Posted by Denis Soukhanov on Tue, Apr 20, 2010 @ 03:07 PM
Learning Today, Inc., a South Florida-based reading and math software publisher, announced today that the company's Smart Tutor program was awarded three Best Educational Software Awards (BESSIE) from the ComputED Learning Center. Smart Tutor received BESSIE Awards in two categories including Upper Elementary Reading and Upper Elementary Math, while MangoMon received one BESSIE Award in Early Elementary / Special Education due to that program's focus on high-interest curriculum for struggling learners.
The BESSIE Awards target original, content-rich programs and websites that provide educators and parents with the technology to promote educational excellence. Winners are selected from software titles and websites submitted by publishers around the globe. The awards truly highlight the best in educational software.
"We are very grateful to receive these awards and the recognition it brings to our product and team. We strive to develop our programs, curriculum, and websites with the best interest of administrators, teachers, and students in mind," stated Robin Baker, Executive Vice President. "Staying focused on their needs, best practices, research-based methodologies, and world-class technology has enabled us to create a highly-accredited set of resources that helps them meet their academic goals."
Smart Tutor is a research-based reading and math program that provides placement assessment and individualized instruction . Its online learning management system allows educators to use reports to improve teaching and learning, manage individual lesson plans, and provide information to encourage parents to be involved in their child's education.
Smart Tutor reading and math curriculum is designed to address the needs of special education students, English language learners (ELL / ESOL / ESL / LEP), economically disadvantaged students (Title I, Free & Reduced Lunch program), and students in need of intervention (Response to Intervention, RTI). Lessons are aligned with state and national education standards.
The MangoMon website offers a variety of free resources for special needs educators, such as reading and math games, interactive flashcards, printables, and a special education blog. There is also an option to access Learning Today's subscription-based Smart Tutor programs for teens, transition students, and young adults. The reviewers from ComputEd stated, "Visually appealing graphics illustrate concepts, making them understandable and motivating to students with communication disorders."
Smart Tutor meets the needs of low-achieving students, including the fostering of specific reading skills, by tailoring assessments, instruction, practice, and re-assessment to individual students and providing a specialized learning plan for each student. More specifically, Smart Tutor assesses students to determine their appropriate skill level, establishes individualized instruction for each student, monitors and reviews student progress by accessing reports, identifies students in need of remediation and intervention, establishes targeted intervention programs using teacher-assigned instruction, and helps build skills that allow students to perform better on high-stakes tests.
There are no downloads or installations required for this web-based program and typical school accounts can be set up in days instead of weeks. Teacher manuals, training videos, and webinars supplement Smart Tutor's training and professional development, and unlimited phone and email support is available free of charge.
Reading and Math Games by Learning Today
Posted by Lauren Grossberg on Wed, Jan 21, 2009 @ 09:42 AM
Learning Today, Inc., a Florida-based math and reading software publisher, announces the release of a new set of algebra lessons for their online learning program, Smart Tutor.
Smart Tutor is a fun, online program that helps students succeed in Reading and Math through engaging activities and lessons. Its K-5 reading and math curriculum is research-based and provides children with explicit instruction. Smart Tutor's online curriculum is designed for homeschool, after-school, targeted remediation, summer use, special needs and gifted children.
The newly added lessons are designed to help algebraic thinking be more engaging for elementary students. Activities range from interactive musical penguins to colorful blocks to bouncing balls. Through these fun and engaging activities, students in grades K-5 are introduced to important key concepts like patterns, relationships, functions, equations and inequalities.
"Many middle school students are fearful of Algebra," stated Robin Baker, Executive Vice President of Learning Today. "We're hoping that introducing elementary-aged students to algebraic thinking through fun, interactive activities will not only help them learn the basic concepts they need to succeed but also show them how interesting algebra can be."
The lessons are fast-paced and act in the same manner as a game. Each lesson includes specific feedback. If a student is struggling, they will be shown detailed explanations, including rich animations and audio. The purpose of this is to show them corrective feedback in a fun and non-threatening way.
To help ensure that students who are in need of more support are continually getting more practice exercises, adaptive instruction logic specifically adjusts to each student. In addition, it allows students who do not need extra exercises to move on to higher level concepts.
The algebra lessons cover key learning objectives. Some of them include to create, describe, extend and explain symbolic (geometric) and numeric patterns, to express mathematical relationships using equations, to solve equations or find the missing numbers using related facts, to apply the appropriate fraction rule to complete a chart, and much more.