My daughter is considering doing an online precalc course this summer so that she can go into calc for her senior year. Does anyone have experience with this type of online course? Will she be adequately prepped for calc in high school? How much work will she have to do? And whihc online school? Any advice appreciated.
It depends on the website itself. I’ve done precalc already online (as an 8th/9th grader) and I really understood it. However, I’m passionate about math, and it comes naturally to me, so AP Calculus (which I also took online) for me isn’t a challenge. I know of sophomores who took online precalc with me, and then took AP Calc in their junior year, and they did well in the class, and found the end of year exam to be easy.
Thanks. Any idea how much time she will spend over the summer doing the work? And any deas for which program?
It also depends on the program. I used the online site AoPS, which is a lot more advanced and in-depth than school math. It also requires a good Algebra 2 foundation, but this really paves the way for an easy Calculus class. The precalculus class was 22 weeks long or so.
If your daughter struggles in math or just doesn’t enjoy it, then perhaps AoPS isn’t the place for her. I’d try Coursera (I believe UCI offers precalc through this website) or maybe BYU. If she’s planning on just testing out of it and not doing the class for credits, it might be worth investing in the AoPS Precalculus book, and then learning out of the book, out of Khan Academy, and using the AoPS forums for help on questions she can’t solve.
The AoPS website is: artofproblemsolving.com. The teachers on AoPS are internationally-acclaimed mathematicians, and they are really very helpful. If a student doesn’t understand a concept, it isn’t embarrassing at all to ask for help as it might be in school. The forums are also there for access for a student who might not even be taking the class; so she will be able to access many different problems.
The TOC of the book: http://aops-cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/products/precalculus/toc.pdf
Excerpt 1: http://aops-cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/products/precalculus/exc1.pdf
Excerpt 2: http://aops-cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/products/precalculus/exc2.pdf
The Index: http://aops-cdn.artofproblemsolving.com/products/precalculus/index.pdf
The Pretest: http://data.artofproblemsolving.com//products/diagnostics/precalc-pretest.pdf
The Posttest: http://data.artofproblemsolving.com//products/diagnostics/precalc-posttest.pdf
Thanks @sternyc , great answer. Not sure yet if she has to get a completion cert or not, but she must have it completed between now and start of school in Sep.
Should also say she is competent in math, enough to do honors classes, but she is not a natural. Maybe she can check out Khan Academy. Supposed to be good. Unless she needs a certificate. Waiting to find out. Basically, she needs to skip precalc so that she can start calc next school year.
Thinkwell - Teacher is award winning Edward Burger - absolutely first rate. Son loves his teaching.
Derek Owen precal, You can check out his videos on YouTube, AoPS is very fast paced and not for the average kid. My kid is doing the AoPs Intro to Alg 1 book, but the class is too fast for her. She loves the videos are Derek owens
Uh, @VANURSEPRAC, how old is she? Perhaps she’s too young for the class. I think I took the Algebra 1 (now they’ve changed it to Intro to Algebra A or something like that) class back when I was 8/9 years old, and it wasn’t fast at all for me. Maybe with the new site, they’ve also shortened the class or something like that? Up until the Precalculus/Intermediate C+P class, everything was really well paced, maybe even a bit slow. Calculus went a tad too fast, mainly 'cause I also took WOOT along with it (really intense class, only take it for oly prep).
If your daughter needs help or something, I can help her if you want. My username on AoPS is mjoshi. 