Math skills and the economic downturn

One profession that should be recession proof is being a math teacher. The importance of skills in math has never been more apparent. Today in the US the auto industry is in turmoil. If the worst is to happen and lets hope it doesn't, hundreds of thousands of workers will have to up skill to find employment elsewhere.

I wonder how many math teachers have thought of opportunities to help up skill workers. The demand for good math instruction should dramatically increase.

In the past most western students were complacent and in most cases did not put the effort required into math class at high school level.

The economic difficulties we all face may in someway make students take more interest in class.

Will the recession knock some sense into today's math students?

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Apologies to all Windows 2000 and Mac Power PC users

Brain Power Math does not work on Windows 2000. A number of teachers have contacted me about this issue. Approximate 2% of visitors to our website use the Windows 2000. I would also like to point out that the MAC OSX version only works on Intel Macs.

From a development point of view we believe that the best way to make the software usable for Windows 2000 and non-Intel Mac users is to move the software to a browser based platform. Unfortunately this will take some time.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

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Usability, the key to quality e-learning.

With the beta release we have done ok on usability given that it is the first public release of the Brain Power Math Application. I think the student tool is more user friendly than the teacher tool. This was always likely to be the case given that the student tool is less complicated and has less options for the user.

Like all software a lot can be improved. As a result, we will be using the state of the art facilities at the National E-learning Lab in Dublin Ireland to conduct usability tests on the software in a scientific environment. This will help to improve the usability and therefore make your experiejavascript:void(0)nce more pleasant.

As you know, the usability factor is key to successful e-learning software. The goal is to make the user forget they are using software and allow for the seamless transfer of learning from screen to student.

Please comment on Brain Power Math and help improve the user experience of the software.

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The Future of Math Education

As western economies decline we see the development of Asia as the World's economic power center. Unlike in Asia, for many years math education has been neglected in the US and Western Europe, and as a result, today's "Western" workforce is at a distinct disadvantage.

More emplasis must be placed on math education to address the current economic situation. Innovation in math and science is key to global economic success. However, creating math and science masterminds is not the only reason to improve math education. The general workforce must have a solid understanding of mathematical concepts to truely participate in the 21st century economy. Unfornatually, this is not the case especially in the US and Western Europe in general.

Yesterday we witnessed the election of a new President of the United States of America. I suggest to President Obama that education is the best economic policy.

Although it will not solve the problem on its own, e-learning software that encourages collaboration and sharing can contribute to the solution when used by teachers to fit best into their teaching style.

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E-learning and the Developing World.

I believe that e-learning software can be a great equalizer in terms of global education. Great advances in bringing down the cost of computing has helped this. OLPC and the Intel Classmate PC have opened up the possibilities for 1:1 computing across the globe. Open source operating systems such as Linux help dramatically reduce the cost of these laptops further.

As you know, Brain Power Math is a free software application and we hope to eventually get around to a Linux release.

I also, think that certain web based applications may not be suitable for developing countries that do not have good Internet penetration rates. Although I see Brain Power releasing online applications in the future I think offline applications should be developed in tandem.

An example I would like to use is Google Docs where there are both online and offline versions of Docs.

Again, lets hope that e-learning software continues to help all students fulfill their potential.

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The Power of Sharing: Math e-learning

Opening up how teachers share e-learning content is a priority for Brain Power. As a result, it is a fundamental feature in all of our software. The idea behind it is, that teachers know best and that teachers produce the best e-learning content.

Teachers can share their e-learning modules through e-mail, website download, LMS or CD-ROM/memory stick.

Math is the number one issue in education right now. Today's average student has huge difficulty understanding math concepts and doing math calculations. By sharing and customizing self-created e-learning content math teachers can build up a vast library of e-learning resources for their students. These e-learning resources will help students improve at math.

Brain Power's math e-learning software allows teachers to create, share and edit calculation based e-learning modules in math. We have decided to make Brain Power Math free for schools, colleges and universities worldwide.

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How to open an assignment in the Student Tool

When you download an example assignment from brainpowermath.com you will see that it is a .ZIP file. The first thing you need to do is extract the .ZIP file (to extract: Windows right click and select "extract here", or MAC just click to open the file). The extracted folder will contain two files. 1) The assignment, which is an XML file and 2) a "read me" or instruction file, which is a .txt file. Before you attempt or edit the assignment read the "read me" or instruction file as it contains brief details on the assignment.

To attempt the assignment open it using the student tool. If you would like to edit an assignment so it meets your students' needs better, open it using the Authoring tool.

Here is a video walkthrough of how to attempt an assignment using the student tool. NOTE: The video only shows a question where one step is required to be answered. However, you can create assignments where individual question/problem require several steps to be entered by the student.

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