Futuristic Rocketship schools redefine teaching | Hacker News Reader

Futuristic Rocketship schools redefine teaching

usatoday.com

To get an idea of what ST Math (mentioned in the article) is all about, this TEDx presentation is probably the best intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VLje8QRrwg

Disclaimer: I'm a developer at MIND Research.

I just watched that video and I'm incredibly upset. I'm currently teaching math at a high school that is on "priority improvement" and needs to reach impossible goals this year or face a "take over" by the state. Our curriculum is the Core series of math books that is incredibly word heavy while we have a student population that can't read that well and is primarily ELL. We have been told it is a directive that we must use the book in class. Every class period, all class period, which is 58 minutes. I had to do training on Saturday for six hours regarding our use of the book in class. They've been using these books for the past few years and it hasn't worked, in fact we need even more growth this year than was needed in the past to get out of priority improvement. Instead of changing the curriculum to include ideas like the ST Math program they're essentially threatening our jobs. There has to be a way to get these products into more classrooms like ours.

I just found your app on the App Store. Any chance you could give us a demo school ID/password we could play with?

I'm a little surprised that this technology is only available to schools, and not to individuals. Is there any effort underway to change that? It seems like these games could be big on the various app stores (e.g. DragonBox), or in partnership with some of the big learning sites such as Khan Academy.

MIND is a non-profit and a neuroscience research institute, with the mission of improving Math education.

With all the hype around computer-based instruction, a big part of that goal has to be the ability to measure and demonstrate positive results on a large scale. With limited resources, the focus is on deploying the program direct to schools and providing the teacher training and support to make sure that the kids get the most benefit from it.

It seems like a great initiative and they seem to be doing it the right way, staying lean, cutting unnecessary expenses and using technology a lot. Yet when I think about it, what I loved back in those years was the interaction with other kids, the noise, the sort of controlled chaos. I don't know if they would have been able to keep me sitting in a lab, glued to a monitor. But alas, those were different times and I do remember getting very excited when we got our first, really really old computers and how we tried by any means to get some time with them. I am not even that old and yet I feel I live in a completely different world. Times have changed, and so fast :)

OT: This website does not work on Safari. The toolbar that should be sticking to the bottom of the viewport ends up repeating across the content as I scroll.

Now, to attempt to get the print version to work...

Edit after reading: In general I disagree with the concept of charter schools, but this seems like a good idea. If there's one in my city when I have children that age I will definitely research them further.

It's a pretty bad design in general, I was flicking between this and my email client and clicking on the 'background' of the page takes you to the front page.

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