DreamBox Learning launches global online community on edWeb.net for educators implementing blended learning models for mathematics

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRINCETON, NJ, February 12, 2013 – DreamBox Learning® (www.dreambox.com), the leading Intelligent Adaptive Learning™ company, and edWeb.net, a professional social and learning network for the education community, today announced the launch of Blended Learning, an online professional learning community (PLC) to support educators exploring and implementing blended learning models for elementary mathematics.

The Blended Learning PLC will provide a collaborative forum for administrators, math coaches, curriculum coordinators, and teachers of mathematics to gather and share insights as schools and districts implement blended learning models at the classroom level.

“As the pioneer of intelligent adaptive learning, DreamBox Learning has redefined personalized instruction in the classroom,” said Lisa Schmucki, founder and CEO of edWeb.net. “Blended learning is an area of great interest to our online professional learning community and we’re thrilled to provide such high caliber experts to educators to improve their knowledge and help them implement best practices in classrooms.”

As part of the partnership with edWeb.net, DreamBox Learning will host a monthly Blended Learning webinar series as well as provide a dedicated blog and access to resources and tools that will allow educators to receive a Continued Education (CE) certificate.

The next webinar, Principal’s Guide to Blended Learning for Elementary Mathematics, is scheduled for February 27 at 3:00 p.m. EST. The session will be presented by well-known author and educator Dr. Jeff Piontek, who will present the keys to implementing successful blended learning models that leverage the powerful combination of real-time and online interaction to improve math teaching and student learning.

The joint effort benefits both edWeb.net and DreamBox Learning. “Joining forces with edWeb.net provides DreamBox Learning with the unique opportunity to engage directly with forward-thinking administrators and educators who are actively exploring innovative ways to increase student confidence and achievement in math through blended learning and differentiation,” said Jessie Woolley-Wilson, President and CEO at DreamBox Learning. “We’re very excited to share our knowledge and success stories as well as learn from the community as we collectively continue to inspire positive outcomes in education.”

Administrators and math educators are invited to join the Blended Learning community. All webinars and content are free. Register for the February 27 webinar. Listen to an interview with edWeb.net’s Lisa Schmucki and Dr. Tim Hudson, Director of Curriculum Design at DreamBox Learning discuss the rise in blended learning and the launch of the Blended Learning PLC. More information about the overall program can be found at www.edweb.net/blendedlearning.

About edWeb.net

edWeb.net is a professional social and learning network for the education community that makes it easy to connect and collaborate with colleagues, share information and best practices, and create professional learning communities. edWeb makes it easy to move forward faster with ideas that transform teaching and learning. edWeb hosts free professional learning communities on key topics in education and won the 2012 Edublog Award for Best Free and Open Professional Development for Educators. edWeb reaches 3.5 million educators in the U.S. through our membership and our partnership with MCH Strategic Data. Learn more at www.edweb.net.

About DreamBox Learning

DreamBox Learning was founded in 2006 in Bellevue, Washington and launched its first online learning product in January 2009. The platform has won more than 20 top education and technology industry awards and is in use in all 50 states. DreamBox Learning Math offers a groundbreaking combination of intelligent adaptive learning, rigorous elementary mathematics curriculum, and motivating learning environment. The innovative DreamBox platform captures every decision a student makes while working in the program and adjusts the student’s learning path appropriately, providing millions of individualized learning paths, each one tailored to a student’s unique needs.

DreamBox Learning closed its Series A round of funding in December 2011 led by private investors Reed Hastings, John Doerr and Deborah Quazzo, as well as GSV Capital Corp. (NASDAQ: GSVC).

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PR Contacts:

edWeb.net:
Lisa Schmucki, 908-407-2755 or lisa@edweb.net

Foghorn Public Relations for DreamBox Learning:
Mary Leddy, 508-872-3369 or mleddy@foghornpr.com
Shelly Eckenroth, 717-852-7060 or seckenroth@foghornpr.com

7 Excellent iPad Games to Develop Kids Critical Thinking

How does your smartphone work?

Classrooms for the next generation?

A three-year project with 400 eight to 10-year olds found that using interactive “smart” desks can have benefits over doing maths on paper, and that pupils are able to improve their fluency and flexibility in maths by working together.

“Our aim was to encourage far higher levels of active student engagement, where knowledge is obtained by sharing, problem-solving and creating, rather than by passive listening,” said Liz Burd of Britain’s Durham University, who led the study.

The research team, whose findings were published in the journal Learning and Instruction, designed software and desks that recognise multiple touches on a desktop using infrared light vision systems.

The desks are built into furniture of the classroom to help encourage more collaboration, and are networked and linked to a main smartboard. A live feed of the desks goes directly to the teacher who can intervene quickly to help a pupil while allowing group work to continue.

Burd’s team found that 45 percent of pupils who used a maths programme on the smart desk system increased the number of unique mathematical expressions they created, compared with 16 percent of those doing it on paper.

Using the new desks helped children work together and solve problems using inventive solutions, the researchers said.

“We found our tables encouraged students to collaborate more effectively,” said Burd. “Such collaboration just did not happen when students used paper-based approaches.”

You never get a second chance at a first impression…..

You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” Don’t make the mistakes that many have made before you.

In today’s world, the first impression idea still holds true. However, digital consumers and social media allow us to connect in ways that we could never have in the past. And the impression that you leave on your Facebook page, Twitter stream, or website could have some people making judgments and drawing conclusions before they actually get to know you, your company, or your products.

What is your goal? What is the impression you are trying to create for yourself? What kind of customers are you attracting by delivering the impression you project?  It’s important to make sure that you always have the best foot forward in whatever business you are in to build an impressive social networking presence with the right impression.

This post originally appeared in The Marketing Tech Blog (http://www.marketingtechblog.com/infographic-whats-your-social-media-impression/)

Happy Holidays to one and all…..

The Digital Story of the Nativity…21st century style

Learning to “Learn” from Failure….

Yesterday’s post on Education Unbound  focused on how teachers can better support student learning by embracing, encouraging and supporting failure in the classroom. This might seem shocking to students who don’t want their instructors to be rooting for them to fail, but we are not talking about catastrophic, epic failure, but rather the kinds of small setbacks that encourage learning. What does that mean and how can you, as a student “fail” and still be successful in your educational goals?

Learning from Your Mistakes
We all make mistakes. I once decided that I would be better served by writing on an exam that the professor’s questions about the history of Native American cultures were irrelevant and proceeded to write a long treatise on the current state of indigenous affairs in the U.S. The “D” I received on that exam is a fair indication that I made a rather significant mistake. But did I learn from my mistake? Absolutely. I learned to play the education game a little better, and I learned that I have a passion for Native American affairs that I hadn’t previously realized. I later turned much of the content of that essay into a portion of a course on “Toxic Literacies” that I taught to incoming freshman.

That was, however, a hard-on-the-GPA lesson to learn. I am not advocating radical/stupid failure just to make a point, but rather acknowledging that you will make mistakes and that you should consciously learn from them. When you find yourself on the wrong side of success in the classroom, what should you do to remedy the situation and turn it to your advantage? Here are some strategies for ensuring  that your failures make you a success.

Embrace Metacognition
Metacognition is the process of thinking about your thinking. That may sound convoluted, but it makes sense if you take a step back and think about it for a moment. Rather than just accept that you got something wrong, think about why you got it wrong. Take an academic failure for example and ask yourself these questions:

• Was this a mistake you make repeatedly? If so, is that due to some knowledge or information deficiency you have, that you might be able to remedy?
• Did you get it wrong because it is the first time you have ever seen a problem like this? Would practice with similar problems or tasks help build the skills you need?
• Did you not make a serious effort to solve the problem, complete the assignment, or study the material? If not, why not? Be honest with yourself. That is the only way to really uncover why the failure happened.
• Was there a problem with the test, task, or problem that confused you or made the process of succeeding unnecessarily difficult? If so, do you understand the underlying concepts or skills and can you demonstrate them on other tasks?

Thinking clearly and honestly about why you failed at something is the first step in learning from it. If you are unwilling to take a good hard look at your own actions and culpability in your failure, you are unlikely to learn from it. Avoid the temptation to blame others for your shortcomings, you can’t control them, but you can do things to make yourself better.  Once you have examined why you think you failed, you are ready to take the next step in learning from the experience – ask the professor for help.

Ask for Help
Contrary to what some students believe, faculty members are there to help you learn. Not just in the lecture hall or lab, but in their offices, the academic quad, or campus coffee shops. More importantly, they want to help you learn. Most of them sit in their office hours and rarely see any students except the ones who are already doing well in their classes. The ones they want to see, however, are the ones who need their help the most.

Once you have a handle on why you are having problems in a class, and if those problems can be overcome by gaining additional clarification from the instructor, or through some focused tutoring on the topic. Contact the professor to schedule an appointment to talk about yourdeficiencies and how he or she can help you overcome them. It is important to realize that, regardless of any perceived lack of clarity on the part of the faculty member, it is your job to learn the material and succeed. Do not blame them for your failure, regardless of what you think the cause may be.

Ask well-targeted questions that help you address the specific issues that you addressed when you thought through your reasons for failing. Talk about studying strategies, alternative sources for the course information, tutoring, or ask for help filling in gaps in your knowledge. Remember, the professor is there to help you, and you should be thankful for their time and consideration. By doing this you are not only getting help with the immediate problem, but also learning how to become and independent learner who seeks help and interacts with those who can assist them. This is also an excellent way to establish a relationship with faculty members who you may consider asking for professional references in the future.

Explore Alternative Paths to Success
This is the one unconventional piece of advice in this post. If you realize that you are having problems because of a failure to make a concerted effort, or because you are having problems understanding core concepts, and asking the instructor for assistance has not helped or isn’t working, consider going outside the normal channels for assistance.
One realistic possibility is that you might have a specific problem learning some types of information. You might consider visiting your student support services office if you are encountering problems with a specific type of learning. They can help diagnose your particular disability and suggest ways of being successful with it.

If you feel that the presentation of the information simply is not a good match for the way you learn best, consider other sources of learning. There is a wealth of information available online and you can find an alternative presentation of almost any course content in online texts, videos, or even interactive tutorials. You just have to look.

The truly radical option here is to step way outside of the box and craft an alternative way to demonstrate your understanding to the faculty member. If you are constantly failing at writing papers for a class but love to make movies, ask the instructor if you can create a short film in place of the final paper. Perhaps a computer animation of the motion of molecules in a particular atom might be an acceptable outcome in a science class? You will never know if some alternative assessment might be possible if you don’t ask. Worst case is they will say “no” and you are back where you started. Best case is that they say “yes,” you wow the professor with what you show them and they see you as a motivated, creative individual whom they are happy to support in future endeavors.

Failing to Learn is the Only Real Failure
All of these suggestions are predicated on one thing – you need to accept failure as a positive experience that helps you grow. If you can examine your shortcomings with some objectivity, you will begin to position yourself to not only overcome them, but to develop lifelong habits of addressing your failings that will make you much more successful in the long run. As Dale Carnegie once said, “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.”

Managing your digital footprint…

“Everything you say and do online can have an impact on your reputation. The Internet is a vast collection of details, and you might be surprised at just how much information on you can impact how you look and how you are perceived as a person and a professional.”

The infographic is split into 4 sections:

1. What is an e-reputation?
2. Why online reputations matter
3. What potential employers are watching for
4. What can you do about it?

I’ve included the final section below, but please please look at the previous ones too (click the image for the full infographic) as the information is well presented and well worth a couple of minutes of your time – if for nothing else so you can be sure you’re doing it right.

“Protect your e-reputation and boost your digital presence by staying on top of what’s being said about you online and developing a real digital strategy. Do it for yourself, for your professional life, for your friends and family – and your sanity.”

More thoughts on effective school technology leadership by @WiscPrincipal

After reading this post by @WiscPrincipal I felt it was important to share it with my followers or readers.

Effective school technology implementation does not occur if there is not effective leadership in place to make it happen. It takes a lot of vision, passion, resources, and coordination, vision, to bring technology (or any new resource or practice) into an organization to make a positive impact on learning and teaching. The school leader is the key player in these areas. Leithwood and Riehl (2003) highlight the importance of school leadership by noting that it is second only to instruction from teachers when it comes to impacting student learning.

I’ll echo Todd Hurst’s thoughts that effective school technology leadership does not differ greatly from good school leadership. Leaders set a vision, share the vision, outline expectations, make goals, and then monitor performance toward that vision (Leithwood & Riehl, 2003). The work of Anderson and Baxter (2005) and Flanagan and Jacobsen (2003) also speak to the importance of the leader having a vision about the use of school technology.

The school leader must have a good understanding of best instructional practices and pay attention to their effect on student learning. The use of technology can be considered a best instructional practice, but tech use can’t be “business as usual with computers” (Bosco, 2003; p. 15). Flanagan and Jacobson (2003) share that, “Merely installing computers and networks in schools is insufficient for educational reform” (p. 125). We need to move past the focus on acquisition of resources, and put work into using those resources to have an impact on learning (Bosco, 2003). This type of instructional shift is where leadership really matters.

The provision of staff development has been identified as an important school leadership factor by Leithwood and Riehl (2003), and is also noted as key for the implementation of effective school technology programs. Bosco (2003) shares that professional development is essential for schools to move beyond the mere presence of computers, to effectively using them as a teaching and learning tool. Flanagan and Jacobsen (2003) show how student technology use progresses from productivity, to foundational knowledge, to the desired level of using technology for communication, problem solving, and decision making. Staff members will need to make these progressions themselves before they will be able to help students do the same. Professional development is the means to make this happen. Not only should school leaders make staff development available, they can also help these changes occur by modeling appropriate use of technology themselves (Anderson & Dexter, 2005).

Resource acquisition and alignment were identified as indicators of effective school leaders by Leithwood and Riehl (2003), and these skills are also important for school technology leaders. Bosco (2003) states that “creative leadership can find ways around the limitations of funding” (p. 18). I don’t sense an impending Golden Age for education where we have abundant money and time, so school leaders need to find ways to advocate and acquire needed resources for their students and staff.

The ability to develop community and collaborative efforts are key skills for school leaders (Leithwood & Riehl, 2003), and is also identified as a needed competency for effective technology leadership (Flanagan & Jacobsen, 2003). Building community and involving a variety of stakeholders can help secure resources, but these are also essential steps for understanding the variety of needs within a school community. Having this understanding will enable school leaders to address the digital divide found among students of different backgrounds.

Anderson and Dexter (2003) suggest that more research is needed to see how technology leadership fits with general school leadership. Their work found that there were lower levels of technology leadership in the elementary schools, and I’m curious to know why that is. Bosco (2003) shares “The strongest objection to ICT in schools is ideological not empirical” (p. 17). This statement leads me to think about the importance of political and persuasive skills for school leaders. Bosco (2003) also suggests that future research should investigate how technology can lead to more instructional time in addition to how it might effect student engagement. I also wonder about links between principal evaluation data and technology use in schools. In this era of increased educator and school accountability, educator evaluation processes across the country are starting to utilize more quantitative data, rooted in student achievement, to evaluate teachers and principals. It would be interesting to look at this numeric data in comparison to technology implementation.

Anderson, R.E. & Dexter, S. (2005, February). School technology leadership: An empirical investigation of prevalence and effect. Educational Administration Quarterly, 41, (1), 49-82.

Bosco, J. (2003, February). Toward a balanced appraisal of educational technology in U.S. schools and a recognition of seven leadership challenges. Paper presented at the Annual K-12 School Networking Conference of the Consortium for School Networking, Arlington, VA.

Flanagan, L. & Jacobsen, M. (2003). Technology leadership for the twenty-first century principal. Journal of Educational Administration, 41(2), 124-142.

Leithwood, K.A. & Riehl, C. (2003, January). What We Know about Successful School Leadership. Retrieved from http://www.dcbsimpson.com/randd-leithwood-successful-leadership.pdf