By Educational Activities, Inc., Basic Math Competency Skill Building: Fractions is a tutorial-and-practice learning system to teach basic mathematical operations (addition, and subtraction) with fractions. $59.95 for single program, $369 for set of eight. Macintosh.
This is a straightforward program teaching basic computational skills with fractions. However, there seemed to be more knowledge of basic terms required than was mentioned in the prerequisites of the documentation, where only basic arithmetic operations were mentioned. At times the instructional content on the screen was bogged down in excess verbiage. In particular, changing fractions to the lowest common denominator was confusing and the explanation was given in only one way. No diagrams provided for visual learners.
A separate program exists for each operation at either an easy or hard difficulty level. The tutorial is presented in the form of sample problems followed by at least five practice problems. A ten problem quiz with running scores concludes each segment. Special features include a tutorial button with sound option (reads instructions aloud during the tutorial dialog) and a context-sensitive help button (the question mark). Pull down menus conform to the basic Macintosh interface. With the Educational Activities Manager (EA Manager), teachers can view and print reports and rosters and create, edit and manipulate individual student information. Lessons are randomly generated so they may be repeated as often as necessary.
The sample problems often did not include information required in
the practice problems and the procedures varied between the
samples and the actual practice problems. For example, all the
sample problem answers were in lowest terms already while the
first practice problems required reducing the answer to lowest
terms. The procedure required to do this was not intuitive even
if the learner knew how to accomplish the mathematical objective.
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User Interface
Ease of Use: The standard Macintosh interface capabilities (pull down menus, help) are present and moving in and out of the tutorial sessions is quite straightforward. The EA Manager System for teachers and administrators is also easy to use. The graphics were appropriate although somewhat repetitive.
The student/computer interface was very reading intensive. Lower range grade levels and remedial learners would very likely find this challenging. While the sound tutorials provided might ease this problem in some cases, unfortunately, it was necessary to click the sound button on every frame of the tutorial rather than having the sound automatically continue with each new frame once the sound option had been chosen.
In several sequences the quiz problems were a good deal more
difficult than the practice problems- a frustrating situation for
most learners. Students testing the materials who were familiar
with the subject content showed frustration with the
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Recommended Use
Recommendations: Since there was not a variety in the explanations offered for new learners, I would recommend this program only in remedial situations and only where there was personal (human) assistance available. There will most likely be questions about using the system ("What do they want here?") for the reasons noted above. Use of this program will be most successful if previewed for exact competency and level of difficulty being remediated before assigning tasks.
Recommended Audience: developmentally geared for
grades 4-6 and correctively for grades 7-12. [Top
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Installation Details
Installation was done on an LCII 8/80 with System 7 operating system. Installation was simply installing disk software onto the hard drive. Instructions provided were clear and installation time very brief at about 3-5 minutes.
System requirements:
Macintosh computer with hard drive. 2MB under System 6 (version
6.0.5 or later) with MultiFinder off; 4MB under System 7 (or
later) or while using MultiFinder under System 6. Color or
Monochrome Monitor.
Product Support: Documentation was good with
overview, prerequisites, learning objectives and concise program
description. Special features were clearly enumerated and
worksheets for supplementary work were included. The
Installation Guide was also very easy to follow.
Calls to the 1-800 number were answered cordially and promptly.
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Other Reviews
Booklist. December, 1994.