Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

DreamBox Learning® Expands into PreK-2 Reading with Launch of Reading Park

BELLEVUE, Wash. —  In response to  nationwide declines in student reading scores, today DreamBox Learning, Inc.® (“DreamBox”), the only provider of solutions rated “Strong” by Johns Hopkins’ EvidenceforESSA.org in both mathematics and reading and pioneer of intelligent adaptive learning, announced the launch of DreamBox Reading Park™, an expansion of its reading portfolio to PreK-2 students nationwide. Through the launch, DreamBox is bringing its patented, state-of-the-art adaptive platform for the first time to PreK-2 readers, offering personalized learning paths that adapt in real-time to every interaction, both within and between lessons, in a playful, engaging learning environment. Reading Park meets Foundational Reading Standards for grades K-2 as outlined in national and state English Language Arts (ELA) standards.

DreamBox’s intelligent adaptive learning platform leverages cognitive science and learning principles to engage and support students at any age. Through Reading Park, DreamBox combines the company’s best-in-class platform with an evidence-based, structured literacy approach that empowers students to more effectively learn to read. Hundreds of teacher-crafted foundational reading lessons are available in a scope and sequence that maximizes educational outcomes.

“We could not be more thrilled to launch Reading Park and bring our intelligent adaptive learning platform to students just beginning their reading journeys,” said Jessie Woolley-Wilson, CEO and President of DreamBox Learning. “As an early innovator in education technology, we have seen firsthand how complementing teacher instruction with proven-effective adaptive technology can help build students’ confidence, critical thinking skills, and a lifelong love of learning. With Reading Park, we are opening access to an engaging, personalized learning experience that meets the earliest of readers exactly where they are and encourages a joy for reading that will not only set students up for success throughout their educational careers, but also in life.”…Read More

DreamBox Learning® Launches Lesson Highlights to Equip Educators with Transformative Insight into Student Problem-Solving

BELLEVUE, Wash. — April 6, 2022 —  DreamBox Learning, Inc. (“DreamBox”), the leading education technology provider and pioneer of intelligent adaptive learning, announced today the launch of Lesson Highlights, a first-to-market data analytics feature that provides an unprecedented level of transparency into how students are problem-solving, thinking critically and creatively, and responding to challenges. Teachers can use Lesson Highlights to retroactively see where students may be experiencing productive struggle and then offer easy-to-implement targeted support for individuals and groups of students.  

Available for the 2022-23 school year, Lesson Highlights provides a roadmap on how students interact with DreamBox lessons. Educators can then use this roadmap to talk through students’ thought processes and problem-solving strategies, while watching the playback side-by-side. This additional insight also enables educators and administrators to easily track, predict, and project student growth, depth of understanding, fluency, and skills, regardless of whether the student is in class or at home. This is all possible through DreamBox’s patented intelligent adaptive learning technology, which generates insights from high-quality and pedagogy-driven information about each student’s learning.  

“Lesson Highlights is another example of our commitment to developing solutions that are easy to use and provide educators with the timely actionable insights they need to efficiently personalize their instructional strategies and save them precious time,” said Lakshmi Nidamarthi, Chief Product Officer at DreamBox Learning. “This is transformative technology that essentially allows educators to look ‘over the shoulders’ of students and assess, on their own time, how students worked on a lesson just a few minutes ago rather than relying on data from an assessment taken months ago.” …Read More

DreamBox Learning® Promotes Dianna Winegarden to Chief Customer Officer

BELLEVUE, Wash. — March 24, 2022 —  DreamBox Learning (“DreamBox”), the leading education technology provider and pioneer of intelligent adaptive learning, announced today that Dianna Winegarden has been promoted to Chief Customer Officer. With this new role, DreamBox will strengthen its commitment to fostering thriving, engaged, and successful customers across its personalized, research-proven dual-discipline learning solutions.  

As Chief Customer Officer, Winegarden is responsible for leading DreamBox’s customer strategy and cultivating a company-wide devotion to nurturing an enthusiastic and growing customer base, including broad responsibility for all customer initiatives such as: customer support, customer success, customer operations, and professional services. A key strategic role at DreamBox, the new position will drive cross-functional programs to design, innovate, and continuously improve the customer experience across an expanding range of products and services. 

“We are delighted to elevate Dianna to Chief Customer Officer where she will continue to lead our Customer Organization to further strengthen our district partnerships and ensure their students and educators are equipped with the support, services, and engagement they need to grow and thrive,” said Jessie Woolley-Wilson, President and CEO of DreamBox Learning. “Dianna embodies what it means to be a values-driven leader at DreamBox. She is a proven innovator, creative thought leader, and passionate customer advocate who continues to demonstrate her strong commitment to unlocking learning potential for all learners, regardless of who they are or where they live. I am thrilled to recognize Dianna’s consequential contributions to DreamBox growth and success with this promotion.” …Read More

DreamBox Learning® Announces Record Expansion into New School Districts

BELLEVUE, Wash. — September 15, 2021 — DreamBox Learning, the leading education technology provider that in 2006 pioneered intelligent adaptive learning, today announced new expansions and partnerships with school district customers, including Prince George’s County Public Schools and East Baton Rouge Parish School System. The districts join DreamBox during a year of record growth and expansion into the K-12 English Language Arts market with the acquisitions of Reading Plus® and Squiggle Park. DreamBox now delivers personalized and adaptive math and reading learning experiences to nearly 6 million students.

As the only dual-discipline provider offering school districts solutions rated “Strong” by Johns Hopkins’ EvidenceforESSA.org in both mathematics and reading, school districts are selecting DreamBox as a partner to provide educators and students evidence-based learning solutions. New and expanded district and state department of education partners now using DreamBox’s math and/or reading solutions include:

  • Beaufort County School District, S.C.
  • East Baton Rouge Parish School System, La. 
  • Northside Independent School District, Texas
  • Prince George’s County Public Schools, Md.
  • Seminole County Public Schools, Fla.
  • South Carolina Department of Education, S.C.
  • Wake County Public School System, N.C.

“DreamBox Learning is the right choice to best support our teachers and serve the diverse needs of our students,” said Dr. Sito Narcisse, Superintendent of East Baton Rouge Parish School System in Louisiana. “We have learned not all education technology is created equal, so we are excited to offer our teachers an evidence-based solution proven to increase student achievement. In addition to impressive adaptive learning technology and real-time predictive analytics, DreamBox also provides our teachers actionable professional development – a necessary resource as we adapt to another uncertain school year.”…Read More

DreamBox Learning® Enters ELA Market with Acquisitions of Reading Plus® and Squiggle Park

BELLEVUE, Wash. —July 19, 2021 — DreamBox Learning, the leading education technology provider that in 2006 pioneered intelligent adaptive learning, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Reading Plus, an evidence-based online reading program for grades 3-12 designed to help students boost their literacy skills and reading confidence. This move complements DreamBox’s recent acquisition of Squiggle Park, a K-2 reading solution designed to help students gain proficiency in early literacy. The combined programs offer school districts the only dual-discipline solution rated “Strong” by Johns Hopkins’ EvidenceforESSA.org in both mathematics and reading.

“These strategic additions to the DreamBox family represent a significant milestone toward achieving our mission to radically change the way the world learns and unlock learning potential for all students – regardless of race, gender or zip code,” said Jessie Woolley-Wilson, President and CEO of DreamBox Learning. “We believe the winning formula to shape the future of learning has three components:  dual-discipline offerings that cultivate a strong foundation in mathematics and reading; strong data and analytics solutions that leverage formative data to personalize the learning experience; and professional development to help educators develop their blended learning knowledge and skills.” 

Currently, DreamBox supports over 5 million students and over 200,000 educators in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada, and Mexico. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated DreamBox’s growth as most district administrators rapidly adopted and scaled blended learning solutions to support remote learning. During this time, teachers’ attitudes towards blended learning changed and they began to see it as a powerful and effective strategy to deliver engaging, personalized, and effective learning experiences that enabled them to keep learning “on” even when schools were closed.…Read More

South Carolina Department of Education Selects DreamBox Learning® to Support COVID-19 Academic Recovery

DreamBox Learning®, the K-8 digital math company that pioneered Intelligent Adaptive Learning™ technology, announced today that the South Carolina Department of Education (SCDE) has selected DreamBox Learning Math to support teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and mitigate student learning loss. The SCDE will offer DreamBox Learning Math through June 2022 to 21 districts reaching more than 32,000 students in the most underserved communities in the state.

“We conducted an extensive evaluation of math solutions that could help our districts as we transition from emergency instruction towards ‘academic recovery,’ and DreamBox stood out as the only solution that is both proven to increase student achievement and able to provide actionable learning insights for our teachers,” said Dr. David Mathis, Deputy Superintendent at the SCDE. “DreamBox provides a prescriptive approach to help educators determine where students are in their learning, where they need to be, and a clear path to close that gap.”

Effective for in-person, hybrid, or remote learning and available in both English and Spanish, DreamBox uniquely personalizes the learning experience for each student through an engaging and motivating environment that adapts in real-time within and between math lessons based on how students are solving problems. DreamBox also offers educators interactive professional development courses to learn best practices for using DreamBox to teach online or in the classroom in ways that meet students exactly where they are.…Read More

Dreambox Learning Math provides 90 day free trial

DreamBox Learning Math is an award winning K-8 online math program.  Our truly adaptive engine looks beyond the answer at how a student is solving problems, and adjusts accordingly to build a unique learning path for them.  We’re passionate about math, because math unlocks future dreams for children, and we believe DreamBox can help them get there.

Offer: 90 day free trial of DreamBox.  Sign up by April 30th.

Get it now…Read More

Software helps personalize math instruction

Using DreamBox, teachers are able to review the advancement of each student, receiving detailed reports that indicate when a student needs extra attention or when a student successfully passes the lessons.

Strong math skills are important if students hope to succeed in high school and beyond—and many school leaders are finding that software that delivers hands-on, personalized instruction can help.

K-12 math instruction is undergoing fundamental changes as individualized adaptive learning programs combine with lessons meant to keep students of all ages engaged and interested.…Read More

Former Leapfrog, Blackboard exec joins DreamBox Learning as new CEO

DreamBox Learning has hired Jessie Woolley-Wilson as its new CEO, an appointment that comes four months after the Bellevue, Wash., online education startup was sold to an investment syndicate that included The Charter Fund and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, TechFlash reports. Woolley-Wilson has spent the past two decades working in the online education field. Most recently, she served as president of K-12 education at Blackboard Inc. Before that, she served as executive vice president of LeapFrog Enterprises and president of LeapFrog SchoolHouse. “Jessie brings an enormous wealth of knowledge and expertise in the area of eLearning, as well as a stellar track record in her ability to lead and execute,” said Hastings, who now serves as chairman of DreamBox. “I am confident that, under her stewardship, DreamBox Learning will accelerate its growth and create a heightened demand for effective, individualized programs that will help millions of students succeed.” DreamBox Learning was started in 2006 by former Microsoft executive Ben Slivka, and its K-2 Math product was released in January 2009…

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