Free PWA for Arithmetic Fluency. Not Standard. Not Perfect. Vanity Project. Battle scarred author. Wife dislikes landing page. Kahneman (Tversky) affected development. Additional info: Daughters are great at math.
---Overview---
I am emboldened to post to ShowHN because of a recent (to me) study about "Arithmetic Fluency" (AF) by McNeil, Jordon, et. al. link: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15291006241287726
RightMindMath.com (RMM) is a personal project built from an Adobe Air app I originally created solely for my daughters. It is a FOSS project, and I cannot (and have no intention to) monetize/scale it.
Since it uses the "Pages" feature of Github, cost to keep it going is mainly my domain reg/dns costs which are about $15/year.
If you click thru to RightMindMath.com and click on the back story, there is a little information about how RMM came to be. Not stated is how extreme the resistance to "fluency" or "memorization" from those in my school district really was. For a parent, it was --frankly-- scary. This was early stages of the Common Core (CC) rollout. CC is absolutely against any type of AF, memorization and/or old-style algorithmic approaches. CC was heavily promoted in our WA school district.
Now, however, it appears that building Arithmetic Fluency (AF) in young children may be good as per link above. It actually helps with "theory/understanding" which the the bedrock of CC. Hence this ShowHN post.
Some school districts in Western WA may be starting to recognize this, but it is gradual, and I think there is still extreme resistance. CC so heavily promotes theory and understanding there is little or no room for "fluency" notably re: school politics.
Interesting History: Way back in the day when it cost little to be an Apple App Store developer, and Apple allowed Acrobat Air compiles to be distributed RMM was pretty successful. With *absolutely zero* ad spend or promotion, RMM (different app name at the time) was downloaded about 1500 times. This was an 99.9 variance measured against other free/non-ad apps. So perhaps RMM is OK given this. You can judge for yourself cause it is a PWA and FREE.
More in my comment below.
ruralfam•3mo ago
1) Scalable SVG: Adode Air had a pretty good scalable UI. Needed to replace this with HTML/CSS/JS. Ended up using an SVG process. Works well. Even the printed worksheet uses it.
2) Readable code: Use a pretty old-school JS model with mostly functional modules. When I have to go back and review/revise things it seems pretty readable.
3) ChunkIt: There is an entire topic dedicated to this at the website. Like the topic notes say: "...it really is a good lifetime skill."
4) Long Division: I think the step-by-step for the old-style algo UI works well imho.
5) Printable worksheets for single digit arithmetic: I truly believe in the pencil/paper learning enhancement model. The sheets are printed using SVG. Took some time to get this working.
6) Daniel Kahneman: This whole thing was built given my reaction to Chapter 4 of "Thinking, Fast and Slow". I cite DK at the site, and obviously do believe he is right re: Associative Memory (fluency). Also kudos to Amos Tversky who did not get to enjoy the extended plaudits/recognition from DK's & AT's "Heuristics" breakthru and subsequent applications.
7) Eldest daughter did the RMM art work using Affinity Designer.
---Could Be Better---
1) Sync using Google sheets. I tried to find a "no cost" server that met the specs... nada. The Google Sheet solution works, but obviously there is no way this is optimal. Complete and utter KLUDGE. My apologies.
2) Verbose, opinionated main page: Wife thinks I am crazy to keep this text-heavy, old-style format. My subconscious thinks she is right. My conscious says... "The target is parents who will do anything to help their kids gain Arithmetic Fluency" so they will persevere. Likely she is right, but I lack the gift of knowing how to properly market/explain RMM so it stays as is.
3) Readable Code: (yes same as above). I would really like to use TDD, but my longish, readable functions likely will not support it. So lots of hand testing when changes are made (I think some well-known game coder did this for his game -- so not alone). Hate it when I have to do it, but the lock-in is deep.
---Frustrations---
1) Free Math PWA: Since I started this, arithmetic learning apps have massively moved into the "subscription", "App Store" model. Sadly I now believe that most folks cannot associate a free PWA with quality. "Why is it free??" "Why does my App Store not have it??" Most folks cannot wrap their heads around the fact that FOSS/PWA can provide great solutions because contributors care and PWAs can be pretty damn good (not saying RMM, but...) Not blaming the parents in any way, just a result of massive marketing/messaging by the big guns.
2) Focus on cute characters/animations/games: Given how math apps for young children are marketed, most parents conclude that for young children an app lacking cute characters/animations/games likely going to be worthless. Our experience is this is 100% not the case, but again ... App Store Marketing. Personally --and based on my anecdotal experiences-- animations, cute characters, and gamification are totally NOT NEEDED. However, this assumes a caring and participatory parent, otherwise yeah, go for the App Store stuff because you are busy and c/a/g engage the kids (that is very cynical, many parents care and still will not consider RMM).
3) PWA support: Sort of a mixed bag: support is there... could be better. Main complaint: Local PWA data after installation should not be tied into non-PWA browser actions such as deleting "browser data". Kinda shocking to delete something in your browser, then open your installed, local, off-line capable PWA to find all its data gone. Might make sense to some, certainly not to me. Work arounds (e.g. a second browser account) gonna make folks think PWAs are not worth it. Might be the intention... but again I am a cynic.
4) Everything related to education in the U.S. seems to be about monetization. Do a Google search for links from moms blogging about home schooling. Hard to believe their blog links are not related to affiliate income rather than real, honest evaluations. (I have visited many.) Then there are the school boards / curriculum decision makers with lots of money to spend, and lots of pretty big companies interested in how they spend it. Given some of the decisions we have seen, optimal-for-the-kids may not always be item #1 on the decision tree. Again... I am a cynic so "grain of salt".
---Final note---
If you are a ShowHN reader who hopes their young children gain AF, check out the RMM (sorry for all the acronyms). Costs you nothing, and may work. I freely admit there may be better solutions. Do think, though, that it is worth investigating RMM as it is free, and may be pretty good for your kids. If not --and may God help you-- scroll thru the App Store arithmetic apps to ferret out the good ones. There are likely some there, perhaps better than RMM, but... again God help you. And, you will, of course, be paying a sub.
HTH, RF
FYI: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2013/06/failing-math-curricul...