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9486 in the collection
Video Game Prepares Texas District for State Test
Ohanian Comment: I don't object to computers. I don't object to games. But I have a few questions here.
DimensionM claims they are supported by research:
Research with our programs demonstrates how well they align with the way today's students learn and how naturally immersed students become in their learning. The result: increase in student motivation, increase in time on task, and the ability to apply their learning in real world situations that have meaning for your student.
But the research they cite refers only to video games in general, nothing about their product.
The so-called case study they cite is nothing but a PR release.
Show me some evidence.
Tabula Digita describes itself as a "fusion of education and entertainment." Fine. Here are their advisors. Don't skip over the breakthrough evidence that "expertise" is defined by being "quoted extensively in the press."
James Paul Gee: Tashia Morgridge Professor of Reading at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his PhD in linguistics.
Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg: Diplomate of The American Board of Professional Psychology in Clinical Neuropsychology and Director of The East-West Science and Education Foundation.
John Katzman: Chief Executive Officer of The Princeton Review. His listed qualifications include "is quoted extensively in the press."
Oren Zuckerman: PhD student at the MIT Media Lab
Lara Stein: extensive experience in broadband entertainment programming, animation and interactive Web development; senior level Microsoft’s MSN unit; Director of Interactive Publishing and licensing for Marvel Comics.
Ron Hume: founder of Hume Publishing, largest North American publisher in the field of personal investing and money management; acknowledged direct response marketing authority.
Farimah Schuerman: Formerly Executive Marketing Manager at Pearson Education Distance Learning
Conrod Robinson: heads Advanta’s Small Business Services Marketing Analysis area.
Sandra Fivecoat:president of a consulting firm, Fivecoat & Associates, which specializes in the education technology space.
Where's the math expert?
If your students are going to spend 30 minutes a day playing math video games, wouldn't you want to know which math experts designed the underlying math concepts? It looks like these games are tied to what is on the test, and you don't need a math expert to do that.
Don't miss the Forbes puff piece below this article.
by Scott Aronowitz
Austin Independent School District (AISD) in Texas is expanding the use of the DimensionM educational video games to seven middle schools and 15 charter schools. The expansion is part of an effort by the district to find innovative ways to help its students prepare for the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) standardized test that all eighth-graders must pass in order to advance to the ninth grade.
The district said it based its decision on the results of a pilot test it ran last summer in a 10-day remedial course to help 350 eighth-grade students who had failed the math section of the TAKS for a third time. Students spent 30 minutes per day out of four hours class time playing the games, and teachers said the results were remarkable.
"We asked the impossible of Tabula Digita and its DimensionM games and they met and exceeded our expectations," said Norma Jost, secondary mathematics supervisor for AISD. "In just a few weeks time, they instructed our teachers on how to incorporate the games into the acceleration curriculum; students were given 30 minutes a day to play the games. What we saw next was amazing--our students were not only succeeding, but truly becoming interested in learning mathematics again."
DimensionM is a series of video games from software maker Tabula Digita designed to engage and excite students while educating them. Comparable to many games designed primarily for entertainment, they offer graphics, sound and sound effects, storylines, and multiple levels, but with the added component of middle school level math problems, including algebra, that challenge and test the players' skill and build understanding of the underlying mathematical concepts being presented.
"An important consideration in selecting the DimensionM gaming software for the pilot program," said Mary Thomas, who oversees state and federal accountability for the district, "was the mounting research showing that game-based learning is a highly successful 21st century teaching and learning tool for today's digitally-advanced students." Equally important, she noted, was its alignment to federal and state mathematics standards.
Finally, AISD took into account the students' own response to the games. In two surveys of the students in the summer mathematics prep course for the TAKS, 86 percent said they liked DimensionM and felt the games were helping them to improve their understanding of and performance in math.
from Forbes , Aug. 14, 2009
The Long Road To Edutainment
by Sramana Mitra
Born of a Nigerian father and a Bahamian mother, Ntiedo Etuk's story starts off on an exotic note. Layer on top of that a degree each from Cornell and Columbia, a stint at Citigroup and then the proverbial entrepreneurial bug.
"I accomplished everything I set out to do, yet I still felt that there was a huge hole in me because I was not running my own company," Etuk recalls, telling the story of the birth, nurturing and several near death experiences with Tabula Digita.
Etuk left his job at Citigroup to go full-time with Tabula Digita, an educational gaming company. The company had raised $437,000 from family and friends in 2003, but by 2005 Tabula Digita had $10,000 left in the bank. Robert Clegg, the company's game designer and co-founder was having second thoughts and a financing negotiation with Princeton Review was stalling. To keep product development going, Etuk borrowed $22,000 from his Columbia friends.
"At this point, the company was $100,000 in debt. We were essentially bankrupt, although I refused to acknowledge it," Etuk says. "We were now getting people who were not prepared to work with us anymore unless we paid off certain things."
But Etuk and Clegg kept at it, building a two-dimensional Web-based set of instructional modules that had a very cool back story built around it. "We had a story around a bio-digital virus that had escaped and was then changing all the animals and creatures on the island into bio-digital creatures," Etuk says. "The game was about math, so unless you could figure out the equations that would let you understand the growth rates, you could not stop the virus."
The flirtation with bankruptcy via the horrendous threat of running out of cash continued for several more months. "I woke up one day and asked my mother, who had put in a significant amount of money, if she would still love me if this all did not work," Etuk recalls. "Of course she said she would always be there. My uncle was also very important. He was there for me at 3 a.m. when I could not sleep. I also have to give my co-founder credit. He is a passionate guy, and we both did this to change the world of education."
By mid-2005, Tabula Digita raised $3 million from Ascend Ventures and it was onto the next phase of challenges. Etuk started looking for customers. The target was middle school students. "We went after the pre-algebra and algebra crowd. We went after math because we knew that math and science would be critical problems for the country," Etuk says. "Additionally, it is very easy to measure if you get an answer right or wrong in math. We also noted that everyone else was focused on the early childhood years and early childhood literacy."
Success started coming in fall 2006 with a beta version of Tabula's multiplayer games. "New York City put our games into two classrooms, and they found that 50% of the kids in the classes improved their achievement by an entire level." Soon after, 160 New York City middle schools were using Tabula Digitas games. So far, the company has focused its efforts in four states: New York, Florida, Illinois and Texas.
Tabula Digita's strategy is working. "We hit cash flow break even last year," Etuk says. Revenue is expected to touch $10 million in 2010.
As I listened to Etuk's story, I could not help thinking how history has always put the toughest obstacles on the path of the greatest value creators, and while they toil endlessly, driven by their internal engine, the speculators walk away with easy, abundant financial bounties. (See "An Innovation Conundrum.")
Tabula Digita is the sort of company that ought to be heavily funded and rapidly scaled so it can gain adoption in as many school districts, as fast as possible. For that, more venture capital would certainly help. Yet VCs are still skittish about education. "VCs do not understand the school system … because the money is coming from a school district instead of a business," Etuk says.
My reaction to this? Either the right VCs have not been exposed to the deal, or the VCs are not doing their job!
Meanwhile, Etuk has gotten himself to a place where he does not need VCs to keep building his dream company.
Sramana Mitra is a technology entrepreneur and strategy consultant in Silicon Valley. She has founded three companies and writes a business blog, Sramana Mitra on Strategy. She has a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She authors the Entrepreneur Journeys series of books available from Amazon. The newest, Positioning: How To Test, Validate, And Bring Your Idea To Market, comes out in September.
— Scott Aronowitz & Sramana Mitra
The Journal and Forbes
2010-01-21
http://thejournal.com/articles/2010/01/20/video-game-prepares-texas-district-for-state-test.aspx
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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