It has been an amazing experience to see our DreamBox Math Classroom product go from being tested in small after-school program pilots in a few local schools to full district-wide implementations in multiple states — in less than a year!

46 states and counting

And we are now just four states away from an important milestone. Since last April, DreamBox Learning has been used in classrooms in 46 US states and the District of Columbia. I have a personal goal to help schools in all 50 States using DreamBox before our 3rd grade math games are launched this spring. So I’m calling all kindergarten, first and second grade teachers in Alaska, Nebraska, North Dakota or West Virginia! Go to www.dreambox.com/teachers, check out our program, play sample lessons, download our free teacher resources, and sign up your class to try the award-winning DreamBox program in your classroom…and help bring DreamBox to all 50 US States!

You’ll join the other 46 in seeing how much for your students will have learning math.

This is interesting not only because 90% of US elementary math teachers are women, but because it contradicts our beliefs that it’s only skill that matters—not attitude. The study reveals that you can know math, and yet if you’re anxious you’re impairing your students.

I encourage everyone to read “Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement”* (you can find it here – it’s just 4 pages long).

In addition to the findings and to the very creative way the researchers measure kids’ “gender ability beliefs”, Figure 2 of the study really struck me. I believe that it contains powerful practical advice for parents and teachers alike.

On this graph there are four bars:

• Average results for boys with strong gender stereotype beliefs
• Average results for boys with weak gender stereotype beliefs
• Average result for girls with strong gender stereotype beliefs
• Average result for girls with weak gender stereotype beliefs

“Gender stereotype beliefs” is the degree to which a child believes that “boys are good at math, girls are good at reading”.

The graph shows that boys who believe this stereotype score higher than boys who don’t; and girls who believe the stereotype score significantly lower than girls who don’t! Not only is the difference significant for the observer, it is also “statistically significant”—or, put in plain English, it’s not just a pure random coincidence, it’s a scientific truth.

So what’s the practical advice for parents and teachers? To me it is that we need to be extremely careful what we tell our children and what stereotypes we create in their young minds. Because, as the study scientifically proves, they may all turn into self-fulfilling prophecies.

* The study was conducted by Sian L. Beilock, Elizabeth A. Gunderson, Gerardo Ramirez, and Susan C. Levine; and published by the Department of Psychology and Committee on Education, University of Chicago, IL 60607

We’ll be in booth 1305—there will be a lot going on in the booth and we hope you’ll come by, for:

• Every hour on the hour: demos of DreamBox Learning K-2 Math and the DreamBox Math Classroom
• Get free Teacher Tools—and other goodies
• And enter to win the DreamBox Math Classroom!

DreamBox teacher presenting conference session on virtual manipulatives
DreamBox Learning’s Mickelle Weary, a nationally board-certified teacher, will be presenting “Using Virtual Manipulatives to Support the Development of Number Sense”

• Date: Thursday, January 14
• Time:  3:10 pm
• Room: W304D

Follow Mickelle on Twitter
Mickelle Weary is a very experienced and highly respected teacher who is now sharing tips for teachers and other topics of interest through Twitter. Mickelle will be tweeting throughout FETC about her interactions with educators, interesting facts and opinions she picks up, and on her presentation. We encourage you to follow MickelleW—just go to twitter.com/MickelleW and click the “Follow” button.

Bring your warm clothes—and we look forward to seeing you there!

Match-n-Make: Identifying Pairs™
The match-n-make virtual tool is a lot of fun, providing opportunities for students to identify number patterns and relationships, and practice computation strategies that build fluency. It helps engage students to develop understanding of landmark numbers (10, 20, 50, etc.) The match-n-make board provides pairs of numbers that add up to a landmark number. The numbers can be restricted (for instance, you can limit it to a landmark of 10 or multiples of 10), allowing you to focus on specific strategies and scaffold student learning.

Like all DreamBox Teacher Tools, when you access the match-n-make tool you’ll also get ideas that you can use as stand-alone classroom activities, as a supplement to your math curriculum, or that you can incorporate into a professional development program. For example, teachers can use lessons as quick activities to support fluency with addition. Or, before identifying any pairs on the screen, ask students to write down as many pairs as possible.

You’ll find more ideas on using the match-n-make tool in your classroom, access to this and all of the other DreamBox Teacher Tools, as well as tutorials on using them, when you visit www.dreambox.com/teachertools!

At DreamBox we’re getting ready for FETC, one of the largest, most successful conferences in the United States devoted to educational technology. Four DreamBoxers are looking forward to handing out squishy brains, tattoos, and lots of candy to those that join us in our booth and play our Quick Image games. Only one of us is a trade show veteran, so this will be a fun, exciting learning experience for the rest of us.

Will you be there? If so, please stop by our booth — you’ll find us in booth 1305. Or better yet, come learn how best to get access to, and how to use, our free virtual manipulatives: the DreamBox Teacher Tools. I promise interactive games and candy there as well. And of course you’ll walk away smarter than when you arrived!

And, I’ll be presenting a session on “Using Virtual Manipulatives to Support the Development of Number Sense.” Please join me on  Thursday, Jan. 14 from 3:10-4:05 in room W304D, and I’ll have a special package of DreamBox goodies ready just for you. Please leave a comment and let me know if you’ll be able to come to the session!

Now we’ve turned our easy-to-use virtual manipulatives into math resources for teachers, and made them available for teachers to use free in their classrooms. If you’re a teacher with a broadband connection you can use these virtual tenframes, mathracks, and other innovative tools in large- or small-group instructional settings. With an interactive white board or projector you can help make math lessons come to life for your whole class, or just use them on a computer for smaller groups. And the DreamBox Teacher Tools are all free!

The DreamBox Numbergram™ tool

Quick Images: Identifying Amounts™
The first in the series of Teacher Tools we’ve released are the Quick Images tools, which help students conceptualize numbers as groups and investigate number relationships. For example, students can:
•    Organize and analyze visual images in mathematical ways
•    Understand spatial relationships
•    Describe patterns and shapes using number relationships and mathematical vocabulary
•    Connect visual images to their numeric representation

Using the Quick Images manipulatives are a great way to engage students in communicating their mathematical thinking while offering opportunities for students to subitize and conceptualize numbers. The ideas here can be used as stand-alone activities, as a supplement to an existing math curriculum, or incorporated into a professional development program for teachers.

The Quick Images tools include 3 different math manipulatives:

• The Numbergram™ uses dot arrangements similar to those on standard dice, familiar to many children, to encourage thinking about patterns in number relationships and support the development of spatial relationships.
• The mathrack uses 1, 2, or 10 wires with 5 red beads and 5 white beads on each wire, to help students see the quantities of 5 and 10 as a whole, supporting the use of 5s, 10s, and doubles as anchors for mathematical thinking.
  

  The 10-wire mathrack tool

• The tenframe, a 2 x 5 array on which counters are placed from left to right across the top, and then left to right across the bottom, offers additional visual support for seeing the quantities of 5 and 10 as a whole.

All three of these manipulatives support students in conceptualizing numbers as groups rather than individual objects to be counted, combining numbers to make other numbers, and investigating relationships between numbers. These relationships form the basis for efficient computation and flexible, quick recall of math facts. Click here to learn more about Quick Images: Identifying Amounts™.

DreamBox resources support professional development
When teachers access DreamBox Teacher Tools at www.dreambox.com/teachertools, they’ll also find tutorials on the manipulatives and ideas for using the tools in classroom lessons. And we provide resources that support the professional development of teachers as they learn to incorporate the virtual manipulatives, in order to support students’ mathematical learning.

After you try the DreamBox Teacher Tools, please tell us what you think and how you’re using them!

Many educators agree that “manipulatives” are among the best math resources for teachers to help students visualize a concept in more concrete terms, and to link new ideas to prior knowledge. Now, with wide internet adoption, virtual manipulatives can support math learning both in and outside the classroom. Virtual manipulatives are interactive web-based representations of their physical counterparts that not only give teachers the ability to demonstrate a concept, but give students a way to manipulate the objects to construct mathematical knowledge.

A DreamBox mathrack lesson

DreamBox developed a unique set of virtual manipulatives

At DreamBox, our teachers worked closely with our software developers to create virtual manipulatives based on classroom experiences. The DreamBox virtual manipulatives, innovative tools around which all DreamBox lessons are built, were developed based on tools that have been shown by research to be most effective in teaching a concept. They help students better understand core math concepts and give them plenty of opportunities to build knowledge through direct hands-on experience. In this way, students are directly engaged in the problem-solving process, allowing them to explore new strategies, replay lessons, and reset and self-correct where necessary.

The DreamBox curriculum is aligned with the Focal Points for each grade set by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. For DreamBox Learning K-2 Math, we developed a number of different virtual manipulatives, each uniquely suited to teach the key Number and Operations Focal Points and Algebra Focal Points for each grade level. For example:

A Snap Blocks™ lesson

• The tenframe, mathrack, and Numbergram™ tools support students in conceptualizing numbers as groups rather than individual objects to be counted, combining numbers to make other numbers, and investigating relationships between numbers. These relationships form the basis for efficient computation and flexible, quick recall of math facts.
• The Snap Blocks™ tool provides a visual representation of numbers, which students can use to compare the relationship between quantities. The tool supports students to develop efficient strategies and provide an important foundation for early algebra.
• The open number line tool can be used to support a number of mathematical ideas including counting, addition and subtraction, modeling situations, and representing student strategies.

A DreamBox open number line lesson

Research supports virtual manipulatives as beneficial elementary teacher resources

Research on the use of manipulatives provides insight into the benefits of using them to support math learning. Using virtual manipulatives can help students develop a richer understanding of concepts – even more so than using physical manipulatives (Moyer, Niezgoda, & Stanley, 2005).

Virtual manipulatives can be especially advantageous for students with language difficulties, who sometimes find it difficult to explain what they’re learning in math. Virtual manipulatives can help them clarify and demonstrate their thinking to others.

Virtual manipulatives have also been shown to support math learning for students with disabilities. Like using physical manipulatives, virtual tools need to be integrated into the curriculum. When they are, they can provide guided exploration, helping students really grasp math concepts and demonstrate learning.

courtesy of Barnes & Noble

In my other life, I am a graduate student which means that I am constantly searching and reading research and books regarding mathematics education. In the midst of one of these recent searches, I ran across a book by Jo Boaler (a former professor of mathematics education at Stanford University) that is scheduled for release on June 30, 2009–What’s Math Got to Do With It?: How Parents and Teachers Can Help Children Learn to Love Their Least Favorite Subject. While it appears that this book may be the paperback version of Boaler’s book that was released in August 2008 (What’s Math Got to Do With It?: Helping Children Learn to Love Their Most Hated Subject–and Why It’s Important for America), the sub-title is different and that caught my attention. It’s not often that a book is intended for both teachers AND parents (which may be the reason for the change); more often, it’s either-or. Stay tuned for a review later this summer! But in the mean time it may be just the book that is needed to encourage parents and teachers to enter a dialogue about the mathematical learning opportunities for students.

The genesis of how DreamBox does assessment, and one of the reasons I am with the company, occurred over 30 years ago when one of my relatives was diagnosed with a learning disability.

This surprised us and shocked his teachers, who considered him to be in the upper middle to top third of the class for math. His test scores consistently supported this. In many areas he was significantly ahead of his peers. Yet a detailed examination with an expert showed that for him division just didn’t compute. Put another way, his brain simply wasn’t “wired for division”.

What does this mean? Well, you could ask him something like “If there are four children and each one has three oranges, how many oranges are there in total?” and you’d get the correct answer every time. If you instead asked “If I have twelve oranges and am going to give an equal number to each of four children, how many does each child get?” you might just as easily get an answer like “seven?” or “six” as “three”.

How had all the very good teachers at a very good school missed this through most of primary school? As it turns out, for a lot of years you can do pretty well at math tests if you get close to 100% of all the questions correct that don’t involve division. Or if the teacher only removes a few points for the “one little mistake” you made in the division part of a problem. Or if you have developed strategies to compensate that often approximate the correct answer, without understanding what you were doing.

The simple fact was that no-one over the years tracked the specific type of problems that caused difficulties for this student. And – this being a traditional “English” school – most teachers were more interested with how many answers were correct than how those answers were obtained.

DreamBox Learning Personalizes Online Math Education

So when we started working on what became DreamBox math I wanted to develop a system that would analyze each action the student took as they made it and respond accordingly, adapting automatically to provide the structured support each student needs as they need it. I also wanted a system that could provide specific feedback to parents and teachers identifying not only areas of strength but also weakness. It didn’t take long to realize that a system that adapts like this would work for all ages and skill levels.

DreamBox Learning K-2 Math is our first small step towards this goal and by all accounts is helping children across the spectrum learn math. Though specifically designed for home use, this version is already in use in over 800 schools and is proving particularly valuable for teachers of remedial math.

No child should struggle with math because a learning problem goes undiagnosed and unaddressed. However, recent studies (such as that by the Education Trust that detail how some teachers “are just one chapter ahead of their students”) show that in some communities this is unfortunately not only possible, but likely.

So I am personally looking forward to working on a more school-oriented version of DreamBox, and to the day when DreamBox math is a valuable tool in every teacher’s toolbox for ensuring each of their students is successful at math, no matter what difficulties they may face.

Oh, and how did things turn out for my relative? Things were tough for him for a while. Eventually he became a spreadsheet guru and has created inventory and financial management systems for corporations in the U.S. and overseas.

Yesterday we introduced the DreamBox Math Classroom program, which allows pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, first and second grade teachers to use DreamBox in their classrooms. As part of our commitment to supporting teachers and making excellent math education accessible to all children, DreamBox is offering any pre-K to 2nd grade teacher at a public, private, or independent school free use of DreamBox K-2 Math in school through the end of this school year (June 30, 2009).

In the past two days we have had over 150 new teachers sign up on DreamBox and create classroom subscriptions adding over 1000 students! Teachers are finding that DreamBox is an incredibly effective way to teach 4-8 year olds math in a fun way.

Why DreamBox is the Online Math Learning Game for Your Child!

Our amazing team worked hard to create a classroom version of DreamBox Learning K-2 Math, because the game allows every kindergarten, first, and second grade student to progress through hundreds of online math lesson games at their own pace! When they begin to play, each child is assessed and started at just the right place in the curriculum, and gets different lessons, hints, level of difficulty, and much more. Teachers have an online Teacher Dashboard where he or she can view individual student progress and completed lessons in the DreamBox math curriculum.

Every teacher is given a personal internet address for their classroom that they can pull up on school computers and have up to 32 students in their class playing DreamBox math games at the same time. Teachers are also able to play sample kindergarten, first grade and second grade math lessons with their classrooms by bringing them up on any interactive white board.

And teachers can invite parents to try DreamBox at home so students can play DreamBox and learn serious math after school, on weekends and over the summer, in addition to the time spent at school, and have one record of their academic progress and game play.

If you know a teacher who would like to use DreamBox in their classroom, please tell them about the free DreamBox Math Classroom subscription! Teachers can sign up for a DreamBox teacher account, preview and evaluate our curriculum, and apply for a free classroom subscription, good through June 30, 2009, at www.dreambox.com/teachers.

My role at DreamBox is to work with hundreds of teachers, who are finding that DreamBox is an incredibly effective way to teach 4-8 year olds math in a fun way. The benefit of teaching children with DreamBox is that the program is able to leverage the latest technological innovations to create an online math learning product. Our kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade math games that adapt lessons based on each child’s knowledge and adjusts pacing on an individual basis.

Why DreamBox Online Learning Games?

With no exaggeration I can tell you that teachers are lining up to get DreamBox into their classrooms because it works! Independent effectiveness studies have shown that student test scores have increased by 19% after 2 weeks playing DreamBox.

I love working with teachers and hearing how excited they are about DreamBox. Here are a couple of recent emails I’ve gotten from teachers who are using the program (and you can read many more here):

“I use DreamBox as a regular part of my kindergarten curriculum. I rely on DreamBox to keep my advanced math students interested and challenged. It’s also a great program for my students who are not as advanced in the classroom because the program is auditory and visual and will repeat lessons and concepts as needed. As a teacher I love that DreamBox is really teaching mathematical thinking. I also love that students can play DreamBox at home in addition to the classroom — the parents of my students often ask me what they can do at home to supplement what their children are learning at school. DreamBox is a great way for students to practice and reinforce math at home. ”
— Marie Hewitt, kindergarten teacher, Norman Rockwell Elementary

“I was really interested in using DreamBox Learning K-2 Math with my first grade class because of its ability to adapt to each individual student’s level. This program challenges each child whether they need remediation or need more advanced work. DreamBox is focused on the critical foundational math my students must learn such as the ability to add and subtract fluently. I also liked how the DreamBox program immediately offers tips and lessons on how to solve a problem if a student doesn’t answer a problem correctly.”
— Lisa Niva, 1st grade teacher, Wade King Elementary

ABCnews.com just wrote a story on DreamBox today and I personally think it’s a great example of a video game and technology that is helping students learn rather than a waste of ’screen time’.

Perhaps not all video games are created equal!