Plain addition and subtraction flashcards can make elementary math boring. If you need an alternative, this website may (or may not) have what you desire! 

XtraMath is an online educational program that aims to increase math fluency. It works to accomplish this goal by giving students timed math questions. The questions start with longer time limits that eventually get shorter and shorter with each level. This makes students more comfortable with answering math questions quickly, right?

Well, while I see how this idea can potentially increase math fluency, I feel like the program poorly executes it. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate how XtraMath contains no advertisements and promises to never sell its users’ information to spammers. The issue is just that the program can make learning math feel stressful for students. What students see on their screens while learning can be visually distracting, and the distraction combined with the time limits can cause students to lose focus on the problems they have to answer.

As someone whose ADHD has gone undiagnosed until her sophomore year of high school, using XtraMath in first grade always felt overwhelming. I’d feel rushed as the timer went down, distracted by visual stimuli, and just plain overstimulated by the whole experience. I didn’t know how to explain these feelings at the time, but now I do. Allow me to elaborate.

Here’s XtraMath from a student’s screen:

First, notice the keypad’s unconventional arrangement. Zero being at the bottom makes sense, as it’s usually in at least the second digit of a number, but the rest of the numbers appear to be out of order at first glance. Our eyes tend to read in a “Z” pattern, reading from top left to right, and continuing this pattern for each line going down. As a result, after reading the question, students may have to visually scan the whole keypad, just to find the keys to type their answer in.

Now, take a look at the left side of the screen. That picture of the XtraMath teacher is pretty hard to miss, isn’t it? I can’t really think of a reason why the website’s designers would put that photo right there, other than to fill empty space on the screen. I understand that a visually appealing website may entice users, but this may not be the time, nor the place, to add unnecessary pictures. Colorful images instantly capture the human eye and keep its attention. So, a student starting their practice might spend a moment pulling their eyes away from the picture, another second reading and processing the question in their mind, and after searching the keypad for the right numbers for their answer…

Time’s out! That’s three seconds. The XtraMath teacher looks disappointed. Now, the student needs another approach for answering these questions. The fastest way to beat the timer would be to think less about what the questions say and rush to type the answer in. Now, is this what we want to teach students to do when faced with math problems? Of course not! Students should focus on the question, not on the other confusing and distracting images on the screen. And after all, they should focus on where XtraMath’s goal started from: math fluency.

There are a few changes that the website’s designers can make to help the organization reach its goals with minimal negative student feedback. They can swap the first and third rows of numbers on the keypad to make the numbers follow the human eye’s pattern of reading. Perhaps they can keep the teacher photos elsewhere in the site, or add an option to toggle them on or off. Speaking of the XtraMath teacher, maybe the page doesn’t need to include pictures of him looking disappointed when students answer questions wrong. I always felt like I disappointed him, even though I knew that he didn’t even know of my existence. Perhaps an encouraging message on the screen (e.g., “Keep trying hard!”) after wrong answers would’ve made me dread math practice a bit less.

Of course, with the help of more old-fashioned flashcard methods, some awesome math teachers (including my mom), and proper accommodations, I’ve healed my relationship with math since then. Overall, we don’t need to get rid of XtraMath, it just needs some reorganization.