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Ahmedabad based Mindspark to teach Math to U.S. pupils
By siliconindia
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Friday, 15 April 2011, 19:39 IST
AHMEDABAD:The dropping standards of Maths education among the children in U.S. has emerged as an issue of great concern for the authorities there.
Ahmedabad-based Educational Initiatives (EI) is all set to take their latest invention "Mindspark" - to help the students in U.S. to master their multiplication, division and more with greater ease.
EI (Educational Initiatives) works extensively with schools, both private and government. The programme will be launched in Texas during the up-coming summer vacation (June to August).
EI offered the U.S. authorities their technology-based self-learning tool, "Mindspark". Over 500 students in Texas, U.S. will be spending their summer vacation learning Maths through this tool. Schools that fail to make AYP (annual yearly progress) are required to engage with service providers to increase student performance.
"Mindspark" ,a computer based self-learning programme, helps the child improve her skills in Maths. Through intelligent program logic, it allows each student to follow a learning path that is based on her need " at a pace she is comfortable with.
A key advantage of Mindspark is the fact that it successfully harnesses the power of new technologies to bolster learning. An intelligent computer system uses a complex adaptive logic to decide what problem to serve up. "The questions in Mindspark were designed keeping an Indian child as its reference. Before the tool was given for use to children in U.S., there was a process of contextualization that had to be done. eg; roti to pizza.
Over 70% of the problems in Mindspark make use of visuals and animations, either in the question, or in the explanation provided for the correct answer. This engages students and increases their interest levels.
Since Mindspark is a self-learning tool, the constant supervision of a teacher is not needed. This will reduce the cost incurred on teachers and will help getting better quality of teachers. EI will not only provide their internet-based tool, but will also give Note Book computers to the children who are a part of the summer programme.