REVIEW: Elephant Learning Math Academy by Elephant Learning Math Academy.

I was given the opportunity to review Elephant Learning Math Academy with my 11-year old son, and I was pretty intrigued to see how it works.

WHAT IS IT?:

Elephant Learning Math Academy is a subscription-based online learning program that helps kids advance their math skills.  It is an automated math academy for kids age 2-16.

The company feels so strongly about the efficacy of their program that they guarantee your child will learn at least 1 year of math in 3 months by using the program just 3 times per week for 10 minutes per session.  That’s just 30 minutes/week! 

The program cost is $35/month, making it less costly than signing up at many popular brick and mortar tutoring facilities on the market.

OUR EXPERIENCE:

This is an intuitive program that is designed to automatically detect what your child understands and what they do not, thereby guiding the practice to work on areas that need better understanding.  When your child begins, it first asks a variety of questions in order to determine placement into the program.  Holden was 11.8 years old when he started, and the program placed him at an Elephant Age of 10.3.  That was a bit of a surprise, but I figured he’d get that number up in short order. 

Getting Holden to work on it for just 10 minutes at a time was never a problem.  It’s such a short time commitment that it really isn’t a big deal to work on it in addition to his regular school work.  In the beginning, he was really excited to see that there were so many “games” to choose from for his daily questions, and he wanted to work for more than 10 minutes so he could try more of them.  The program will allow a little extra work, but not beyond 20 minutes per session.  It conveniently tracks the time for you and ends when the max has been reached.  However, he soon found that the “games” were really all the same, just with different graphics.  He began to lose some his enthusiasm at that point, but he still didn’t mind doing it.  I would say it’s less like a game and more like themed animations for answering questions.  So to him, it didn’t matter which theme he chose from that point on.  It’s colorful, but not particularly motivating to him one way or another.

 

Each time I peeked over his shoulder now and then to see how it was going, I noticed he was still answering the same types of questions as the previous sessions, and that had me wondering why.  I noticed that his Elephant Age had still only progressed to 10.5 in all this time, and that progression had happened early on, but there had been no changes since then.

I went away for a few days to celebrate my anniversary near the end of the review period.  When I returned and logged him in to work on the program, a message popped up saying that he was struggling in multiple areas and that we should consider having him retake the placement test.  I mentioned it to him, and he started panicking at the though of having to start over, so I opted out and let him continue where he was.

I have since contacted customer service to ask for advice on how to proceed, and I’m waiting to hear back.  He obviously has NOT covered a year’s worth of material as the program promises, so I’m wondering where the disconnect is happening.  I suspect from my observations that it is simply his ADHD.  He will often start talking while working on it and get distracted or accidentally touch the screen and thereby change his answer without realizing it before pressing enter.  He prefers to use the app on our Android tablet rather than doing it at the computer, which by the way, works very well.  I love that portability option, as it saves his progress in all formats whether he uses the app or the computer. 

I really don’t blame the program.  It doesn’t know if he was careless or truly doesn’t understand the question.  I know from watching him that he understands but is making careless errors, and for that, it is preventing his progression through the program.  So my conclusion is that it may not be the best fit for him because of his inability to focus, but it certainly could be for a child who isn’t so easily distracted.  I think he is becoming bored with it, simply because he is stuck on the same types of questions over and over again, which only adds to his inability to focus.

After each session, he can see how he’s doing in each category of problems, and it’s color-coded for easy understanding.  He does like watching his progress this way.

Within each category, you can click it to see more detail of the work and progress within that category.

I can also check at any time to see how well he is keeping up with working on it regularly by viewing a Playtime Analysis at a glance.

In addition, I can see a detailed history of whether he has passed or failed each concept every time he uses the program. 

I wasn’t clear on how I was supposed to use this feature, but I also discovered that there was a worksheet section that appears to be extra written practice that I could print off for him to do each day.  That’s a nice option, too.

In theory, I love the idea of an intuitive program that keeps your child right where they need to be until they are ready to move on and that keeps progressing them at their own pace.  In practical application, though, I can see where a child like Holden can fall through the cracks of that intuitiveness.  He is doing much more advanced math questions in his regular math program, so I know that he has the ability.  I just think his ADHD makes it perhaps not the best format for him personally, and I think he would be more engaged with it if it had an actual game element to it rather than just themed animations.  But I would encourage you to give it a try and see if it is right for your child! 

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