ALEKS Corporation — Tuesday, March 05, 2013
"Ready to Learn" Online Math Courses Now Available for iPad and Android Tablets;
IRVINE, Calif. - March 5, 2013 - To support the explosive adoption of iPads and other tablet devices by U.S. schools, ALEKS Corporation today announced the availability of its first K-12 and higher education courses for iPad and select Android tablets. Eight ALEKS courses are now optimized to work in the emerging tablet environment.
"For the power of technology to truly transform student learning, we must offer programs that intelligently adapt to individual student needs and allow students to learn at their own pace," said Wil Lampros, president of ALEKS Corporation. "In addition, we need to engage students in the learning environments where they are most comfortable, and on the most popular devices. Our courses for the tablet environment enhance ALEKS' ability to help all ALEKS students reach their full potential."
With its completely individualized approach to learning, ALEKS enables students to successfully master course material by targeting their learning on the material they are precisely ready to learn right now. Since ALEKS is web-based, and accessible directly via common Internet browsers, students can quickly access their accounts anytime, anywhere, via a tablet, laptop or traditional computer. The upgraded courses are available directly online and continue to feature user-friendly answer input tools that allow students to enter mathematical expressions and free-response answers that avoid multiple-choice and demonstrate true content mastery.
The launch of ALEKS courses for iPad and other tablets marks the start of ALEKS' ambitious program to make its extensive course catalog fully usable on these mobile devices. Many courses can be used during this school year, and the remainder will become available during the 2013-14 academic year.
The ALEKS courses now available for iPad and select Android tablets are:
K-12
Mathematics - LV 3 (with QuickTables)
Mathematics - LV 4 (with QuickTables)
Mathematics - LV 5 (with QuickTables)
Mathematics - MS/LV 6
Essential Mathematics (with QuickTables)
QuickTables
Higher Education
Basic Math
Pre-Algebra
To learn more about how ALEKS works, visit www.aleks.com/video/how_aleks_works. A free trial of ALEKS courses is available to teachers and administrators at www.aleks.com/free_trial/instructor
About ALEKS Corporation
ALEKS Corporation is a leader in the creation of web-based, artificially intelligent educational software. ALEKS assessment and learning technologies were originally developed by a team of cognitive scientists, mathematicians, and software engineers at the University of California, Irvine, with major funding from the National Science Foundation. ALEKS is founded on groundbreaking research in mathematical cognitive science known as Knowledge Space Theory. Through adaptive questioning, ALEKS accurately assesses a student's knowledge state, and then delivers targeted instruction on the topics a student is most ready to learn.
ALEKS has been used by millions of students in over 100 different mathematics, science, and business courses at thousands of K-12 schools, colleges, and universities throughout the world.
For additional information, visit: www.aleks.com
Mayor’s Fund donations will provide expanded counseling programs, mentoring,
academic support, and afterschool services
Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott and the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City today announced new programs to provide long-term assistance for students at 39 schools severely impacted by Hurricane Sandy, including mentoring, counseling, social services, and academic support. The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City has committed more than $2 million in hurricane relief funds to this initiative, to be administered by The Fund for Public Schools.
“Students in areas hardest hit by the storm lost a significant amount of time in the classroom, and this funding will allow us to provide them with services to get them back on track for success,” said Chancellor Walcott. “We are so incredibly thankful to generous New Yorkers and concerned donors around the world. Without their contributions to the Mayor’s Fund following Hurricane Sandy, these grants would not have been possible.”
“We know that many families’ lives were disrupted as a result of Hurricane Sandy and one consequence was children missing valuable school time,” said Megan Sheekey, President of the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, which is providing funds for this effort. “This initiative is making it possible for students to catch up on learning they may have missed and also receive the vital counseling and mentoring services to further help in the recovery process.”
“When Hurricane Sandy disrupted so many New Yorkers’ lives, the City’s schools were a source of comfort, continuity, and inspiration to students and families in need,” said Julia Bator, C.E.O. of The Fund for Public Schools. “This grant from the Mayor’s Fund will enable schools to continue to go the extra mile to ensure our students feel safe, cared for, and ready to learn.”
As a result of Hurricane Sandy, thousands of students were displaced or relocated from their schools, creating unanticipated learning gaps and other challenges. The grant will allow the Department of Education to make great strides in supporting these students through mentoring and supplemental academic support.
The Department of Education will allocate $1.3 million to support expanded mentoring and counseling programs in 30 schools that serve more than 16,000 students. As the long-term impact of the storm and a more comprehensive picture of its effect on students’ well-being have emerged, it
has become apparent that students need non-academic support. These funds will assist schools in helping students regain a sense of normalcy and stability through mentoring, counseling, and social services.
The remaining $715,000 will provide expanded online tutoring and extended afterschool time for 13 schools that serve more than 13,000 students. These schools participate in the Department of Education’s Innovation Zone (iZone) program, which supports innovative educational programming and organizes instruction around the unique needs, motivations, and strengths of each student. Principals at iZone schools in storm-damaged neighborhoods sought opportunities for their students to make up lost instructional time and receive additional academic support from teachers. The iZone will use technology and afterschool support to meet these needs, which include providing student access to online Regents preparation programs, online tutoring services and coursework, online math and literacy programs, and afterschool time with teachers. The iZone will also provide laptops and calculators to schools that currently lack equipment because they have been removed from their school buildings or experienced losses during the storm. These tools will enable more efficient and effective support for students, both during the day and after school.
About the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City
The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to innovative public-private partnerships and programs for the City of New York, is accepting financial donations to support hurricane relief efforts. One hundred percent of donations are being dispersed to relief efforts and organizations. Grant funds have helped to support the supply and transport of emergency needs including hot food, toiletries, baby supplies, cleaning materials, warm clothing, and medications to communities hit hardest by the hurricane. The Mayor's Fund is now focused on longer-term rebuilding and restoration efforts including assistance for displaced families, schools, small businesses, nonprofit organizations, parks, and other impacted groups. To learn more, visit NYC.gov and search for “Mayor’s Fund.”
About The Fund for Public Schools
The Fund for Public Schools is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to improving New York City’s public schools by attracting private investment in school reform and encouraging greater involvement by all New Yorkers in the education of our children. The Fund works to strengthen the New York City Department of Education’s relationship with the private sector, secure funding for critical education reform initiatives, help businesses create partnerships and programs that support city schools, and raise public awareness about public schools. For more information about The Fund for Public Schools, visitwww.fundforpublicschools.org.
On Saturday, June 4, over 1,600 principals, superintendents, cluster staff, and network leaders joined Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky at the Chancellor’s Principal Conference.
The video of the morning program, including welcome addresses by Chancellor Dennis Walcott and Chief Academic Officer Shael Polakow-Suransky and keynote speeches by Charlotte Danielson and David Coleman is posted here for your reference.
INSIDE HIGHER ED, March 10th, 2011
With public higher education systems under political pressure to increase completion rates, and foundations offering grants to colleges that are using new technologies to help usher students through to a degree, education technology companies are seeing a ripe market of potential buyers for new e-learning products - in particular, software aimed at high school graduates who lack the basic reading, writing, and math skills to succeed at the college level.
Technology geared toward helping students "catch up" has been around for a while, but only recently has it achieved a potentially game-changing level of sophistication, according to Carol Twigg, president of the National Center for Academic Transformation. "These products that 10 years ago were sort of iffy, at best, have now become remarkably mature and high quality products," she says. And while public higher ed systems are seeing their budgets cut, developmental education is in such bad shape that many colleges are prepared to spend - often with foundation support - on products they think could help bring them more in line with state and national completion goals. There are many contracts to be won, Twigg says.
The Education tech industry is responding by mobilizing teams to tweak and re-brand existing software for the developmental market and begin developing new products to sell to desperate colleges.
Most companies are offering variations on a theme: "adaptive" technology that learns the strengths and weaknesses of individual students and tailors its tutorials to address their needs. Unlike a traditional sequence of instructions in a learning exercise, adaptive software adjusts to how well a student appears to understand different concepts. If a student struggles to learn a skill when it is presented one way, the software will detect her confusion and present it another way. The model is highly individualized instruction, without the many instructors that would be needed to adapt to each student's needs the old-fashioned way.
Since certain standardized tests, such as the GRE, already use adaptive testing that shapes exams to the skill of the test-taker in real time, it might come as no surprise that a number of entrants to the developmental education market, such as Knewton and Grockit, have emerged from the test-prep industry.
Publishers such as Pearson, McGraw-Hill, and Cengage Learning are also getting in on the action. Pearson earlier this month released<http://www.prweb.com/releases/2011/02/prweb5101354.htm> MyFoundationsLab, a spinoff of its popular MyMathLab module. The company is marketing the new product, which is adaptive and covers basic reading, writing, and math concepts, directly to colleges for program-wide adoption in addition to selling to individual professors and students. It says it has already signed up 50 colleges.
McGraw-Hill last year created a unit devoted to pushing its existing adaptive products - LearnSmart and ALEKS - in developmental education, and it plans to brand new iterations of that technology specifically for the developmental market, according to officials there. Cengage also says it recently scrambled a "developmental studies team" and has seen a "significant" uptick in sales of its products in that market, according to a spokeswoman.
Blackboard, long known for its learning management products, made its own move last year, partnering<http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/22/remedial> with another company, K12, to develop remedial courses that the company says use adaptive technology.
And then there are the newcomers from the world of test prep. Knewton, which was founded in 2008 by the former director of new markets at Kaplan, Inc., just inked<http://www.knewton.com/press/arizona-state-university-partnership/> a deal with Arizona State University that is expected to see the nearly 7,000 students in two Arizona State developmental courses, college math and college algebra, using the Knewton platform next year. David Liu, the chief operating officer at Knewton, says the company is close to similar deals with 10 other colleges, and has had preliminary talks with more than 100 beyond that.
Grockit, which over five years has established itself as a player in test prep, says it is expanding its combination "adaptive" and "social" learning model into the developmental education market. Much like the live support chats that companies sometimes offer through their websites to help perplexed software users, Grockit retains a bullpen of Web-based tutors whom students can ask for help if the company's adaptive teaching platform is not doing the trick. Grockit says it is close to a number of deals with colleges that it says are similar to Knewton's Arizona State partnership.
Hunter R. Boylan, director of the National Center for Developmental Education, says he is happy to see the private sector investing so heavily in technology that might help colleges get students through developmental programs. At the same time, he points out that this is not the first time tech companies have swooped in with a supposed elixir for developmental education. In the past, certain products "failed because the technologies weren't able to deal with differential learning styles well," Boylan says.
That's exactly the problem that the latest generation of commercial products claims to address. "Personalization" - or "individualization," depending on whose brochure you're reading - is their watchword. The technology industry in general has tacked toward personalization, with companies such as Google, Netflix, Facebook and Amazon mining user data to show individual customers what they probably want to see based on their needs and interests, and higher ed has begun to follow suit<http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/10/18/phoenix>. Developmental education programs especially could stand to benefit from the application of the same principles in learning design, the companies say.
"With students who are already struggling, [the problem] in teaching to the mean is that you end up alienating students across the entire bell curve," says Vineet Madan, vice president for learning ecosystems at McGraw-Hill.
"That's where the adaptive technology comes in - that personalization," says Madan.
"It is similar to what Google and Netflix and other web applications are using, where they measure activity that user is doing and bringing back the data . based upon actions that you've taken," says David Liu, Knewton's chief operating officer. "Not only do we data mine all [your] activities as a student, but we also begin to understand some of the tendencies you have and compare you to cohorts that we have using the system."
Knewton, for example, has each student take a diagnostic test to get a sense of his baseline competency in, say, college-level math. Based on the results, it generates a list of concepts a student needs to learn, derived from how well he knows each concept and how well he is expected to know it. As the student takes tutorials and quizzes in an attempt to improve his mastery of the concepts, the program logs how much time he is spending on various ideas and questions, as well as which questions he is answering wrong and how he is likely to have arrived at those wrong answers. In doing so, the program can allegedly pinpoint that student's specific level of understanding of each concept and let him - and his instructor - know what he needs to work on in order to pass.
The personalization extends to professors, who can set expectations for how well they want students to master different concepts based on which ones they want to emphasize. They can also view the data profiles of each student as they evolve in order to prepare them for any necessary human intervention.
Most of the companies, after all, say their products are intended as a supplement to live counseling and instruction, not a replacement. In developmental education especially, the "blended" model - which promotes heavy instructor attention no matter how smart the software is - is still the best way to improve learning, Twigg says.
Arizona State acknowledged that its recent deal with Knewton was a substantial investment, but says it has no current plans to scale back on instructors and support personnel in its developmental programs. The return on investment, says university spokesman Russ Knocke, comes with seeing fewer students drop out during remediation. "Retaining students who might otherwise fall through the cracks is certainly cost-effective for the long-term," he says.
"When you're face-to-face with students, you can track them and encourage them much more directly," says Twigg. "The online environment is good for lots and lots of things, obviously, but . these are students who have no study habits. Creating that [classroom] structure is very important."
For the latest technology news and opinion from Inside Higher Ed, follow @IHEtech on Twitter<http://www.twitter.com/IHEtech>.
- Steve Kolowich
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/03/10/companies_look_to_improve_developmental_and_remedial_education_products_using_adaptive_learning_technology
NY TIMES, September 30th, 2010
FRANKLIN LAKES, N.J. — By the time they get to kindergarten, children in this well-to-do suburb already know their numbers, so their teachers worried that a new math program was too easy when it covered just 1 and 2 — for a whole week.
“Talk about the number 1 for 45 minutes?” said Chris Covello, who teaches 16 students ages 5 and 6. “I was like, I don’t know. But then I found you really could. Before, we had a lot of ground to cover, and now it’s more open-ended and gets kids thinking.”
The slower pace is a cornerstone of the district’s new approach to teaching math, which is based on the national math system of Singapore and aims to emulate that country’s success by promoting a deeper understanding of numbers and math concepts. Students in Singapore have repeatedly ranked at or near the top on international math exams since the mid-1990s.
Franklin Lakes, about 30 miles northwest of Manhattan, is one of dozens of districts, from Scarsdale, N.Y., to Lexington, Ky., that in recent years have adopted Singapore math, as it is called, amid growing concerns that too many American students lack the higher-order math skills called for in a global economy.
For decades, efforts to improve math skills have driven schools to embrace one math program after another, abandoning a program when it does not work and moving on to something purportedly better. In the 1960s there was the “new math,” whose focus on abstract theories spurred a back-to-basics movement, emphasizing rote learning and drills. After that came “reform math,” whose focus on problem solving and conceptual understanding has been derided by critics as the “new new math.”
Singapore math may well be a fad, too, but supporters say it seems to address one of the difficulties in teaching math: all children learn differently. In contrast to the most common math programs in the United States, Singapore math devotes more time to fewer topics, to ensure that children master the material through detailed instruction, questions, problem solving, and visual and hands-on aids like blocks, cards and bar charts. Ideally, they do not move on until they have thoroughly learned a topic.
Principals and teachers say that slowing down the learning process gives students a solid math foundation upon which to build increasingly complex skills, and makes it less likely that they will forget and have to be retaught the same thing in later years.
And with Singapore math, the pace can accelerate by fourth and fifth grades, putting children as much as a year ahead of students in other math programs as they grasp complex problems more quickly.
“Our old program, Everyday Math, did not do that,” said Danielle Santoro, assistant principal of Public School 132 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which introduced Singapore math last year for all 700 students in kindergarten through fifth grade. “One day it could be money, the next day it could be time, and you would not get back to those concepts until a week later.”
Singapore math’s added appeal is that it has largely skirted the math wars of recent decades over whether to teach traditional math or reform math. Indeed, Singapore math has often been described by educators and parents as a more balanced approach between the two, melding old-fashioned algorithms with visual representations and critical thinking.
In Franklin Lakes, teachers are learning the new math system as they pass the knowledge on to their students. One morning last week, Ms. Covello and six other kindergarten teachers worked with a consultant on how to reinforce the number 8 for students. First came a catchy tune about eight oranges; then they counted off one by one while throwing up their arms in a wave.
Singapore math was developed by the country’s Ministry of Education nearly 30 years ago, and the textbooks have been imported for more than a decade. The earliest adopters in the United States were home-school parents and a small number of schools that had heard about it through word of mouth.
Today it can be found in neighborhood schools like P.S. 132, which serves mostly poor students, as well as elite schools, including Hunter College Elementary School, a public school for gifted children in Manhattan, and the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, a private school attended by President Obama’s daughters.
SingaporeMath.com, a company that has distributed the “Primary Mathematics” books in the United States since 1998, reports that it now has sales to more than 1,500 schools, about twice as many as in 2008. And Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Math in Focus, the United States edition of a popular Singapore math series, is now used in 120 school districts and 60 charter schools and private schools, the publisher says.
Some recent research suggests that students who are taught Singapore math score higher on standardized math tests, and in anecdotal reports, teachers say it helps even young children to develop confidence in their math abilities. But school officials caution that Singapore math is not easy or cheap to successfully adopt.
In some districts, there has also been skepticism from school board members and parents about importing a foreign math program. The books look different from standard-issue textbooks, with fewer pages and brightly colored pictures and diagrams, and early versions contained references to curry puffs and the Asian fruit rambutan.
The books and materials initially cost an average of $40 to $52 per student, comparable to other math programs in the United States. As with other math programs, workbooks might be replaced from year to year. But training teachers can be expensive.
“All along, people have said it’s too hard, too demanding for teachers,” said Jeffery Thomas, a history teacher who founded SingaporeMath.com with his wife, Dawn, after using the books to tutor their daughter at home in the suburbs of Portland, Ore.
Mr. Thomas said that about a dozen schools had started and dropped Singapore math, in some cases because teachers themselves lacked a strong math background and adequate training in the program.
When the Scarsdale district switched to Singapore math at its elementary schools in 2008, it expanded the number of math coaches to three from one to help the 110 classroom teachers learn the material. The district spent $121,000 on the “Primary Mathematics” books and $24,632 for teachers’ materials.
Bill Jackson, one of Scarsdale’s new math coaches, scribbled notes the other day as he watched a fourth-grade math class. For nearly an hour, the students pored over a single number: 82,566 (the seats in New Meadowlands Stadium, where the Giants and Jets play football). They built it with chips on a laminated mat, diagramed it on a smart board and, finally, solved written questions.
Mr. Jackson said that students moved through a three-step learning process: concrete, pictorial, abstract. American math programs, he said, typically skip the middle step and lose students when making the jump from concrete (chips) to abstract (questions).
Mr. Jackson began experimenting with Singapore math while teaching at School 2 in Paterson, N.J., in 2000. Test scores were mixed, and the school replaced it four years later. But Mr. Jackson continued to use it when he could. “I learned more math from Singapore math than I ever did in high school or college,” he said.
Here in Franklin Lakes, students in a second-grade class at High Mountain Road School rolled dice last week to build two- and three-digit numbers. Then they lined up together, each holding a different number, and shuffled back and forth to order their numbers from largest to smallest, then smallest to largest.
One student in the class, Lindsey Polevoy, said she liked math better this year. “I don’t like being rushed,” she said. “Sometimes I get really nervous and my fingers sweat and I give the wrong answer.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/education/01math.html
On July 19th, 2010, the New York State Board of Regents adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for Mathematics and CCSS for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects, with the understanding that New York State may add additional expectations to the Common Core. Over the summer, the State Education Department will convene two groups of educators (one for ELA and one for Mathematics) that will review the Common Core and determine if there are additional standards for New York State to add (up to 15%). In the fall, the Board of Regents will review those recommendations and share the recommended standards with the public for feedback. Additional information about the implementation timeline is forthcoming.
To see the new Common Core State Standards for ELA, go to
http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards/english-language-arts-standards
To see the new Common Core State Standards for Math, go to
IRVINE, Calif. - March 5, 2013 - To support the explosive adoption of iPads and other tablet devices by U.S. schools, ALEKS Corporation today announced the availability of its first K-12 and higher education courses for iPad and select Android tablets. Eight ALEKS courses are now optimized to work in the emerging tablet environment.
Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott and the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City today announced new programs to provide long-term assistance for students at 39 schools severely impacted by Hurricane Sandy, including mentoring, counseling, social services, and academic support. The Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City has committed more than
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