do you want your kids to be really great at math do they hate doing math or just really struggle with it or can they not get enough math and you're looking for something they can do to really hone those math skills I think I've found the solution for all of that and I'm so excited to share this with you let's review the synthesis tutor for Math and see if it's really the best online math program around as a homeschool mom who majored in math in college it's really important to me that my kids ki
ds understand what they're learning with my 9-year-old this has not been as easy as I'd hoped we've tried several different curriculums different online programs all sorts of things and there are still areas where she struggles I don't just want her to check things off a list and move on I really want her to gain a deep understanding of math that's why I'm so excited that I found this program from the first time she tried it I knew it was going to be different so what is this synthesis tutor all
about well it's a sophisticated AI math tutor that's designed for kids ages 7 to 11 to help them not just learn math but be really great at it and it's unlike anything I've ever seen and just so you know this company is not paying me although I'd love to be able to work with them this is just my completely honest review when you go to their website you're going to see two different options synthesis tutor and synthesis teams these are two entirely different programs synthesis tutor is the AI ma
th tutor that we're going to cover in this video synthesis teams is a program for kids ages 8 to 14 designed to teach critical thinking I'd love to cover that program too in an upcoming video so let me know in the comments if you'd like to see that for this video we're just going to focus on the synthesis tutor program so if you go to their website make sure that you click on tutor and not teams now I have to warn you this program is not cheap they do have a 7 dayree trial which if you do sign u
p for you're probably going to love it so this is one of the only times I'm actually going to suggest that you don't sign up for the free trial because if you do and your kids really enjoy it then how are you not going to keep it right I mean it's math after the free trial it's going to cost $348 for a full year if you don't cancel your free trial in time this is what you're going to be charged for if you do cancel in time you can resign up and pay $45 a month with the option to cancel it any ti
me so the $29 a month you see here is deceiving because that's only if you pay for the full year upfront and just keep in mind if you do decide to cancel your free trial and then resign up all the work your child did is not going to be saved so they'll have to start over which is kind of a bummer they also have this $999 lifetime offer which they say is expiring soon but who knows I don't know about you but I don't have $11,000 to spend on something like this anyway $348 for the year is expensiv
e enough but once you see how awesome this is I bet you're going to be trying to figure out how you can fit this into your budget once you sign up it's super easy to get started and as a parent you don't have to do anything other than enter your child's name and age so if math isn't your strong suit this is perfect because the AI tutor is going to do all the work for you so when you first sign on this is what you'll see so you can choose your student here or add another student if you add anothe
r student then you're going to have to pay for them too unfortunately at first I thought it was included because it lets you create the profile so I made a bunch of profiles to see if there was a limit and now I can't delete them but when you click on them it brings you to the page to start your free trial so when your child is ready to get started they can just click on their Pro profile and this is the main screen they're going to see over on the left here are the two options tutor and teams s
o since we're reviewing the tutor here that's what you want to make sure is clicked if you have both programs then this is how you switch between the two launch the tutor to get started the first part that your child will do when they first start the program is this meet the tutor section this introduces them to the program and the AI t so it's basically like a tutorial but it's not boring at all it just jumps right in and even my twins were having fun watching my older daughter do it as you can
see once they complete the initial tutorial then it unlocks the other units there are seven units in total numbers and place value addition and subtraction multiplication fractions number sents bonus lessons and supplemental arithmetic your child can work on any unit they want but the lessons will go in order you can see how many lessons are included in each unit here and don't worry if your child already understands some of these topics because the point of this is to get really great at it le
t me show you an example of one of the lessons now then I'll show you some of the settings you can change and go over some additional things you need to know like how to cancel that free trial if you don't end up liking this hey Payton check it out I just got done building my new DOT Blaster have you ever used a DOT Blaster before a master already I hope you have your license also this Blaster is special it's more than just a blaster it's a multiplication machine that's why I built it I'll go ah
ead and activate it for us that's more like it now we're in the game why don't you help me charge it up press the Green Arrow I've circled it up at the all right ready to go next let's pick up the dot Blaster by clicking on it I circled it for you at the top time to let it rip Blast by clicking in the empty space we call that area the blast zone keep going pew pew you're a real sharp shooter did you notice my blaster maxes out after 10 blasts let me clear those out for you so you can do it again
by-bye dots charge it up again there you go now it's time to blast this round let's keep it reasonable only blasted five times these dots aren't cheap nice how many blue dots do did you blast of course you blasted five dots you were blasting one dot at a time and you shot it five times I'm excited for you to see what else this thing can do let's clear out these dots and blast again click the red button at the top of the screen to clear the dot poof there they go this time give the Blaster a bit
more juice power it up to two dots nice double the trouble I've given you the Blaster fire away all right that time you fired two dots when you blasted that's different let's keep going keep blasting until you have five pairs of dots awesome blasting how many blue dots do you have now you've got it you have 10 dots let's think about how you got here when you fired your blaster how many dots came out with each blast yes you're right you charge the Blaster with a group of two yellow dots so two d
ots came out with each blast now remind me how many times did you fire the Blaster exactly you fired the Blaster five times and each blast made a new row of two dots time to put this all together mathematically let's start by looking at the total dots that we blasted I've highlighted all 10 dots you made 10 dots by blasting five times each blast made a new row of dots I've highlighted all five rows and each time you fired your blaster you shot a row of two dots there it is at the top still charg
ed up to two so putting it all together you charge the Blaster with a group of two dots you blasted two dots five times for a total of 10 dots you know we have a special way we can write this in math instead of saying I shot my DOT Blaster five times with two dots each time we can write that as 5 * 2 there it is circled above the dots and look at that little X symbol between the numbers that's the multiplication symbol we read it as times so using the times symbol we can describe what we did 5 *
2 = 10 5 * two dots 10 in total with each blast you are doing multiplication let's keep going so you can see what I mean now that you know how to use the Blaster let's charge it up even more this time let's charge the dot Blaster up to three click the Green Arrow to charge it up time to blast shoot the Blaster four times you're a natural using what we just learned about multiplication how can we describe this set of blue dots ah I see what you were thinking the plus sign and the multiplication
sign look similar that's an easy mistake to make let's look at why this isn't right 4 + 3 would only be seven dots but you have more than seven dots four * 3 means we blasted four times with three dots each time that's exactly what you did can you also tell me how many blue dots you have in all what is four * three exactly blasting four times with three dots gives us 12 dots in all 4 * 3 = 12 you're already multiplying like a pro have you ever multiplied before it shows you may also already know
that multiplication can be a shortcut for adding the same number multiple times some people call this repeated addition let's get back to the Blaster so we can see repeated addition in action okay so that's how the lessons are going to work but remember this is an AI tool so it also depends on how your child answers the questions so this might look a little different depending on the student if you go up here you can change some of the settings if you don't like the sound of the AI tutor you ca
n pick a different voice you can also adjust the talking speed restart allows you to restart a lesson you can switch users here if you have more than one student signed up under more settings you can enable or disable reading question options and choose to use open dyslexic font clicking on exit tutor will take you back to the main screen up here is where you can log on in another device manage billing or get help manage billing is where you'll go if you decide to cancel your plan so that's how
the synthesis tutor works and what it all looks like now let's just talk about a few more important items first is their money back guarantee if you do end up paying for this you will have 30 days to try it out and get your money back if you don't end up liking it so that's another option if you still aren't sure after the 7-Day free trial next I just want to point out that this isn't an app it's done on their website so that means that you can use it on a desktop computer or on any device with
access to the website but I did actually have trouble with it on my iPad it worked much better on the desktop you may have a different experience but that was mine I also want to talk a little bit about why this program is different than any other math program you may have tried synthesis tutor is actually built on Research by DARPA the government agency behind GPS the internet and early self-driving cars this agency was working on a tool to replicate classroom learning but it ended up working e
ven better than they thought the idea was to create an AI tool that would teach teach in a similar way to having a private tutor except unlike a human the AI tutor can't get frustrated or angry if you're student isn't understanding a concept the AI tutor will continue to provide just the right guidance and it really feels like learning from a real person in a study performed by DARPA students using the digital tutor outperformed classroom students and navy technicians the synthesis tutor was cre
ated by partnering with a team that created the original d a program expanding on their research and creating a program specifically designed for students ages 7 to 11 so that's some of the history behind the program now let's just talk about a few more things that you may be wondering first is this a complete math program well to me that depends on the student this is really designed to work like a tutor to help bring your child's math skills to their Highest Potential so in my family we're usi
ng it as a supplement but I think for a child who really struggles with long in-person lessons this could be your main program we haven't gone through all the lessons yet and I noticed that the fractions unit only has two lessons so it might not cover everything but your student will certainly get a lot out of it they also say on their website that they add new lessons monthly so there may be more coming you also may be wondering how much time your child should spend on this per day or week one
thing I noticed was the tutor did tell my daughter when to take a break it seems like they should probably do one lesson at a time but there are also games that they can do over and over again to get better so my recommendation maybe about 30 minutes a couple of times a week if you're using this to supplement your curriculum lastly I just want to say that this program is relatively new while I think that the teams program has been around for a bit longer from what I can find this tutor program o
nly came out last fall so I imagine there could still be some bugs to workout and some other changes as more people test it out and provide their feedback so that's everything I wanted to share with you today about the synthesis tutor for math we're definitely keeping it so if you have any questions please let me know in the comments and I'd be happy to help and if I learn anything more about it as we go through the program I'll make sure to keep you updated thank you so much for watching
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