This can not be done with offline DVD or book products – which are at best “fossilized remains” of a living service like Dreambox.

Another way of thinking if it – would you prefer a living teacher in your child’s class or a video recording of a teacher’s presentation?

Finally, Dreambox is going to “spoil” parents. It gives the kind of feedback that parents only receive if they are lucky to have an extremely gifted teacher with acute powers of obervation and a deep understanding of children’s mathematical mental processes. Needless to say, the vast majority of parents aren’t nearly so lucky! I’m looking forward to seeing Dreambox displace traditional direct instruction in the classroom; this will give trachers more time to use project-based learning approaches that integrate mathematical thinking with the rest of the curriculum.

“they all work through the same lessons in the same sequence”

This is simply not true. To take a random example, let’s look at the 1996 CD-ROM game Civilization II, which was one of my favorites back in those days. It’s a strategy game, not a math game, and it is not based around lessons. However, it did have discrete progression in the form of a technology tree, of scientific advances that you could discover. Every time you played, you could choose a different path through the tree, informed by the unfolding economic and military situation that was completely different each time.

This has nothing to do with the particular platform on which the software is executed. I mean, even Chess, the board game, plays out differently each time, and it’s made of wood or plastic!

I am glad that your learning software makes use of such a flexible, player-directed progression. I hope that the trend catches on. Just don’t try to hide the fact that games have been doing this for a long time, and that it in no way depends on software being web-based.

Instead, you could emphasize the way that being web-based allows you to monitor aggregate player statistics on the game, and actively improve it week by week. Or maybe you provide access to a social network site where kids can compare their progress, play collaborative math games, help each other with difficult subjects, and so on. Those are examples of special opportunities unique to the web-based format.

At the very least, you could elaborate on the connection between

“Because we offer a web service instead of a CD or software that downloads to your desktop”

and

“DreamBox is able to customize every aspect of the experience to your child’s specific actions in the game and learning needs.”

Thank you for your consideration.