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Mathigon
Pros: Beautifully designed and interactive courses give students a chance to fully engage with a wide range of math concepts.
Cons: A limited course catalog and lack of teacher dashboard (currently) limit its use.
Bottom Line: A front-runner for a new generation of textbooks -- if they finish their course catalog and add more teacher resources.
Mathigon functions much the same as a classic math textbook in the content it covers, but it presents the materials in a new, engaging, and exciting way for students. Teachers can use it to supplement their lessons (like a typical textbook), to highlight foundational subjects for students who may have gaps, to assign additional readings to those who want to learn more than what's in the curriculum, or to brush up on their own knowledge. Without a dashboard, teachers will have to find creative ways to monitor students' learning.
Mathigon is an interactive take on the classic math textbook. There are mini-games, interactive elements, and problems to solve throughout the text to keep students engaged. Topics range from Divisibility and Primes to Differential Equations; other fun topics include Mathematical Origami. Mathigon provides definitions of words and places for students to answer questions directly in the text. Students must often show knowledge of concepts being taught before they're able to move forward. As students enter answers, an interactive bot named Archie gives real-time feedback and positive support and hints. Archie also provides fun animated GIFs to celebrate with students.
The current content focuses on intermediate and advanced high school students, but foundational courses are being added with content from grades 6-8. The current catalog of content is somewhat limited, with only about 30 percent of the listed courses being available, but as additional content is added, teachers will be able to access more comprehensive resources for students across their classroom.
The Mathigon interface pulls students in and forces them to engage with the content in a meaningful way. The language used is appropriate for high school (and some middle school) students and explains the concepts in a straightforward manner. The interactive bot provides good feedback in real time, which makes students feel like they have a personal tutor as they go through the materials. The topics provided range from foundational skills to extended applications of math in higher learning and the real world. This diversity of topics gives students something to work toward and may pique their interest to discover what else they could learn. Once Mathigon's numerous "Coming Soon" courses are made available, it could be a great one-stop shop for a huge number of math topics.