to a non-audio lecture?

(while my son currently prefers spoken instructions classes that require slogging through oh-so-slow audio/video components while the same info could be conveyed in 3 paragraphs of text drive *me* nuts!)

I "think" the regular epgy is also accelerated. I am not sure about open enrollment.

hee hee . . .

I'm sure he wouldn't appreciate the nickname we've given him in this thread.

It's adaptive, but I think the regular EPGY requires less repetition before a given topic is considered mastered. For us, having me listen to the lecture then explain briefly worked. But I don't believe it's intended to be done that way.

I personally didn't dislike the lecture component - and DD was filling in holes, so the material was really lower-level than I'd have otherwise started her.

OK, all knowledge is contained in this forum. Poor "boring man" has a name: http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/75752/Re_EPGY_OHS.html

The needs/likes of undergrads are probably not the same as that of elementary school kids, however gifted .

Too bad the people who produce NatGeo/Science Channel shows like "Naked Science" can't produce a math series. DS would eat that up!

Here's a quote from that thread:


EPGY sent me a sample of the geometry course materials. Aesthetics are definitely lacking. The course materials were LaTeXed/TeXed (so, all black and white).

Now, I wrote my M.Sc. and Ph.D. theses with LaTex and know how powerful it is and how far ahead of its time it was. But for me, LaTex isn't a good choice for course materials. Color is generally a superior way to highlight important points and is definitely better for diagrams. Actually, I livened up my thesis by including colored graphs. I just left big blank spaces on my LaTexed pages and then ran them through the color printer to add the graphs. I also glued color photos into the thesis.

Re: the boring man. I think that part of the Khan Academy's popularity stems from the guy's voice and the way he speaks. He has a nice voice and he changes his tone when he lectures, which makes him easier to follow.

LOL

I cannot recall any of my math profs or upper level/grad classes being boring. In fact, they were the funnest classes and teachers I had. Only a couple of profs in the history and Greek departments even came close.

In some of the classes we'd get to arguing over a particular problem and it would go on for the whole class. Heaven help you if you got picked to do a problem and were not prepared. You got to really see how visual vs sequential learners dealt with different classes of problems.

One of the things I took from math to other courses was the need to completely memorize certain things.

Point of pedantry: it's perfectly possible to use colour in LaTeXed documents. I do it all the time, and many textbooks are developed in LaTeX and use colour.

(I am not saying there aren't reasons to prefer things other than LaTeX under some circumstances. But wanting to use colour isn't one of them.)

The comments about Professor Suppes crack me up. Our DS rather enjoyed him and found him to be erudite. And, most of his "lectures" are 30 seconds or less. He would much rather hear Professpr Suppes lecture than me!

In comparison, we looked at the Art of Problem Solving videos for similar subjects. for DS's twin sister The AOPS courses would be great for her as she is a visual learner who needs to be entertained. DS needs a lot less interaction; perhaps that is why he was able to so easily digest Prof, Suppes. We are signing DD up this Spring for AOPS classes as it fits her style. As far as DS, he is staying with EPGY. While both of them have distinctly different learning styles, they have similar math aptitudes.