Posts Tagged ‘DreamBox Learning’

In the seemingly infinite blogosphere it can be a huge investment of time to figure out which education blogs are most worth reading. Luckily, DreamBox has done the work for you, reading many education blogs on the internet to tell you about some of the very best. When we created this blog round-up, we looked for [...]

One of our favorite things to do as we prepare to release a new beta is to invite parents and their child(ren) to come to our offices for early usability testing; mostly because it gives us a chance to observe and interact on many levels. While most conversations usually center on the product experience, over the last month, a surprising number of parents asked how we came up with the name DreamBox Learning. So here it is.

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. In the classroom children get the very real benefit of interacting with their teacher and with other students. Online learning has distinct advantages too. That’s because online teaching can be tailored to individual students in a number of important ways. Benefits:

1. Online learning is self-paced
2. Sophisticated online education products can offer self-selected learning.
3. Online learning games encourage engagement.
4. Online education can support a range of learning styles.
5. Advanced online tools can provide real-time assessment
6. With an internet connection, there are no geographical barriers
7. Learning happens when it’s most convenient.
8. Online learning enhances computer and Internet proficiency.

Late in 2005, when my co-founder Ben and I first started talking about the notion of DreamBox Learning, we knew that the eLearning market was, as one person put it, “an elusive quarry” (btw, this same person wanted to bet that the discovery of an alien life form would happen before one eLearning company was profitable, let alone an established public company). You have to understand that much of this cynicism stemmed from two decades of near misses. But being the curious (fine, stubborn) guys we are, we wanted to understand why all of these well-meaning and otherwise enlightened companies became road kill. What we found was neither surprising nor intellectually deep: their timing was off.