"Addition and subtraction practice is so much more fun now – next up Marketing 101!"

Coursera’s Edge

Coursera boasts 56 online courses – some underway, others beginning soon — from big names in higher education like Princeton University, Stanford University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Most courses last four to twelve weeks long, and like real college courses they promise discussions with classmates and professors, textbooks – some digital, homework and tests.

We think what makes Coursera standout is its relationship with top education brands.  The power of a private university brand – especially the Ivy League — is substantial with double the price tag of average public universities.  The brand backing of an Ivy powerhouse can be the deciding criteria for high school seniors.

How Can K-12 Online Learning Programs Benefit?

Coursera’s model — leveraging an established brand to build its own – seems like a no brainer for K-12 online learning and education programs. Unlike the Ivys – with generations of innovators and achievers in their annals – K-12 online courses and education programs haven’t been around long enough to build their brand.

Perhaps an up-and-comer in online learning can benefit from a partnership with an established K-12 brand and provide a tried-and-true online learning solution.  The K-12 brand would be able to capitalize on its strength, and the K-12 brand could grow its own brand in parallel.  The result would be an e-learning front runner with an established track record – something hard to find.

It will be difficult for Coursera to strike a balance between leveraging the Ivy brand and not upsetting the value proposition offered by its new partners.  But if Coursera can straddle the line, we’ll certainly see something similar soon for K-12 programs.

- Harry

5/3/12 – UPDATE:  Shortly after posting about Coursera, EdX announced partnerships with Harvard and MIT.  More at the Washington Post.

Get some Cinco de Mayo classroom ideas from Scholastic
May 5th is a day of national celebration in Mexico!  Just remember, it’s not Mexican Independence day, which is September 16th.

Make Mother’s Day accordion cards
Mother’s day is an opportunity to tell mom how much you appreciate her.  For the classroom, here’s a set of inexpensive Mother’s Day cards that will keep mothers extra appreciative come parent/teacher conference time — Thanks to for the find.

Craft a Memorial Day Peace Windsock
We remember our soldiers on Memorial day in May.  Education World has a simple instructions sheet for creating a peach windsock that students can hang proudly outside the school or at their homes.

Hey! Where are all my bananas?!!

Educational technology companies have long been developing classroom tools. Higher education institutions have led the way in technology adoption, but primary institutions aren’t far behind. Today, there are specialists, certifications and conferences supporting technology adoption in the primary classroom.

Still development of educational content – lessons, videos, interactive games – has been slow to follow suit as creators struggled to find an audience large enough to justify the effort. Just a few years ago, lessons for second grade students in Missouri in many cases did not match those of their peers in Nebraska because of varying state learning standards.

Role of the Common Core State Standards

But state adoption of the federal Common Core Standards is a game changer, enabling consistency for most of the country’s students. Currently adopted by 45 states, the standards outline comprehension concepts for students in grades kindergarten through High School.

Ubiquity in standards will enable far more extensive content development, as a multitude of small audiences with specialized needs now become a single large audience with the same needs.

With the foundation in place, educational technology companies just need a nudge toward content development.

Support from the Education Department

The Education Department is nudging. With a sizable budget to assist in developing online educational resources, and even a video contest, the federal agency is supporting open educational resources as a job creation engine as much as a paradigm shift in education.

The department has high hopes for online resources in the classroom. On whyopenedmatters.org, Arne Duncan, the education secretary says online educational resources “can not only accelerate and enrich learning, they can also substantially reduce costs for schools, families, and students.”

What’s Next For Teachers?

It may be too soon to say if the timing is right for online educational resources — Utah recently questioned the federal government’s authority to create the Common Core and passed a 21-6 vote to request reconsideration by the Utah Board of Education.

But when the storm clears, teachers may find a wealth of new teaching resources at the end of the rainbow. And the Education Department may have just provided a much needed boost to the economy.

Buzz Math is a website that enables students to practice math concepts outside of the classroom.  Beautifully designed, Buzz Math caters to Middle School students, families, and teachers with curriculum aligned to NCTM and national Common Core standards.

If you have 3 bananas and then you eat 2, how many bananas do you have left, Harry?

Site design and usability at Buzz Math are fantastic.  Animated characters greet students as they enter and offer encouragement during practice sessions.  Problem sets are beautifully designed and easy to interpret and understand.

Buzz Math’s use of application “modes” — a key usability feature — enables a tailored experience for everyone in the learning ecosystem.  Teachers can view stats on their class performance.  Students can see progress on a topic or select what they want to work on next.  And parents can see student progress on any number of standards.

Overall Buzz Math delivers an enjoyable learning experience worth considering for your class or family. Check it out and tell us what you think…

See you soon!

- Harry

If you have an educational resource that you think we’d enjoy learning about, let us know — email us: harrychimp@mathchimp.com or find us on twitter @mathchimp.

The views and opinions expressed here are those of Math Chimp.com.

Math Chimp "matures" to Middle School games

Since we launched in 2010, we’ve found some great games for elementary school students, and we’ve been thrilled to see our users agree.

At first we were hesitant to expand to Middle School content. Modern day tweens seem more mature than their counterparts just a decade ago. We were concerned the interest for math games just wasn’t there.

But we looked past our concern and ultimately decided to expand because we saw that the existing landscape for Middle School games was relatively scarce. While there seems to be an abundance of Elementary School games, with many sites now catering to entertaining and educating young ones, traditionally developers haven’t focused on Middle School much. This could be seen as an indicator of non-interest by a more mature audience, but rather we think it’s an indicator of the immaturity of the math games landscape.

We think the rigidly-structured curriculum, which enables mass appeal for elementary school math games still applies to middle school. For example, student tracking into honors or advanced curriculum is still relatively uncommon in middle schools and is primarily reserved for high school students. But in middle schools, students must sill master foundational math skills.

In essence, we’re betting it’s unlikely the middle school audience has become so segmented that we can’t reach them. We see a gap in coverage for middle school students and we want to help parents and teachers continue to find fun ways to keep their students engaged

Time For Middle School?

We’ve finally scheduled the launch date for our expansion into Middle School math games.  Be sure and come back and check out Math Chimp on February 25th!

We’ll launch 30 games at once that cover topics like:

• Rational numbers
• The Pythagorean Theorem
• Square Roots
• Expressions, variables and equations
• Probability
• … and more

See you soon!

~Harry

P.S. Did you know that the world speed record for banana eating is 81 bananas in a half an hour?!

The new Favorites page is coming along well.  We’ll be adding a site tour, which we think will help new Math Chimp visitors use the site more effectively.

We’re also piecing together our first major content expansion.  Since launching in 2010, MathChimp has focused on Elementary School math games.  This month we’ll post our first batch of Middle School math games, and continue adding to our inventory over time.

Expansion to Middle School will grow our potential audience by more than 50%.  We’re excited to reach a whole new group of teachers and parents!

Here’s a nice piece from the Teaching Channel on the Common Core for Middle School.

More soon!

~ Harry

P.S. Here’s a hot tip!  Did you know that if you peel a banana upside down (from the bottom to the stalk), the stringy things don’t get in the way?

Free Technology 4 Teachers is a blog run by Richard Byrne, a high school US History teacher and technology enthusiast.  As you can imagine based on the blog’s title, Free Tech introduces teachers to tools they can use to improve their lessons and increase engagement in the classroom.  We like Free Tech because it’s heavy on good content and consistently maintained and updated.

Weebly offers the easiest way to create a homepage for your classroom.  Weebly is open to anyone and it’s essentially a platform for creating a website without the need to understand programming.  They’ve paid special attention to features for teachers.  Quickly drag and drop pictures and links to create a public resource that your students and parents can reference.  Here’s a great example from a 4th grade teacher at Bester Elementary School.

Pinterest is relatively new social networking site that we’d best describe as a virtual bulletin board.  Users ‘pin’ their interests (typically pictures, videos, or websites) to their Pinterest page for other users to see, like, and leave comments.  We like Pinterest for it’s visual appeal.  We found this nifty reading strategies apron from our friends at Pinterest!

Hope these sites give you a few ideas for your classroom.  Drop us a comment here or tweet at us @mathchimp and tell us about any other cool sites you use.

- Harry

But we’re having trouble finding games for certain topics…

We’ve found and posted many games for particular topics like addition and multiplication.  But we’ve been having trouble finding games for other topics like angles and volume conversion.  We’re confident these games are out there on the interwebs, but we’re having trouble finding them.

That’s where you come in… We’re asking your help! (and offering a reward)

We need your help finding great new math games. If you have favorite math games that you think we may have missed, please let us know (especially games relating to the subjects in our Wish List below).  Getting in touch with us is easy!  Let us know by email, blog comment or tweet!

• Add a comment to this post,
• Email your game to us at harrychimp@mathchimp.com, or
• Tweet at us: @mathchimp (use the hashtag #greatmathgames).

…and the reward?

As a thank you for giving back to the teaching community, we’re offering a shout-out on our homepage as a reward!  Anyone and everyone that submits a game between now and Valentine’s Day will get a shout out spot on our homepage for one week!.  We can post your name, the name of your company, a link, really anything — we’re reasonable and we’ll do everything we can to meet your request.

So, if you have a game you like to play with your class, let us know!  If you have games that you like to play at home with your kids, let us know!

(One note: To collect your reward, the games you submit do NOT have to be related to our Wish List below, but we’d really appreciate it!)

Hope to hear from you soon!

~ Harry

Math Chimp Games Wish List

• Algebra – Factors and Multiples
• Decimals – Multiplying and dividing decimal
• Measurement – Relate addition and subtraction to length
• Measurement – Conversion of measurements from a larger unit to a smaller unit
• Measurement – Volume measurement
• Geometry – Differentiation between shapes with similar characteristics (eg. square vs. rhombus)
• Geometry – Angles classification (eg. acute vs. obtuse)
• Geometry – Classifying 2-dimensional shapes

Inspiration

Netflix is undoubtedly a dominating force in online movie and TV watching.  I can still remember the first time I watched my favorite Charlton Heston Remake streaming from my Netflix Account — what a day!  And though Netflix has had some difficultly recently with their pricing, I still appreciate their user experience.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Netflix has mastered the user experience around rating movies.  Their rating system is simple to understand, simple to use, and it improves your experience because it enables them to suggest movies to you.  They successfully established a self-reinforcing process that improve their product and the user experience.  Users WANT to rate movies — over and over and over — because it enhances their overall experience.

Borrowing a page out of the Netflix user experience handbook, we’re underway developing a My Favorites page that will function much like your Netflix “Movies I’ve Rated” page.

My Favorites Functionality

Your My Favorites page here at Math Chimp will have two pieces of functionality:  it will list your ratings, and it will suggest new games for you to try.

On your Math Chimp Favorites page, you’ll be able to see all the games you’ve rated.  No more trying to remember where on the site you found that great Jet Ski Addition game.  Instead, all the games you’ve rated will be on one page for you to peruse and replay at your leisure.

We’ll also suggest other games that we think will interest you.  We’ll look at games you’ve given a high rating, and we’ll suggest other similar games.  So if you typically play 1st grade-level math games, then we’ll suggest a 1st grade game that’s highly-rated by other users.  And if you’ve played several money counting games, we’ll suggest more of those.

We think that the My Favorites page will be a top feature here at Math Chimp and we’re excited about it.  So keep your eyes peeled (and bananas too) for upcoming announcements on this new feature.

- Harry