Math Shark Reviews

Math Shark

Educational Insights brings a terrific idea to life in Math Shark, a combination skill-building tool and calculator. The shape, colors, flashing lights, and beeps--all reminiscent of a hand-held electronic game--will appeal to kids who may not otherwise be interested in practicing math. (P...(click for more.)

Manufactured By - Educational Insights

	Features: Plays like a video game and teaches like electronic flash cards Quizzes kids on addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fraction, decimals, or percentages

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Anonymous

Excellent concept - worthless product

(Review From Amazon)

General Comments:
This is an excellent concept. It has every feature that you could think about. My kids liked this very much (5 and 7 year olds). However, the screen is worthless. It is faint and hurts the eye. There is no way you can turn up the brightness (no buttons for that). The numbers on the outside can't be seen at all. The window is the exact size as the screen so that light from any side casts shadow on the screen. Kids even when they are squinting to understand if the number is a one or seven make mistakes. I would have happlily given double this price to get a version with the screen resolution issue resolved. May be this would get resolved in the next version. Till then it is as worthless as a 74 inch plasma hdtv with a dead screen.

Anonymous

A Lifesaver!

(Review From Amazon)

General Comments:
I bought this for my step-daughter who is twelve. She has struggled for years in shcool due to dyslexia. When she came for the summer, we were shocked to find she still counted fingers for the most basic math facts! I ordered the Math Shark and made an agreement with her to do 4 sets of subtraction problems each day (10 per set) on level 3. When she reached a certain time goal I rewarded her with something she'd been asking for. Math Shark is MUCH better than drilling with flash cards (which is painful). It corrects wrong answers immediately, then puts that fact back in the queque for the child. It has drills & functions for fractions, percent and basic math operations & they can all be set to many different levels of difficulty. I would highly recommend this to anyone whose child is struggling, especially with memorizing basic facts.

Anonymous

Excellent way to drill those facts and see improvments!

(Review From Amazon)

General Comments:
I bought this for my nine year old who thought she knew her facts, but couldn't do her tests on them fast enough. One can tell the Shark exactly what skill to test (for example, subtracting "3" from all the one digit numbers in random order). It sets the ten questions (each one is either in vertical or horizontal format - one can't specify that), and provides immediate feedback as the child enters each answer. It asks any incorrrect questions again. Once all the questions have been answered correctly, it provides the time, for example, 43.3 seconds.

My daughter enjoys seeing her time get better each time she repeats a skill. We have an agreement that she does 5 sets each day (total 50 problems). She usually does 3 sets on the same skill, and each time gets faster. Then she reviews two other skills she's already mastered.

My only complaint is the display screen can be hard to see, especially from the side (so I can't tell what problems she gets wrong, sitting beside her). Sometimes she'll get a problem wrong because she thinks a number is something else. I think the problem might be when the LED is right next to the edge of the screen, it can be in shadow or something.

You can turn off the sound (which isn't all that loud anyway). I really like how specific you can be in setting the level of challenge. This is a valuable tool for drilling math and getting immediate feedback.

Anonymous

A Pleased Teacher

(Review From Amazon)

General Comments:
I ordered 5 math sharks for my inner city classroom. My students were having motivational issues and this really helped. I used it in centers and during indoor recess. You can turn the sound off if your student/child is using it during a quiet time. It tells the student what their score is at the end so they can keep track. My students were at different ability levels and they could choose something that was challenging for them. I did find that by the end of the year, the display was not as clear.