Someone on Scoble’s blog challenges the notion of MathPractice and FractionPractice that provide instant feedback when working through math problems:
“…that seems like a bad idea. Shouldn’t we promote work-checking? If feedback is instant, most kids will just “brute force” their way through the answers. Unsure if its 7 or 9? Don’t think, just try them both! I know that’s what I’d do, if I was still a kid. I hope this feature can be disabled in Worksheet mode, or whatever you end up calling it.”
Hmm. Makes me think…
What about a feature and/or separate app that supported casting out 9s? Or for every multiplication problem a companion problem could be used to verify the answer?
Being able to verify work is a valuable skill. Brute force verification methods, such as “casting out 9s” is one useful scheme, but also being able to apply common sense rules to the answer is another. I’ll see if I can integrate something like this in.
Loren,
This probably just got me at a bad moment but why are we always so quick to think that every child wants the easy way out. As a teacher of 25 years I can tell you the vast majority of students are eager to learn but at the same time dislike frustration and busy work.
MathPractice and FractionPractice are by their name practice programs. If used correctly students will be spared the frustartion of silly mistakes and worse the frustration of not understanding by working “live” with this software. By all means look at toggles that will add more features but just because some of us can’t be bothered by learning something new don’t label today’s youth the same.
ken
My students love the programs because of the feedback. They still have to think about why the answer is the way it is … it’s not magic. Besides some may argue that the first step to learning is to memorize. Most of my students have their multiplication tables memorized but their memory just isn’t that good for them to recall the correct answer. So repetition is important. 😀