Multimedia Achievement Pack Math

Reviewed by Anise Hollingshead
Published by Simon & Schuster

Age Group: Age 8 and Up, Adults
Type: Math
Price: $60

Description:

Multimedia Achievement Pack Mathis a comprehensive math program geared for Middle School grades 6-8. There are three courses, one for each year of math typically taught in Middle School. Each course is on a separate CD, and a fourth CD is comprised of quizzes for each lesson.

Upon starting the program, you are presented with a menu of chapters to choose from. The lessons are designed to look like pages out of a student's textbook, and offer examples, brief video clips and interactive spreadsheet style activities. The spreadsheets are especially noteworthy because they offer students a visual, manipulative example of the concept being taught. When a user enters in a figure, the whole spreadsheet changes accordingly; for example, if there is a lesson on graphs, when the user enters a new number into a cell of the spreadsheet, the graph itself will change to reflect the new information. Basically, what this means is that if a student wants to change the number of people who prefer salads over pizza, when the new information is entered, the actual picture of the graph will change, too.

The math concepts covered are very comprehensive, everything from means to to simple algebraic equations. This program is not designed as a stand-alone teaching tool, rather as a tutoring assistant for additional practice.

Features:

  • 3 years of middle school math
  • Interactive spreadsheets
  • Video clips
  • Quizzes
  • Excellent manual

Technical Aspects:

Installation was simple, and the program ran well. However, the interface could have been easier to navigate. When you're in a chapter lesson, you have to click on File, then the Main Index, in order to go back to the Main Index. Even if you just want to move to the next chapter, you have to go back to the Main Index, then pick the chapter. There should have been an option available for moving back and forth from each lesson.

The video clips were clear, and presented good examples of the lessons. The audio was also clear and easy to understand.

Report and Conclusions:

This is an excellent help for middle school math students, and even those in grades above who need a little refresher course. Also, teachers/parents need to know that the spreadsheets are capable of being used for any additional problems they would like to make up, as long as the basic parameters are the same. This is really the best way to use this product, since the activities given by the program aren't very numerous for each lesson. But with these interactive spreadsheets, instructors/parents can increase the activities significantly.




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