Archive for the ‘Online Learning’ Category

I continue to marvel at the power of the Web and the way it has completely transformed how we transact business and conduct our lives. We connect and communicate, we buy and we use content (books, music, movies, information, etc.) in completely new ways. In that brief second after you click the mouse, just consider how personalized and targeted the response is to your purchase on Amazon, music selection on iTunes, flight scheduling on Expedia, restaurant reviews on Yelp, friend connections on Facebook, and searches on Google.

Michael Horn was interviewed this month by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) for their monthly Education Update. "Q&A: Disrupting Class - an interview with Michael Horn" speaks to the core need for differentiated instruction via technology in the classroom.

Early on in the development of DreamBox Learning K-2 Math, as we began beta testing with 4-8 year olds, we figured out that our users would have a variety of mouse skills. For some, this was the first time they’d used a computer, so they had little to no experience using a mouse. For others, they were experts. Drag and drop? No problem!

I’ve talked before about all the beta testing we completed before launching the product to the public. A significant portion of the beta testing took place in schools where the Academic Team (all certified elementary teachers with 75% having earned National Board Certification) could watch kids playing. We watched for signs of confusion and boredom, as well as excitement and learning. We listened carefully to their questions and statements muttered throughout the play. Kindergartners especially are known for talking aloud as they play. On the other hand, second and third graders can more easily express their misconception and "aha: moments.

This was a very exciting week at DreamBox Learning. When we launched DreamBox K-2 Math we heard from hundreds of kindergarten, first and second grade teachers around the country telling us that they wanted to use DreamBox and our online math lesson games in their classrooms. Since our January launch we have been piloting our DreamBox math games in 150 kindergarten, first and second game classrooms around the country. Teachers are using DreamBox in their math clubs, with their math all-stars and high achievers, as well as with their math intervention students who need math tutoring.

I came across a short but compelling interview with MIT professor Henry Jenkins at the recent interactive conference SxSWi. He heads the comparative media studies program at MIT (soon to be USC he says), where he studies the convergence between games, learning, and the web. In the clip he describes a session with 2 game [...]

Soon after we completed our first round of beta testing with our very first version of DreamBox (think 40 games as compared to our current 350+), I attended an incredible conference called Dust or Magic, an annual Children’s New Media Design Institute, organized by Warren Buckleitner, editor of the Children’s Technology Review. Buckleitner has reviewed thousands of children’s technology products in order to accomplish his mission: to help parents, librarians, and teachers find quality interactive media/technology products for children.

As a teacher I often used software in the classroom. Much of this software relied on me to determine the appropriate starting place in the curriculum. Every year I’d add my class list and determine which objectives I wanted to address for each student. Often I’d do this in August as part of my preparation for the new school year, which means I hadn’t even met the kids. Plus, we all know about the loss of knowledge retention that occurs over the summer. How was I supposed to know what each student did and didn’t need?

Recently, a friend of a friend who had reviewed our offering wrote to me and said, "Overall I find the business model of a monthly charge very strange for a children's learning software. Usually one buys a book or a CD/DVD for a one time price and can use it indefinitely. DreamBox's offering basically means that now parents need to pay over and over again if their kids want to revisit lessons or if they are just slow learners. A more appropriate pricing model would be to sell the service per lesson or grade level. That would appeal a lot more to me. Think about it. I have to spend $100 for one year of service and after that I basically lose access to the learning tools unless I continue paying. For $100 each year I get many learning software on CD/DVDs or books and I can keep them forever. That is a very easy decision in my mind."

Here at DreamBox, we recommend for best results that a student play at least twice a week for 15 minutes at a time. Some will play more. However, like Vitamin A, a lot more is not better. To take an extreme, a child playing 3 hours a day every day is crowding out too many other activities for a happy child.

I was at conference recently discussing DreamBox with a pretty savvy industry insider when she asked “what makes your product so unique?” My response was “It’s incredibly effective, fun, and highly individualized to a child’s particular learning needs.” That’s when she said it. “Individualized?! That’s what they all say!”

I’m increasingly conscious of the gap between the urgent calls for more effective math education in the U.S., and the seemingly low expectations some parents have for their own child to advance in math. It’s as if the pressing national need has nothing to do with us on a personal level. I hear parents talk about their child’s math performance, and say things like “I was never good in math either.” Or regarding newer ways of teaching math, I’ve heard “I don’t like the ‘new math’ because I wasn’t taught that way.”

Edu-tainment was initially envisioned to be the perfect hybrid between education and entertainment. In the abstract, the idea that educational software could be equally effective and engaging remains a good one. Most edu-tainment companies, however, got the mixture wrong and thus never fully realized this promise.

I just got back from a great three day "Dust or Magic" conference run by Warren Buckleitner for people who create children's technology products. (The title is a quote from a 17th century philosopsher named Matsuo Basho: "An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it.")

As we get closer to launching DreamBox Learning’s first product, an online adventure game that teaches serious math, and we see more and more kids in beta testing, we’re realizing how many advantages there are to online learning games.