Math Facts Pro Overview

Math Facts Pro has 2 sides:

1. The Free Side assessment & practice app, with jokes. No data is collected and stored, so every session starts over.
2. The Paid Side, with a free 30 day full trial, that adds data storage, tracking (and thus much better efficiency), usage and growth reporting, and a fun, highly focused math fact video game, Mars Defense. (more games to come)

To start on the free side, a student clicks the appropriate large round operator button and enters the information requested.

To start on the paid side, a student clicks the student login button and enters the teacher/school username, their name, and their password. (assisted by autotyping)

The assessment and practice tool (on both free and paid sides) is used to diagnose what the student needs to work on today, gives them some practice, and focuses on a teaching fact, if necessary. One of the huge benefits of individualized instruction is that your students are all in individualized situations with their math fact learning, and it adapts to each one uniquely for optimal growth. They are not all learning the 3’s, for example. Some students will be frustrated working on 3’s, because they don’t know the 2’s yet, others will be frustrated because they already know up to the 6’s. And the path of fluency is not straight across the fact table. it jumps around a lot. That’s why Math Facts Pro’s algorithm now considers relational factors. If a student knows 2x3, they may know 3x2, 2x4, 4x2, 3x3, 2x2, 1x3, and 3x1. (We will get to complete fact families in a future version.) However, if they don’t know any facts related to 6x8, they probably don’t know 6x8, either. The algorithm hunts down which facts are fluent and which facts can/can not be figured out. It is also figuring out which facts are closest to becoming fluent, and focuses on them. However, to avoid frustration, it adapts the questions asked to achieve 90-95% accuracy (zone of proximal development). Mastery is considered as perfect, or correct and fast enough 9 out of the last 10 attempts. The cutoff speed for determining whether the student was fluent or had to figure out the answer is also individualized. It is based on the student’s fastest average speeds, with a built in cushion. Basically, a student’s fluent speed is close to how fast they answer 0 + 0 using the current input device. Math Facts Pro does not use multiple choice answers, and students will never see a math fact with a wrong answer which they have typed, only the correct one is shown. Practicing fact after fact can be boring, so students can watch a joke every once in a while. Students can also set high scores on the leaderboard.

At the end of a session they are shown their results page. If they are on the free side, they should print it and show it to you. On the paid side, the data is all inclusive, so the grid shows their current state, based on everything we know about them - every response they’ve ever made. The lowest not-fluent facts are listed as the facts to work on. Mousing over the grid/graphs will give you more specific information, such as why a fact isn’t counted as fluent. If you want students to practice a second operator, they can do that from the results page.

Once they have practiced a session on the assessment and practice app, students on the paid side can go to our first highly focused math fact video game, Mars Defense. Students will work hard to beat a video game, so why not make a game where the work is learning their math facts? While we have worked hard to make Math Facts Pro smart and efficient, the biggest factor in math fact fluency is the quantity of practice. So making math fact practice fun makes it more sustainable (if you count up to the 12’s in multiplication and division, with all four operators there are 580 facts to learn!) Mars Defense does not waste time, it is very focused on answering facts. Students get lost in the game, going faster and faster as they try to pass levels and beat high scores. It is also very individualized, using the data learned in the assessment and practice app. If a student plays a lot today, they will learn the facts they need to, and advance to the higher levels. Tomorrow’s assessment session will show the growth, and they will now have new facts to learn in order to get back to those same higher levels.

The paid side has a teacher’s dashboard, which you reach when you log-in with your username. It will give you a snapshot of your class(es), including data to quickly see how they are doing, who isn’t practicing, who may be plateaued and in need of help, and who is working hard and learning their facts. The class snapshot and individual reports are printable. More features are coming. Schools can also create an account with each teacher being a class. The price of the paid side is just $1/seat/year (12 months). We do take purchase orders, but there is an $8 fee because these have to be processed manually. We can upload your roster for you for $0.10/student, with a minimum of $10.

We are very eager to continue development, but we are currently in a holding pattern, waiting on circumstances beyound our control. Meanwhile we are planning improvements to make Math Facts Pro much more fun and effective. There is much more to come!