Customer Reviews

Educational Insights Talking Hot Dots Pen

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Wow! I'm speechless. I purchased 2 hot dots pens made by Educational Insights (from Fat Brain toys - who offer free shipping w/min purchase and Amazon check-out through their website), several of the phonics/reading packs (pre-K, making inferences, using context clues, and main idea) and the multiplication and division math packs. However, telling time, U.S. States, and even make your own flashcards packs are also available.

What's so great about these? Provides instant reinforcement and encouragement through engaging sounds and visual cues (light turns green for right or red for wrong). My pre-K/K and 5th grader are both equally enthralled.

I will quickly go over the cards, since they are relevant to your purchase of the pen:
Notes on the reading comp cards:
For older kids: These can definitely be done solo. Some of the reading passages appeared in last year's annual achievement test. One caveat is that the cards offer a full range of grade levels in 1 pack (e.g. 2.0-6.0). So, they may have limited applicability to say an average sixth grader reader. 3rd grade would be ideal. However, there is a key card in the front that lists the story name and grade level (e.g. 2.1 or say 5.7) - plus they are arranged by grade level in the box. The questions are very appropriate, standard multiple choice type questions (what's the main idea...).

For younger kids: An adult or older reading buddy is needed to facilitate. The pre-reading phonics cards contain letter identification (match the upper case with its lower case letter), color and word identification (shows you a red apple and asks you to find the word "red"), number recognition (count the animals, number is shown below (e.g. 1 giraffe), identify the corresponding word - e.g. one, two...), and rhyming (picture of mouse on left, choices are pictures of a house, rake, car). The instructions are at the top of the cards. After a few rounds, I think the letter identification could be done solo. There are several different card packs, including consonants as well.

Note on the math cards:
There are several (10) answer choices on either side of the problem. So, it is tricky, however be warned that the fact the answer choices are there WILL provide visual cues. So, these cards alone will not teach children to master multiplication/division/addition/subtraction. My son seeing the 64 reminded him the answer to 8x8 correctly and quickly, but take away the card and he answered 65.

Notes about the pen itself: There are several sound settings; mute, low, and loud. In a classroom environment, mute would be preferable, but the child can easily control the volume as there is no lock-out option. There is no on/off button. The battery cap (on the top) itself easily screws on/off (not an actual screw requiring a screwdriver) releasing the batteries. I like this, but a K teacher in the midst of 20 curious 5 y.o. may not.

Notes about the cards: they are thick cardboard, nicely boxed. The smaller cards - pre-K phonics and math cards come in small plastic index cases that can actually hold a pen inside. The reading cards are actually quite large (nearly a half sheet of paper) and fit into a cardboard box, clearly labeled. One worry is that with rigorous/excited usage from multiple children, it is conceivable that the pen could mar the answer bubble thus providing a "hint" as to the correct answer. The cards seem reasonably priced, and since the make your own dots are super cheap, they could even be repaired if this were to occur.

My son BEGS me to use his multiplication facts and his states and captials thanks to this little device. It's a fun activity for him and he is learning in the process!

For those who care to know: the tip of the "pen" (it's not a writing instrument) is made of two layers of conductive rubber. When you press the tip, an internal switch audibly clicks and turns on the pen's electronic circuitry and simultaneously the conductive rubber tip senses whether it was pressed against conductive surface or not.

And so, if you press the tip against your finger it will buzz "wrong answer", if you press it against bare metal surface it will praise you for correct response.

The black dots on the flash cards are made of plain black paper for the wrong answers and black conductive carbon material for the correct answer. All the dots look very much alike, except that the paper ones are more shiny than the conductive dots, and a smart kid with good eyesight could figure that out pretty fast.

These pens are sturdily built and use two AAA batteries (not included) - which is much more practical than using short-lived and costly button cell batteries. The audio level is set just right - enough for the kids to hear and not enough to annoy their parents. Overall, this is a clever idea put in a nice product, reasonably priced, but may not be for all kids.

Also, I think that the older kids (4th grade +) should take a small Philips screwdriver, a multimeter and take the pen apart to see how it is constructed and what makes the pen "know" which answer is which. This too would be highly educational since kids are surrounded by electronic gadgets of which construction, or principle of operation, they remain too clueless.

We've used this Hot Dot pens at our tutoring center for years. Students enjoy using the Hot Dots pen and materials, but if the Hot Dots session is prolonged, students can gradually lose interest.

I like the immediate feedback given by the Hot Dots pen.
I like the adjustable volume.
I like the mix of sound and verbal responses.

Occasionally the pen will give a false reading, mostly becouae the pen was not centered on the black answer dot. Because of this quirky response, it's best that children use the Hot Dots materials with a teacher or parent who can catch these occasional false readings.

The pens don't look particularly durable, but they hold up to lots of use and abuse by our students. Most performance problems can by remedied by putting in some fresh batteries.

My 4-yr old daughter thought this was very cool. However, the pen only worked for about 5-10 min. Instead of wasting my money on another one or more flashcards. Decided to spend it on BrainQuest workbooks instead (which she also loves).

We purchased this for our 6 year old daughter. She loved using it at first, but it gave the wrong answer at least half of the time. If the pen doesn't hit the EXACT center of the correct answer bubble, it says that it's wrong. What young child is going to use this with such precision? They're not, so it's going to be frustrating and not fun at all. Great idea for a product, but it just doesn't work. Big disappointment. Going to stick with good old flashcards, I guess.

This pen makes review and drills a lot of fun. With the set of hot and cold dots sold separately you can create your own worksheets. BUT - the pen is incredibly flimsy. We took our first one on a trip, after that it declared each and every answer to be wrong. I ordered a new one, it did not work for a single second. No sound, no light, no nothing. Same with the first replacement. Nothing. No matter which batteries we used. Finally, our second replacement arrived - and it works! The problem, IMHO, appears to be with the lid/inside of the pen. On the inside of the pen where the lid is screwed in is a little metal pin to pick up the electricity from the batteries. At least in those two broken pens this pin was covered by plastic, not so in this last one. Very poor quality. Therefore only one star for quality/durability, but five stars for fun and educational values. Just don't take the batteries out unless you have to replace them.
Big thank-you to amazon for replacing this pen twice without problems, but with lightning speed.

These pens are so unreliable. Please do not waste your money. I ordered two: the first one did not work so I returned it. The other one also does not work. When you touch a picture that is suppose to be correct, it says 'sorry try again'. These pens are awful for students trying to learn basic skills. I am a teacher so I really wanted this to be a fun experience for my students. However, my students were just confused with the red light always going on and saying 'wrong answer'. It was a waste of their time and mine.

I tested this pen before letting my students practice with their Hot Dot cards; SOMETIMES the talking pen will light red when one of my students pressed down on the correct answers on the Hot Dot cards. There is nothing technical about it then just holding the talking pen straight up and pressing down in the middle of the hot dots. Maybe some of the cards in the three sets of Hot Dot flash cards I also purchased (Word Families, The Alphabet & Subtraction), could have defects- it seems I just can't get the Talking Pen to tell me or my students the answer IS correct when IT shows incorrect. Now, I'm not commenting this Talking Pen is not right for me. I do find this helpful for my students but, I can't let them use it by themselves or my students would think their answer is incorrect when the Talking Pen can be wrong.

Brief description on the Talking Pen: light weight WITH 2 AAA batteries (not included); have a COIN ready to unscrew the battery cap
sound levels are low, high and mute
plays twenty phrases (GREAT, GOOD, TRY AGAIN ect..)
Lights RED for incorrect and GREEN for correct (obviously)
hight of a normal pen but the width of an abnormal one

I bought three pens, two of which do not work. The one that works is awesome, however I am really upset that the other two do not work and see that other people have had problems with them as well.