<p>My DD is in 6th grade and doing the CTY prealgebra course. CTY contracts out to Thinkwell for this class and all other higher level math courses.</p>
<p>For the beginning coures, CTY contracted out to EPGY. She's done several EPGY math courses.</p>
<p>Which is better and why? EPGY or Thinkwell.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>My kids had EPGY, not Thinkwell. I just watched 4 demo lessons on Thinkwell website. Here is what I think:</p>
<ol>
<li>Pros:
a) Thinkwell has better video presentation. It has the video of the teacher talking and writing on the whiteboard like an actual classroom. EPGY only has some video of hand writing on the whiteboard but no teacher face; students only hear the audio. I am not sure EPGY has any improvement on this aspect or not. My kids took the classes more than 5 years ago.</li>
</ol>
<p>b) Thinkwell is a lot cheaper.</p>
<ol>
<li>Cons:
a) It seems Thinkwell teacher talks too much. EPGY has less talking.
With EPGY, the kids hear the professor talk in a cool way. Probably this is the style intended for gifted math kids.</li>
</ol>
<p>b) It seems Thinkwell does not present the math knowledge in a precise and very logical way. The “too much talking” obscures this aspect. It also presents the wrong knowledge. In the presentation on equation, the teacher uses the expression “no solution” more than one time and it’s mathematically wrong in this situation. </p>
<p>EPGY has actual tutors and office hours. I don’t know if Thinkwell has this.</p>
<p>Our family used Thinkwell for Algebra II through CTY 5 plus years ago. There was a tutor and office hours which were not ideal for us at the time. It was relatively new at the time (for CTY) as I recall and the tutor appeared unfamiliar with using the whiteboard to work equations during tutoring sessions. Too much lecturing for younger students. Make certain that if you are transitioning between software that too much knowledge is not assumed by the new product. There were gaps in knowledge that needed to be addressed- the Thinkwell AlgII product included areas covered by our district’s pre-calculus course, resulting in frustration for our child.</p>
<p>D used Thinkwell “Honors Algebra 1”, homeschool version, in 8th grade, because her classmates and teacher were moving through math at a snail’s pace. She is CTY humanities, not math, qualified, so we did not have the tutoring from CTY for Thinkwell. So, I took the course along with D so that I could coach her when needed. She found some of the lectures irritating (I rather liked them!). A workbook came with the course, and it was a good resource for review and explanation of the concepts - a math-bright student might be able to use the workbook as a text and skip the lectures altogether. D plugged through most of the curriculum and covered about 4 times as much math as her classmates who were doing Algebra 1-A. She was able to test out of Algebra I in her HS and start with Geometry. When she got to HS Algebra II, she had already covered a lot of the material in Thinkwell. For $100 for the homeschool version, it seemed to have worked out just fine for her. Never did EPGY, can’t help you there.</p>
<p>Great idea to get the book. She doesn’t care for the lectures either. CTY doesn’t mention the workbook but I saw where I can buy it.</p>
<p>Thanks everyone.</p>