TOS Review: UnLock Math

The Old Schoolhouse Magazine’s Review Crew recently had the opportunity to review the online course UnLock Pre-Algebra from UnLock Math. I asked to review this with Liberty, who will be in 7th grade this fall. UnLock Math’s Pre-Algebra is for 7th grade, and since Liberty is signed up to do a Pre-Algebra course at co-op this fall, I had high hopes this would give her a boost of confidence as she enters middle school math.

Liberty began the course with a fair amount of review. She’s completed 6th grade math with had a good bit of algebra in the curriculum we currently use, so it was pretty easy to begin with. It graduated into more difficult concepts quickly though, and she’s learned much, and has averaged a 90% score so far. Before the video are warm up questions – review from the last lessons. Then she watches a video explaining the new concept, then there’s “Stay Sharp” – review and new work mixed together. “Challenge Exercise” is has been a huge challenge for her, and then review notes that are easily printed to be able to review the complete concept anytime they wish conclude the lesson. The videos are interesting, easy to understand, and have Liberty’s vote for the best part of the curriculum. She says they are often funny and have never frozen up on her. (We do have pretty high speed internet to run this program.) Challenge Exercises have been exceedingly frustrating for Liberty and I’ve had to work through a few with her. (Doable always, but they’ll definitely make you think!)

Liberty’s only complaint is that, with questions being corrected by a computer, any simple typo will get checked wrong. She’s accidentally put a space before her answer, or a period after it, and it gets checked wrong even though her answer was correct. Since UnLock does not offer multiple choice for every answer – something I appreciate – it has to have a right and wrong, I’m sure. It’s just been an ongoing frustration. Perhaps a type-in window that only has enough spaces for the correct answer would eliminate this frustration?

UnLock Math’s claim to fame is giving kids confidence with ease of learning. While I’m not sure it made Liberty love math, she did well and learned well. She was never frustrated with the concepts presented and she did it easily and willingly. I do think this has given her a head start for the math class she’ll take next, but I don’t plan on having it replace pre-algebra for her. It feasibly could, but we’ll go on with another course as planned. For a girl that has never enjoyed math and has struggled to maintain a good grade in it, UnLock certainly lived up to it’s claim of teaching her well without struggle.

I had Liberty run this on our PC. It never gave us a moment of grief with a computer running Windows 7. Other than the occasional challenge exercise that she found to be quite the challenge, she used this entirely on her own. I can access her grades easily, and she can also see how she’s done so far. It’s a roughly nine month full time full curriculum math course – it should be easily completed in the one year time frame option for billing. It is set up to do lessons in order, although you can vary from that if you wish. Liberty worked through it sequentially. She’s completed 13% thus far, working 3-5 days a week, half an hour or so each time, in just shy of six weeks’ time.

UnLock Math Pre-Algebra is $299 per year or $49 per month. They also offer an Algebra course. Find both here.

UnLock Math can be found all over social media. Follow them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest.