The other day, my wife and I were at a friend’s house and he showed us an electronic device called FlashMaster. His daughter was having trouble with her math facts and her fifth grade teacher recommended that her parents purchase one of these devices. I liked it as well and purchased one for my daughters.
Chuck Resor of Jackson Hole, Wyoming invented FlashMaster after becoming frustrated with other educational technologies. The short biography provided on the FlashMaster website states that Chuck’s most relevant qualification for inventing the product is that he is a parent himself who also struggled with how to most effectively supplement the math training his own children received. He hired an engineering firm to craft his concept and a Chinese manufacturing firm to build it. The gadget is a little bigger than a Nintendo DS and probably not as much fun. However, for those of you who think that today’s elementary school programs do not teach the basic fundamentals of math (math facts) and whose children do not respond well to flash cards, this is the tool for you.
FlashMaster comes with an instruction booklet; but it is written for teachers and parents. On the front page, the guide recommends that the device be handed to children to learn as much as they can about how it works without reading the directions. There are nine levels each of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. You can set the level of difficulty for each as well as the time that you want to answer all thirty questions at each level. The problem is displayed on a screen and you type in the keys corresponding to the numeric answer. If you get an answer wrong, a little beep is registered and the question is automatically stored for a review at the end. You can also change the format of your question from straightforward (1+2 = ?) to (? + 2 = 3) or (1 + ? = 3). At the highest level and the shortest time, you really have to know your math facts to answer thirty multiplication and division questions correctly. There’s even a memory function that allows the student or the student’s teacher or parents to review which questions the student missed while using Flashmaster.
Our girls enjoy using the device and challenge each other with how many questions they could answer correctly in a sixty second, 150 second, or 180 second time period. I am confident that they will improve their math facts while playing with the Flashmaster. I am not related to Chuck, do not know Chuck, and do not have a financial relationship with Chuck. Chuck, many thanks for inventing this device. I wish that I had. I think it is one of the best tools for improving basic math skills and I think we need millions of them in America, particularly in elementary classrooms.
