What If You Had an On Demand Math Tutor at your Fingertips?

This post is brought to you by Photomath and The Motherhood. All opinions are my own.

Raise your hand if you are completely comfortable helping your kids with their math homework? I’m a former 2^nd and 3^rd grade teacher with a master’s degree and when my kids went into the higher grades for math – I wasn’t so comfortable with helping them with their homework. And while I like math, I simply can’t help them like I want to. Plus, with everything going on now, it’s been harder for my kids to connect with their teachers due to all remote learning. We have a tutor for my 9^th grader, but there are many times when he and my 7^th grader need help immediately. But I have a new best friend – the Photomath app, which is an on-demand tutor at my fingertips. What If You Had an On Demand Math Tutor at your Fingertips?

I have a new best friend – the Photomath app, which is an on-demand tutor at my fingertips.

If you’re not familiar, Photomath is the most-used math learning app in the world and it was created by a dad who wanted to help his kids with their math homework. What I love about Photomath is that it shows us, step by step, how to solve a problem. We’re using the premium version which is giving us even more features. Knowing how a problem is solved and seeing the steps is really helping my oldest and middle child. Photomath believes everyone CAN be good at math and that math confidence is achievable.

When we were in grade school, which seems like billion years ago, we were taught math differently. Now with common core, my kids are doing their math equations using different methods – some make sense to me, but some don’t. There are a lot of things our kids need to know. The Photomath app is like an on-demand tutor at your fingertips and when my oldest son and daughter are doing their math homework, we usually use the app together and we both benefit from seeing the step-by-step instructions. I love that it helps me to understand their math homework! I keep Photomath on my iPhone and they work next to me.

The creator of Photomath is Damir Sabol, an engineer, had a solid foundation in math, but he frequently found it challenging to explain math concepts and solutions to his teenage son during homework time. So he came up with Photomath, which provides more than just the answer. Every answer has step-by-step explanations to help students really understand and learn math concepts. Photomath wants to provide access to learning support for more people. The price point is more affordable than tutoring and many of the features they’ve developed (and will continue to develop) are focused on truly understanding where students are stuck.

Wondering how Photomath works?

There are two ways, the camera experience and the calculator experience.

In camera mode:
You take a photo using your smartphone of any math problem (printed or handwritten). Then Photomath analyzes the print and then shows you the steps to solve the problem.

In calculator mode:
You input the math problem using Photomath’s scientific calculator. You can also hold down any keys with a red dot to reveal more functions.

Frankly, it’s genius.

How we use Photomath

My children aren’t using textbooks, but they get a lot of word problems assignments.
So to work with Photomath, they write out the problem on scrap paper (which they would do anyway) and then use the camera in Photomath. You simply take a photo, and then the Photomath app shows a detailed step-by-step way to solve the problem. Before they even use Photomath, they try to solve it themselves and then they use the app to see if they were right.

Features of the App:

– Camera recognition of printed or handwritten math problems.
– The app analyzes the math problem and then provides detailed step-by-step explanations
– There are multiple solving methods available for problems
– Multi-functional scientific calculator
– Interactive graphs
– Animated tutorials (available in the Photomath Plus premium feature – which we tested)
– Math terms and concept definitions (available in the Photomath Plus premium feature) Important: You can fully use the app without internet access to use the core free portions of Photomath (to save phone data).

Photomath Plus (this is the premium version):

– Textbook Solutions
– Custom explanations to problems for over 75 different text books at all grade-levels
– Many other super helpful features.

Now, what you’re probably thinking, do I let my oldest son and daughter use Photomath during class or during online testing? No. They are allowed to use calculators, but I keep Photomath on my iPhone and we use it to understand how to do math homework problems. It’s helping them. I feel like it’s an on-demand tutor in our pocket and we feel lucky to have this marvelous resource.