Evolver, DimensionM, 3-D algebra games used in Broward County, Florida. RTI ready with built-in data-tracking of progress!

When Dimenxian, the first version of a 3-D algebra game, developed by Tabula Digita came out, I had the chance to try it out with a few students who were struggling in math, and found it to be effective. Since then, Tabula Digita has come out with more options, and the games have been adopted by many school districts.

Broward County, in Florida, is using Tabula Digita's DimensionM games as supplemental resources to teach pre-algebra and algebra skills to students in 24 middle schools.

Resource: Video Games for Learning:
http://www.dimensionm.com/docs/VideoGamesforLearning.pdf



Information from a recent Serious Games Source article:

"The DimensionM product series offers several titles incorporating key algebraic concepts in both single and multiplayer formats. The games are aligned to meet the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics's standards, as well as several state standards, for grades 6-9."

"The supplemental curriculum offers lessons that cover topics such as proportions, number lines, and adding and subtracting integers to linear equations. The software also provides automatic progress tracking for each student, enabling teachers to analyze results and provide additional instructions based on those results."

Here are the curriculum alignments, from the Tabula Digita Website:

"All of the game content of Tabula Digita's DimensionM products is aligned to National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) standards, as well as the standards of selected states. Currently we have alignments for grades 6-8."

"Click on one of the links below to download the state and national standards alignments for your school district:'

Evolver Pre-Algebra Alignments
NCTM
California
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Texas

Dimenxian Algebra Alignments
NCTM
California
Florida
Georgia
Florida & OCPS
Illinois
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Texas

Dimenxian Algebra High School Alignments
NCTM
California
Florida
Georgia
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Texas

Evolver Multiplayer Alignments
NCTM
California
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Texas

Evolver Multiplayer High School Alignments
NCTM
California
Florida
Georgia
New Jersey
New York
Ohio
Texas

SymTrend: Use of a PDA for tracking progress for children and adults with Asperger Syndrome and other disorders

I'm always on the lookout for applications that can support intervention and progress monitoring. SymTrend is a company that provides coaching and monitoring software for a variety of social and emotional difficulties and disorders. SymTrend looks like it has potential for intervention and progress monitoring in schools for RTI (Response to Intervention), Positive Behavior Intervention and Supports, and IEP's.

The beauty of SymTrend, in my opinion, is that it helps people develop self-monitoring skills through providing a means of analyzing data that is gathered frequently. From what I understand, through interaction with the software, the student/client establishes a better understanding of themselves, and also and understanding of feelings, triggers, reactions, and coping strategies. A rich amount of data is collected that can be helpful to treatment providers, or special educators.

The following video from Minna Levine, Ph.D., president of SymTrend, explains how it can be used for young people who have Asperger syndrome:



Information I "reblogged" Dan Brickland, a SymTrend Advocate:

"SymTrend is an electronic diary system that is designed to optimize symptom and behavior reporting, progress tracking, and session to session progress. It combines tracking tools to see how things are going, with analytic tools for seeing what might subvert or retard treatment efficacy. It also contains guidance tools that can help make things go better. SymTrend is most useful when one or more of the following occur in a health or educational challenge:

• The course of change is slow and the indices of progress may be mixed or ambiguous.
• There is no single magic bullet solution or cure.
• There are, instead, multiple solution strategies that can be tried.
• The best combination of solution strategies depends on individual circumstances.
• The delivery of multiple services occurs at different sites and requires some coordination in time or over developmental stages.
• The road to success has hidden mine fields that impede progress, must be located, and that must be circumvented.
• The indices of progress - symptom reduction and skill building - are best measured at home or in the community not in an office.
• Progress indices change through out the day or from day to day in response to events.
• Verbal report is compromised by observational and memory failure.
• The verbal report takes longer than the service provider can give to listen.
• The person with the problem would benefit from on the spot "when to" reminders to improve progress.
• The person with the problem would benefit from how to reminders which enhance presence of mind and executive functioning reminders to improve progress."

-From "My Take on SymTrend"

If you are using SymTrend in the schools, clinical practice, or for research, please leave a comment!

School Psychology and Special Education Researchers: Educational Data Mining Conference

In keeping with my recent theme about data, I thought I'd post a copy of a call for papers for an interdisciplinary conference on topic of educational data mining, which will be held in UQÀM - Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada, immediately following the International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems.

University researchers fields such as school psychology, education, special education, and related disciplines might have some important insights to share at this conference. Practitioners and graduate interns might also have something important to contribute to this new are of study. The topics that I think are most relevant to RTI and broader K-12 school improvement efforts are highlighted below in green.

Call For Papers

The First International Conference on Educational Data Mining brings together researchers from computer science, education, psychology, psychometrics, and statistics to analyze large data sets to answer educational research questions. The increase in instrumented educational software, as well as state databases of student test scores, has created large repositories of data reflecting how students learn. The EDM conference focuses on computational approaches for using those data to address important educational questions. The broad collection of research disciplines ensures cross fertilization of ideas, with the central questions of educational research serving as a unifying focus. This Conference emerges from preceding EDM workshops at the AAAI, AIED, EC-TEL, ICALT, ITS, and UM conferences.

Topics Of Interest

We welcome papers describing original work. Areas of interest include but are not limited to:

Improving educational software. Many large educational data sets are generated by computer software. Can we use our discoveries to improve the software’s effectiveness?

Domain representation. How do learners represent the domain? Does this representation shift as a result of instruction? Do different subpopulations represent the domain differently?

Evaluating teaching interventions. Student learning data provides a powerful mechanism for determining which teaching actions are successful. How can we best use such data?

Emotion, affect, and choice. The student’s level of interest and willingness to be a partner in the educational process is critical. Can we detect when students are bored and uninterested? What other affective states or student choices should we track?

Integrating data mining and pedagogical theory. Data mining typically involves searching a large space of models. Can we use existing educational and psychological knowledge to better focus our search?
Improving teacher support. What types of assessment information would help teachers? What types of instructional suggestions are both feasible to generate and would be welcomed by teachers?

Replication studies. We are especially interested in papers that apply a previously used technique to a new domain, or that reanalyze an existing data set with a new technique.

Important Dates

Paper submission: March 31, 2008
Acceptance notification: April 30, 2008
Camera ready paper: May 16, 2008
Conference: June 20-21, 2008

Submission Types

All submissions should follow the formatting guidelins (MS Word, PDF). There are two types of submission:
Full papers: Maximum of 10 pages. Should describe substantial, unpublished work
Young researcher: Maximum of 8 pages. Designed for graduate students and undergraduates

Conference Organization

Conference Chair: Tiffany Barnes, University of North Carolina Charlotte, USA
Program Chairs: Ryan S. J. de Baker, Carnegie Mellon University, USA; Joseph E. Beck, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA
Local Arrangements Chair: Michel Desmáris, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Canada
Web Chair: Arnon Hershkovitz, Tel Aviv University, Israel

(Click here for a PDF version)

TECHNOLOGY FOR DATA COLLECTION, ANALYSIS, AND PROGRESS MONITORING-Revised Post

The amount of data collected for monitoring interventions can be overwhelming. Innovative solutions that harness technology can help. Here are a few examples:
From the IDEA Partnership website:

RESPONSE TO INTERVENTION MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

“The Royal Oak RTI Management System is a secure district Intranet system that promotes interactive problem solving and decision making among Student Study Team members for the purpose of improving student achievement. The system allows all members of a school’s team to enter and continually monitor the information necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of prescriptive interventions, strategies and programs as well as gauge individual students’ progress. This team includes the district director of special education, school psychologists, literacy coaches, teacher consultants, other specialists, principals, teachers, students and their parents."

"Particular emphasis is placed on the leadership of building principals and general educators in the successful implementation of the system. In development for a year, the RTI Management System is being piloted in 2007-08 in two elementary schools, with universal screening (AIMSweb) for all second graders (as well as individual screening for other students who are referred to school psychologists). Universal screening is followed by continuous probes of student progress. Entries on students begin with data-driven questions based on screening results. Team members enter the specific area they will work on (e.g., fractions, phonemic awareness, any skill or behavior); the exact steps; who will do what; duration and frequency; and who is responsible for probes of student progress. In addition, the school psychologists have created a graph that charts individual students’ growth so that their progress can be monitored and the effectiveness of interventions can be evaluated. The charts incorporated in the RTI Management System can provide ongoing graphic comparisons between the student’s trend line progress and target line (goal) expectations for use in team meetings."

"The secure online form has a slot for email addresses requested by the team at various levels, so that a team member can add information and make comments and suggestions. When anything new is added to a student’s page, the entire team gets an email flag, and they can interact about a student’s interventions and progress (much like a blog or threaded conversation). Parents’ passwords are coded for information and discussions on their child only. At the school and district level, there’s a summary page that lists all students, a brief description of the problem, and progress of all students in the school who are involved in RTI.”

For more information on the RTI Management System:
Melinda Stout, Director of Special Education or Ed Meade, School Psychologist, School District of the City of Royal Oak


Wireless Generation

I have not yet evaluated the software developed by Wireless Generation. From what I can see, it is the software used in the Royal Oak schools, mentioned above. My hope that it is flexible and user friendly!

Here is some information from the company's website:

"A leader in educational assessment, reporting, and professional development, Wireless Generation offers solutions that give teachers, coaches, and administrators real-time data about student progress and the capacity to use it to improve reading and math achievement, and reduce special education referrals."

"The mCLASS software is a complete handheld-to-Web solution that saves classroom time, reduces paperwork and allows you to apply results to instructions. Each mCLASS Solution: Automates scoring & timing Gives real-time assessment results Delivers one-touch robust Web reporting for deep analysis of scores How does it work? A teacher assesses the student using a handheld computer loaded with mCLASS assessment software. When assessment is complete, the teacher gets a student’s results instantly on the handheld, “syncs” the handheld to a secure, password-protected Web site, views and analyzes Web-based reports on the class and individual students, and then uses the information to tailor instruction to students’ needs."

Whitpaper: An Analysis of Technology-Assisted Progress Monitoring to Drive Improved Student Outcomes (Download)

Wireless Generations' mClass: RTI Software (information page)


From the Science Daily website:
Autism Caught on Tape: Computer Scientists Use Technology to Help Children with Autism

"Computer scientists have devised two tools to help people interact with autistic children. Videotaping interactions allows teachers or parents to replay situations and evaluate the cause of particularly good or bad behavior. Cataloging actual data, rather relying on memory or interpretation, proves to be a more accurate measure of a situation."

CareLog and Abaris are data collection/logging tools used in intervention and progress monitoring of students who have autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The tools were developed by Dr. Gregory Abowd, a Human Computer Interaction professor at Georgia Tech, and his research teams. Dr. Abowd is the father of two sons who have ASD.

Screenshot of Abaris:

CareLog Screenshot:

Detailed information about CareLog and related technologies can be found in Documenting and Understanding Everyday Activities through the Selective Archiving of Everyday Activities, a Ph.D. dissertation written by Gillian Hayes, at Georgia Tech.(2007)

Software such as CareLog and Abaris is much-needed, given the significant increas in the number of young people who have autism spectrum disorders.

Data-Driven Decision-Making and Educational Data Mining

Technology tools are needed in order to support efforts such as Response to Intervention (RTI) that rely on closer monitoring of data regarding student progress. The Winston-Salem school district in North Carolina has implemented a web-based application known as the Teacher's Workbench, funded in part by a Reinventing Education grant from IBM.

According to an abstract by Mark Singley, Richard Boehme, Lei Kuang, Richard Lam, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA , "Teacher’s Workbench is a web application whose goal is to improve day-to-day instructional decision making by providing teachers with a finer-grained, more timely understanding of the ever-changing patterns of student proficiency in their classrooms. Teacher’s Workbench takes a three-pronged approach: First, the system provides integrated support for managing standards-based classroom data through the core functionality of a teacher planbook, student profiler, and access to third-party gradebooks. Secondly, the system amplifies the teacher’s ability to analyze and understand student performance by mining the gradebook, planbook, and other school data sources. The system alerts teachers to the existence of critical teaching and learning patterns. Finally, the system helps teachers act on these new understandings by automatically locating and delivering instructional resources in response to the patterns detected."

Business Tools for Better Schools is a website that advocates for improving educational data systems:

"...too often, educators do not know how to use the data system or lack training in how to leverage the information to improve instruction. Although collecting and disseminating better data is essential, knowing how to analyze and apply this information is just as important for improving student achievement. Business leaders, by tapping into their own corporate experiences, can help educators, administrators and policymakers understand how to access and use longitudinal data as part of daily operations and long-term improvement strategies."

In my opinion, school psychologists, given their backgrounds in measurement and data analysis, should be part of the decision-making process when school districts adopt new data systems designed to enhance student progress-monitoring.

If you are a school psychologist or educator who is involved in the use of data-driven decision-making to support Response to Intervention efforts, please leave a comment. What sort of software does your school use? What security and privacy precautions do you have in place to ensure the confidentiality of student information?