Austin Scholar #2: Austin's App Analysis
Day Two of Launch Week
Hey, y'all!
Welcome to day two of my launch week! To all of my new subscribers, I'm so excited and grateful that y'all are here! To all of my returning subscribers, welcome back, and thank you for the continued support.
Today from Austin Scholar...
The story of using my first online app
Austin’s App Analysis: an article that gives an overview on a few of my favorite adaptive apps
Three sources centered around adaptive apps
Austin's Anecdote
I used my first online adaptive app when I was in the first grade. Though I was still attending a "normal" school, my dad wanted me to maximize my potential and work on math at home, using an app called Dreambox.
One of the tools Dreambox uses to teach simple math functions is a game that stars Evil Trolls. I had to quickly answer math problems in order to escape the Evil Trolls. When I started the game, I didn’t know how to subtract, so the Evil Trolls captured me quite often. Unfortunately for my parents, though, I cried every time the Evil Trolls captured me. I was miserable, never able to escape the clutches of the Evil Trolls. To save myself (and my parents’ eardrums), I spent hours figuring out how to subtract seven from fifteen as well as mastering my multiplication tables. The final time I battled the Evil Trolls, I could confidently answer three times three.
Dreambox is adaptive software used to teach students K-8 math, which allowed me to work on third-grade-level math, even though I was only in the first grade. I was able to achieve this because apps allow students to learn at their own pace. Each student is given the same content in the apps but can work through it as quickly as they choose. The adaptability comes into play as the app recognizes which questions the student is getting correct and will move them to more complicated problems. If the student doesn’t seem to understand a concept, which is shown by getting the questions incorrect, the app will provide them with the basics they need to understand the concept.
Since Dreambox, I began to exclusively use online apps to learn, and nine years later I have consistently scored in the 99th percentile of my grade level. To reach this level of mastery, I have experimented with many different online adaptive apps, and have plenty of opinions on what the best apps are to learn anything: from math, to history, to foreign languages. I will be writing about specific apps in future articles. Become a paid subscriber now to learn which ones are best for your child.
Today's article does a deeper dive into adaptive learning apps and how to choose the right one.