DreamBox Learning®» Life at DreamBox Learning http://www.dreambox.com DreamBox Learning, a web-based math learning company Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:01:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 TCEA 2011 is Next Week! Will We See You There? http://www.dreambox.com/blog/tcea-2011-next-week http://www.dreambox.com/blog/tcea-2011-next-week#comments Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:27:49 +0000 Tracy H http://www.dreambox.com/blog/?p=7441

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You could even win the DreamBox Math Classroom for one year (a $700 value)! When you're at the event, come find us and share your DreamBox experience with us. We look forward to meeting you!]]> http://www.dreambox.com/blog/tcea-2011-next-week/feed 0 Unlocking Learning Potential with Dreambox http://www.dreambox.com/blog/unlocking-learning-potential-with-dreambox http://www.dreambox.com/blog/unlocking-learning-potential-with-dreambox#comments Tue, 07 Sep 2010 16:21:14 +0000 Jessie W http://www.dreambox.com/blog/?p=6197 http://www.dreambox.com/blog/unlocking-learning-potential-with-dreambox/feed 0 DreamBox Customer Service Hours Have Expanded! http://www.dreambox.com/blog/customer-service-hours-expanded http://www.dreambox.com/blog/customer-service-hours-expanded#comments Fri, 03 Sep 2010 15:59:46 +0000 David G http://www.dreambox.com/blog/?p=6129 support@dreambox.com.]]> http://www.dreambox.com/blog/customer-service-hours-expanded/feed 0 Dreambox Learning Has a New CEO! http://www.dreambox.com/blog/new-ceo http://www.dreambox.com/blog/new-ceo#comments Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:37:29 +0000 Tracy H http://www.dreambox.com/blog/?p=6164 our latest press release.]]> http://www.dreambox.com/blog/new-ceo/feed 0 Just Announced: Investment in DreamBox Learning Means a Bright Future http://www.dreambox.com/blog/just-announced-investment-in-dreambox-learning-means-a-bright-future http://www.dreambox.com/blog/just-announced-investment-in-dreambox-learning-means-a-bright-future#comments Tue, 20 Apr 2010 14:35:12 +0000 Sue http://www.dreambox.com/blog/?p=5285 Charter Fund, a non-profit venture capital firm. This partnership has given DreamBox a $10 million investment that will allow us to significantly increase our growth, create new content, and further develop our technology platform. All of which will help us achieve our big dream of helping millions of students! Our technology platform is at the core of our product — it’s the engine that continually assesses each student’s mathematical understanding with every mouse click, and then provides the most appropriate hints, encouragement, and the right next lessons, at the right pace and level of difficulty, for that child. The mission of the Charter Fund is very much in sync with ours. They are dedicated to reaching a broad range of students and helping public education thrive. The Charter Fund is a social venture investment fund, founded in 2005 to significantly increase the capacity of proven education entrepreneurs to serve more children, and provide quality educational options to thousands of underserved families in diverse communities. “This investment allows us to further deliver on our commitment to help public education thrive by providing critical resources and tools to traditional public schools, charter schools, private schools and schools on a global basis,” according to Kevin Hall, CEO and President of The Charter School Growth Fund. You can read more about our exciting news in our press release, and in this morning’s New York Times article. But we wanted to be the first to tell our excellent and most appreciative customers that we’re in a great position to make your — and our — wishes come true.]]> http://www.dreambox.com/blog/just-announced-investment-in-dreambox-learning-means-a-bright-future/feed 0 Schooled by 5-8 Year Olds: More Mouse Struggles! http://www.dreambox.com/blog/schooled-by-5-8-year-olds-more-mouse-struggles http://www.dreambox.com/blog/schooled-by-5-8-year-olds-more-mouse-struggles#comments Thu, 16 Jul 2009 17:10:44 +0000 Mickelle http://www.dreambox.com/blog/?p=1782 Schooled by 5-8 year olds: Mouse Skills Needed).]]> Schooled by 5-8 year olds: Mouse Skills Needed). With adults or intermediate users, we probably wouldn’t have had to worry about any of this. However, solving the problem for our primary audience has a big impact on whether they want to play DreamBox or not. We couldn’t ignore it! We included the Mouse Tutorial games as a part of the First Time User Experience (FTUE). It’s a part of the opening game story. Users must pass the minimum (bare minimum) requirements for each level in order to enter DreamBox and begin the instructional math games. This ensures that most users have the basic mouse skills needed to use our virtual manipulatives. (Note: Our virtual manipulatives are vital to allowing students to “build” answers to problems instead of simply providing multiple answer choices for them to choose from.)

Math learning requires mouse education for younger students

What’s the problem? The problem is that we built this into the FTUE. Some kids love it! Some kids don’t! In the same way that the first page of a book and the first 10 minutes of a movie are important for hooking the reader or viewer, so are the first 10 minutes of a computer game experience. There are lots of solutions to this problem, and each is accompanied with varying degrees of development time. The most straight forward solution is, if can we generalize, that all kids that start at the kindergarten level receive the mouse tutorials. Anyone older doesn’t. The most involved approach, requiring the biggest commitment in terms of development, would be to create a mouse skills assessment at the beginning of the experience, just as we've included academic assessments throughout the math games. As with every decision we've made at DreamBox, we carefully weigh the pros and cons of each, ultimately leading us to a better experience for every child.]]> http://www.dreambox.com/blog/schooled-by-5-8-year-olds-more-mouse-struggles/feed 0 "We just won the 'Oscars' of Education Publishing!" http://www.dreambox.com/blog/we-just-won-the-oscars-of-education-publishing http://www.dreambox.com/blog/we-just-won-the-oscars-of-education-publishing#comments Tue, 23 Jun 2009 21:40:22 +0000 Lou http://www.dreambox.com/blog/?p=2679 the Golden Lamp  for Technology Innovation (Association of Educational Publishers). Since I'm quoting folks, I think I'll quote Nigel: "Whoo Hoo!!  (Hey, it's better than me quoting Sally Fields) Well deserved gang, well deserved . . . as we continue to build more products, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if you all pulled off a Katharine Hepburn.]]> http://www.dreambox.com/blog/we-just-won-the-oscars-of-education-publishing/feed 0 Sometimes Things Just Don't Compute… http://www.dreambox.com/blog/sometimes-things-just-dont-compute http://www.dreambox.com/blog/sometimes-things-just-dont-compute#comments Wed, 20 May 2009 13:49:23 +0000 Nigel http://www.dreambox.com/blog/?p=2324 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".

]]> How does a teacher, who doesn't realize a student has a problem, help them overcome it? 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.]]> http://www.dreambox.com/blog/sometimes-things-just-dont-compute/feed 0 DreamBox: My Purple Cow http://www.dreambox.com/blog/dreambox-my-purple-cow http://www.dreambox.com/blog/dreambox-my-purple-cow#comments Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:19:15 +0000 Mickelle http://www.dreambox.com/blog/?p=1738 Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow. It’s about transforming your business by being remarkable.]]> Seth Godin’s book Purple Cow. It’s about transforming your business by being remarkable. There’s a lot of talk about what it means to be remarkable. Of course I read the book thinking about our product, DreamBox Learning K-2 Math. But more and more, I thought about my job at DreamBox as being the truly remarkable. Before DreamBox, I taught in elementary schools for 9 years. I loved the classroom. Even with all the frustrations, low pay and school politics, I loved teaching, and I wasn’t looking to leave the classroom. Then came the call from a former parent. He founded a start-up company and needed a teacher. Was I interested?

Life With the DreamBox Learning Team

Along the way, I was given more than I ever imagined. When I read an academic book that spoke to the type of teaching we wanted to apply to DreamBox, I met the author. I brought her into our fold and picked her brain, learning straight from the source. I was handed an assessment guru who was always there with the right advice and background knowledge. I was surrounded by and worked elbow-to-elbow with world-class developers. They’d ask questions and dig deep into how my mind worked as an educator. They’d come back with technology language that my team transformed into high quality learning games. As artists, developers and teachers we created our own virtual manipulatives. Building K-2 Math was an organic, get-your-hands-dirty process. We worked very hard and forged our own processes along the way. Our CEO was always there, clearing the path and providing inspiration. DreamBox is remarkable because of the people, the talent, and the empowerment. Almost three years later, joined by 3 more teachers on the Academic team, as well as Development, Creative and Marketing teams, we got there. 2 months ago we launched DreamBox Learning K-2 Math. Now it’s time for my own launch. The timing on all this is poetic. I’ve just given birth to my second child. My responsibilities leading the Academic team have come to an end. When and how I return to DreamBox are tbd. If this were any other job, there wouldn’t be a question of my returning to work. I’d stay home and be with my kids. But this isn’t any other job. This is DreamBox. Challenging, empowering, giving - Remarkable.]]> http://www.dreambox.com/blog/dreambox-my-purple-cow/feed 0 Helping Young Animation Lovers Appreciate Math; and Vice Versa http://www.dreambox.com/blog/helping-young-animation-lovers-appreciate-math-and-vice-versa http://www.dreambox.com/blog/helping-young-animation-lovers-appreciate-math-and-vice-versa#comments Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:43:14 +0000 Sue http://www.dreambox.com/blog/?p=1994 Science Daily article might be a good read. Not all kids grow up with a love of math like Tony DeRose, a computer scientist at Pixar Animation Studios. He put the algebra and trigonometry he learned in high school to good use when he realized that “without mathematics, we wouldn't have these visually rich environments, and visually rich characters." The article includes a video clip of an interview with Tony talking about the connection between animation and math. You’ll also find a link to an article about the computer scientists who won an Oscar for developing the fluid simulation used in animated movies like Pirates of the Caribbean. Or take a look at this PBS Teachers site that suggests ways to help students use measuring, multiplication, division, and fractions to understanding what motion picture film is and how it is used. But we know that the best way to get kids interested in high school math is to make sure they’re engaged with math from the very beginning of school. And as a mother of an artist, in an environment where budget cuts have virtually eliminated art education from public school education, I was pleased to find someone like Wendy Jackson Hall. She was an animation artist and educator Seattle who used creative media like animation as a learning tool to help teach other subjects (and she introduced my son to stop-motion animation).

Relating Math Learning to Everyday Activities

In this terrific Stop Motion Works article, Wendy talks about teaching kids how to make flip books to relate math and aesthetics – with specifics for kids in grades 1 through 6. Helping children understand that 24 frames are combined to create one second of animation helps build comprehension of multiplication, division and fractions. And relating this to aesthetic principles of design, composition, contrast, and visual symbols, helps kids make the connection between the seemingly disparate worlds of math and art.]]> http://www.dreambox.com/blog/helping-young-animation-lovers-appreciate-math-and-vice-versa/feed 1