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Dreambox On My Mind
Recently several members of the #MTBoS have written about games and what they believe makes a good educational math game. Dan Meyer has written/spoken/video-recorded many thoughts on how gaming and apps can be integrated into math class or how math class can be integrated into games and apps or both!
Picking up from where Audrey McLaren left off two weeks ago about Tracy Zager’s popular and controversial post about her criteria for fact-based math apps where she gives two suggestions of games that meet her non-negotiable criteria. They are Dreambox Learning and Bunny Times. Here are Tracy’s twitter thoughts about Dreambox when her daughters began their free-trial at home.
This week Dreambox continued to be on #MTBoS minds. Kent Haines, who also uses Dreambox with his children, wrote an extensive review of his first impressions. Christopher Danielson also recently reproduced how Dreambox communicates with parents.
As a special education teacher I really like Dreambox for two reasons: 1) it was developed in concert with Cathy Fosnot and 2) it is digitally multi-modal (using models, visual representations, and “hands-on” tools to develop conceptual understanding).
However, I am not without constructive criticism. Though Dreambox understands learning is not linear, I do wish they would give teachers more control over which lessons students were assigned because I believe teachers are always better than an algorithm!
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