Today’s review will be on Eat your maths

Overview

Eat your maths is a blog that “Mr. Fong” uses to help improve students chances of doing well on the math portion of the PSLE. The purpose of the PSLE is to assess pupils’ suitability for secondary education and place them in one of the appropriate secondary school courses, which match their learning pace, ability and inclination. Essentially he puts a mathematical problem on the blog and solicits the answers from his “students” by way of the comment function. Being perfectly honest my initial reaction was something along the lines of Why? Why would someone want to do these problems?!

The Good

“Mr. Fong” has a passion for teaching that much is abundantly clear. If he did not this blog would not exist. He presents the math problems in an interesting and relevant manner. He also actually participates in the discussion beyond simply posing the question. Which is great as he explains how he does things, and why he does them. This impresses me because a few years back when I was trying to self-tutor in math via the internet I was not the least bit impressed by the offerings out there. Plenty of people were willing to pose questions for you to answer but very few stuck around to explain the ins and outs. The fact that he does so is great!

The Bad

Like all things in life there is a bad side to this blog as well. Actually it has a very ugly “bad side” to it, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be readily improved.

Concern: Who exactly is this guy? - The first things I wonder are: Who exactly is “Mr. Fong”? What are his credentials to be tutoring maths? Where is he located? How long has he been a tutor? After a bit of searching I found a link to visit his profile which takes me to his main blogger.com profile page. From there I learn a few thing about “Mr. Wong”. The question at this point is why should I have to click a link to learn a little bit about him and then another (actually two more) to view his other blogs and learn even more about him? I would suggest an about me on the front page of his blog somewhere and an even more indepth one on it’s own page.

Concern: Why is there so much Harry Potter stuff on here? - Is Mr. Fong using Harry Potter to reach the youth who will benefit from the tutoring or does he himself like Harry Potter? If he does like Potter that is fine, but it really confuses the senses and you are greeted with How Harry Potterish is Mr. Fong? I can only say this, if you feel the need to ask how “Harry Potterish” people think you are then it is quite possible that you are a little to “Potterish”. I suggest getting rid of the Harry Potter stuff and perhaps dedicating another blog to it, but make it wholly seperate from your current math help blog.

Concern: There is a stat counter on the page - I guess that’s not really to bad of a thing, but it is not accurate. Each time I refresh the page it increments by one. It should record you once every 24 hour max. Fortunately this is easy enough to fix. Go to your hit counter properties and instead of having it record on Every page hit set it to record Every unique user. That’s if you really feel there is a need to have a counter on the page. Personally I believe it just detracts from the purpose of the site. If you want a way to keep track of your visitors there are much better methods. Firs to mind is Google Analytics which allows you to embed code into the webpages and track all kinds of interesting things. Beyond that it is not visible to the naked eye and therefore does not draw attention away from the site.

Concern: The color - I don’t know if it’s that none of the colors seem to blend in together with one another or that there are so many colors. Perhaps it is to do with the fact that the colors make the blog look very amateurish that bothers me. Normally it wouldn’t be a concern but “Mr. Fong” is pitching himself as a professional math tutor and while I’m sure he is the collage of colors doesn’t fit that theme very well. I would suggest picking two or three colors as your base and working everything from that point. Remember you aren’t shopping for clothes trying to find colors that look nice together, but you are trying to come up with colors that compliment one another and blend in well with one another. This will help to give the viewer a seamless experience.

Concern: The title - The website is eatyourmaths.blogspot.com, but the title says: One day in the shoes of an underaged maths tutor… This screams out at me to run like hell, and if not for the fact that I was doing this review I would have. First of all the title is way to long. It should be short and memorable. Second I ask myself why would I be tutored, or have someone tutor a loved one when they use the word maths? clearly this is an attempt at some humor on “Mr. Wong’s” part but it falls flat. I expect things like that from scene kids and Myspace emos not “Mr. Wong”. A little less concerning though still there is the fact that underaged is specified. Why should we care? No need to suggest an age to anyone. Many potential customers could very well be turned off if you tell them you are underage. Suggestion is to make the title Eat your maths (and yes in the case of the title the plural is fine since it gives it some originality), and then make the One day in the shoes of… part into a tagline for your new title.

The Conclusion

Eat Your Maths is a bit different than the normal blogs I see on a daily basis. It’s not a commercialized, monetized monstrosity nor is it a personal blog that someone has thrown up for a few months while they are in the blogging mood. It is actually an active blog with some viewers who spend time answering the questions posed. All in all it does the job well and aside from a few cosmetic changes there isn’t anything wrong with the blog for what it is. Now if “Mr. Fong” has visions of the blog earning money or launching his online tutoring career I don’t think what he has will work.

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