DreamBox Learning®» eLearning

Announcing The Free Homeschool Math Ebook

Tracy — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:43:31 +0000

Free eBook

We are very excited to present "Helping Children Be Successful in Math. A Homeschool Math Learning Guide." This free eBook offers tips on how to help your child develop a positive attitude towards math, goals from the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, and homeschool math learning activities. It's a must-read before you start this year's math curriculum. Get our free homeschool math eBook! We realize that homeschooling is a huge financial undertaking. That's why we made this eBook completely free and no registration required! We are also working to create more homeschool resources to make DreamBox Learning your number one destination for homeschool math support.

Michael Horn on the Need for Differentiated Instruction via Technology

Lou — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:54:49 +0000

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. My favorite segment of the interview is a quote that could have been right out of DreamBox Learning’s executive summary:

“All students learn in different ways, and in the book, we use the theory of multiple intelligences to describe this," explains Horn. "Considering these differences and constraints on time and space for learning, it's incredibly hard to individualize instruction for 20 or 30 students at a time. So our big question was: how do you break apart that interdependency and allow for truly student-centered learning?’ Horn calls for educators to be more purposeful in their use of technology in the classroom and discusses the new role of the teacher in a disrupted classroom.”

Michael Horn is co-author of “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.”

Dreambox: eLearning Comes Home

Lou — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 19:22:38 +0000

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. Think about it.

The Move Toward Individualized eLearning

Before we reached the 21st century, the combination of user behavior, the number of homes with broadband, PC power, and sophisticated Web technologies didn’t exist in any meaningful way. Today, things are much different. Most of DreamBox's initial users (children ages 4½ - 8 years old) are already online; the vast majority of homes are wired with a pretty fast internet connection (thank you Comcast and Verizon); PCs are more powerful than a warehouse full of 1990 vintage super computers; and Adobe’s slick Flex framework allows for super rich and dynamic internet applications on top of its ubiquitous Flash Player. Empowered by this, we formed DreamBox Learning with the stated goal of bringing effective, engaging, and truly individualized learning fun to children in their homes over the internet. Now, we thought, all we had to do was build the company. Oh, yeah, build a company.