Moby Max thoughts?

Discussion in 'Homeschooling' started by Blizzard, Jul 12, 2016.

  1. Blizzard

    Blizzard Member

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    Does anyone have any information on that Moby Max online program? I briefly tried to research it and the person who created it, but didn't really find anything bad. It is free, seems to be easy to use, and the kids seem to be fine with it. The hair on the back of my neck keeps telling me there has to be a catch or some alterior motive. Call me paranoid, but has anyone else heard anything about it?
     
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  3. eyeofthestorm

    eyeofthestorm Active Member

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    We used it quite extensively from Dec through June last year. I enjoyed that someone else did a lot of the "legwork" in terms of prep and planning. I did find - particularly in math - I had to do a lot of teaching (not even retracting) of concepts. Often I felt the math was just presented in an unnecessarily complex way (there's a strong common core element).

    It has some nice features: there is a "focus" monitor, which is supposed to indicate if a student stops working/paying attention. It's not perfect. Because if it's taking your child a long time to work out an answer (like math), they can be marked inattentive. But it was a helpful tool for my "daydreamer" overall.

    You still have to manually assign tests. For some reason, they aren't in the lesson schedule.

    A nice feature: sometimes when my kids would just be STUCK, it turned out they just needed a different format (paper instead of computer). You can print EVERYTHING. You won't, because it's thousands of pages LOL. But more than once, I'd select the trouble areas and a number of problems to solve and print. By the time they worked it all on paper, they were ready to go back to the computer.

    I like the science mostly...in a very broad way, it covers many topics. But there's no hands on, of course. No research. Just listen/read. The boys found it interesting, though.

    Now. A couple things that heavily influenced us not going back to it as primary this years.

    1. The boys requested to go back to plain books/workbooks (specifically Pathway Readers and Working with Words). This surprised me, but I didn't argue.

    2. Math. My oldest successfully completed a year AHEAD in Mobymax math, as did my youngest. I do not believe they are actually competent in these skills. I think they just test well. My second son, who can do rings around all of us in performing math, did not do well according to the system.

    I think we will still use it for enrichment and to supplement, but since we're not going to use it for math or language arts this year, i don't consider it a core at all.

    I would recommend you use the free version for a trial period. (If you pay, and the price is reasonable, you get more record keeping features, IIRC)
     

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