The Real Facts of Math and Its Advantages for Students

Math is the most interesting subject, as far as students are concerned, though it is a difficult subject. At the same time, mathematic is the easiest subject to score hundred marks. Since mathematics is involved in all major subjects like physics, chemistry and statistics, students should take utmost care to learn math.

Adaptive reasoning is the most essential aspect in math and that is why children should be taught mathematics, with very strong base, in the introduction stage. Different nations follow different ways of math teaching and in poor countries, kids are not provided with math learning equipment, which is a disadvantage for the school students. In present days, schools have become commercial and program the syllabus, which is heavy for the kids.

Mathematics scholars provide various creative ideas, for the benefit of the students and very unfortunately, only a few global education institutions are implementing those innovative ideas. Modern math is not easy for kids to learn, without visual lessons. In fact, many international electronic whiteboard manufacturers have upgraded the way of teaching mathematics.

Even mentally challenged kids and autism-affected children show special interest in learning math. In fact, they understand math better than other subjects. Speech therapy specialists use math as the base tool to teach kids, who are with disabilities. In practical life, math is not just a subject to learn, but it also supports kids to deal with various situations. In recent times, mathematicians have made mathematics very interesting and kids are fond of learning math, with deep involvement.

According to Albert Einstein, pure math in its original form is the logical ideas in poetical style. This is one of his lampoons, but profound thoughts, which is identically relevant, even at this present era. As he laid stress about the math subject through all his works, math forms an essential and integral part of modern technologies ranging from complicated computer networks to robotic surgical operations. That is the reason all the international mathematical scholars feel that the kids should be taught the subject, in the most appropriate way.

Further, learning of math inculcates creative as well as lateral thinking, which is highly essential, not only in schools, but also in difficult life situations. In fact, all employers believe that the lateral thinking ability of candidates is far better than their technical skills and academic knowledge.

Mastering of mathematics at young age paves way for critical reasoning and thinking to cope up with the present global economic condition. For economists, who are in public policy making positions, math helps to have holistic approach, while making important decisions, which determines the entire global smooth functioning.

The developed modern math is based on the philosophies, which were formalized by ancient mathematicians like Aryabatta and others. This rich history of mathematics makes the subject unique, which has stood of the test of time, over past years. Unless kids are provided with the opportunity to have complete exposure to math, they may not be able reach their goals, or perhaps even decide their goals.

Teachers, who are teaching math, should realize the importance of the subject and they should teach math with dedication, with ultramodern teaching equipment. Unfortunately, only some of the international educational institutes use advanced method of teaching, while most of the schools still follow old school techniques to teach math. Now, it is imperative that schools all across the globe should start taking advantage of the modern technologies that are available to make math an interesting and easier subject to learn.

Practutor helps students practice to achieve excellence

On June 2, 2013, inspired computer science graduate Hardik Parikh and team launched the first version of PracTutor.com. This was the fruition of sixteen months of discussion, planning and execution. After noticing the lack of online resources and poor offline options and the problems students face in Math and English especially during the initial years, the PracTutor team chose to offer this amazing program. PracTutor mentors students to excellence.

As this is the first edition of PracTutor.com, Mr. Parikh encourages new users to email and call him personally with any and all feedback, comments and suggestions that will help Practutor develop and grow. PracTutor seems to be off to a wonderful start thus far. The website gained 5,219 registered users just 19 hours after it launched.

PracTutor was developed from much research and a genuine need to help students grow into their fullest potential. Teachers and child psychologists were consulted. It was concluded that this modern world poses many obstacles for the young, growing student. There are many distractions and much pressure on children.  To create PracTutor, a math program was developed with the help of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB). Many children struggle with math. The math program of PracTutor, backed by IITB strives to remedy that problem. It is fun-based to keep the students engaged and customized to meet each student’s need.

Many students struggle with English as well. Teachers in the Common Core Curriculum in the United States were consulted to develop a program for that. PracTutor's English program focuses on helping children with reading comprehension.

PracTutor was developed by parents with concerns about their children's education, just like any other. The company is devoted to helping children succeed and giving back to the community. PracTutor donates a part of each subscription fee to a variety of charitable organizations. It allows the user to choose which organization receives their donation.

PracTutor firmly believes that each and every student has the innate ability for success. No matter their learning level, every student can exceed expectations in Math and English. PracTutor can help them on their way to greatness.  PracTutor mentors students to excellence. The team and staff is devoted to helping each and every student succeed. No matter where your child is at in his or her education, PracTutor can help.

About PracTutor

PracTutor is a customized learning and practice environment to help students in Grades 1 to 8 master Math and English. PracTutor is trying to solve the challenge of how can we make any student love, learn and enjoy Math and English.

PracTutor
12806 Townepark Way
Louisville, KY 40243-2311
http://www.practutor.com
News Media Contact : press@practutor.com

Does It Make Sense To Give Education For Free?

Free Education

Francis Bacon, the great philosopher and thinker viewed that “knowledge means power”. Once one gains power one can lead his / her life in a decent way. It is the power of education that can bring dignity and respect in one’s life.

If power is the sublime element for one’s existence and sustenance rather to say the stamina to survive in this world, why not all are entitled to have it? Why only the rich can enjoy the power of education? That means if a person by attaining proper education can exhibit his / her intelligence and capability, why the person will be deprived of that due to poverty?

If this disparity gets going, our society will not see its fullest possible all-round growth. The eventuality of this will be----somewhere or other the society will be languishing because actually the untapped potentials will be wasted. This will be a national hypocrisy.

Social Balance

The simplest and the best way of disseminating knowledge is to educate every one so that a strong and permanent social balance is transformed as the balanced social platform, where all can contribute to the uplift of the single, unbiased and harmonious society.

If education is free from primary level up to the graduation level, all can get the benefit. Once all are privileged to get education, the first benefit will be seen as the reductions of social ills. Mostly our societies are divided over poor & rich. This menace is more pervading than any of the biting problems.

Actually, our societies consist of unbelievably rich, very rich, measurably rich, middle class, lower middle class, poor and the big chunk of utterly poor.

However, the above pulsating discussion can hypnotise one to blindly vouch for free education for the have-nots. Many countries are plugging in the loopholes of many of the social problems which are culminating out of this uneducated lots’ liability. The tax payers are contributing their hard earned money to the state’s exchequer but the benefit is not derived as it should have been.

Examples are many like Ecuador, USA (under Obama Administration), Malaysia and a few more countries including India have realised the importance of free education for have-nots. Ecuador has taken up many steps; Obama administration has recently made a significant change in its education policy and has adopted many ambitious programs under the banner of free education.

India too is gradually freeing up its compulsory education up to secondary level. The gigantic step India has taken under the present UPA government is “compulsory education” for one and all up to secondary level. Although many countries are gradually adopting and also experiment this important issue, the fallacy of the fact is, the sediments (negative sides or the boomerangs) are always disturbing the planners.

Free Education Means Mockery of Education

Free education allows everyone to get education without spending a penny. But this frees the parents from many of the important responsibilities attached with the “education of a child”. The child on the other hand also does not learn the gravity and importance of the education, in Toto (which otherwise is learnt in paid education system).

The free education is not “a miracle out of nowhere”; it is the taxpayers’ dollars are being made use of. Tax payers mean not only the direct tax payers; it is also the indirect tax payers also. Indirect tax payers mean one and all, including the parents enjoying the “free education of the child”. This means many other projects for social developments are being either stopped or curtailed or even diverted which could have been otherwise helpful to the poor strata of people also.

Besides this, since it is the government run project, the entire administration put their heart and soul in this benevolent program and leave aside many of the constructive programs that could have benefitted the society in general and the nation in particular.

Conclusion:

This discussion with the just above arguments will be rather “abrupt end” of the discussion. With both the positive and negative aspects as references, it is rather recommended that to justify the second part of the title--“does it add value”—the answer is “yes”. If the countries mentioned above should not go with the ‘blanket plan” for free education for all. It should be only need based, so that people should not suffer from unnecessary burden of tax, state should not divert the other social development programs and the nation, as a whole should see the best of the best.

Practutor: Unique learning tool launched

Math and English has always been problem subjects for the students. Some children dread the subject so much that they fall ill at the time of exams. At times even dedicated efforts of the teachers fail to make children come out of this fear. Understanding this plight, on June 2, 19.32 hours Practutor was opened for registration. Since then, more than 5000 people have registered on the site.

The main idea behind Practutor

The main idea took roots during a coffee table discussion almost one and half a year back. The intention was to make available for the kids in the elementary and middle school an effective solution so that the problems they faced in English and Math was addressed properly. The product took shape after long discussion, ideations, fine-tuning and research. The focus is only one-excellence of students in English and Math irrespective of the place they belong to and the level of schooling they receive.

Help where it is needed the most

Each student has his own strong points and shortcomings. Some are good at grammar while some in numbering. Practutor’s algorithm tracks down the weak areas of the students and provides intensified help in these areas. It also challenges the strong areas of the students so that they can develop the skill to its full potential. Briefly, the idea is to make learning adaptive to the need of each student.

How do we go about it?

We have formed a core curriculum, which comprise of more than 4200 individual questions in Math and 40,000 English questions that cover all the aspects of the studies. These questions are mostly targeted at testing the basic and critical thinking of the children. The students can print it offline, work on them and email back its answers. The core curriculum inhabits myriad learning videos, materials and learning options. Teaching through gaming is an integral part of this curriculum, which makes the learning process exciting, and reward based.

First version of PracTutor

The first version of PracTutor –www.practutor.com is designed to reduce the rift between the teachers and students making it easier on the part of both of them to teach and understand respectively the subject in the most simplified manner. It also gives the parents the power to involve themselves in this teaching and learning effort and contribute in any way possible to help their child come out of fear for a particular subject or topic.

How can parents participate?

The program allows the parents to monitor the progress of the child and the teacher can identify the various strengths and skills of the students distinctly. This helps both parents and the teachers to focus on the shortcomings and encourage the students to do better in that particular arena of studies. Practutor being a bespoke tool mentors the students on one to one basis and immediately darts an alert if his performance comes down.

Our staff includes qualified mentors who are mathematics and English geniuses, professionals who are parents themselves and dedicated teachers.  These mentors regularly keep in touch with the parents and support the teacher and the parent to help student overcome the hurdles in studies. All the efforts are diverted to make each student achieve the highest level as per his potential.

Pre-registration to end soon
The pre-registrations for the students, parents and the teachers will close soon. It is free for the teachers and if you invite your friends and relatives, you can get $10 credit on your monthly subscription. You can start right now by signing up @ www.practutor.com/preregister/UWwHrngx. Periodic forms of comments will be duly sent to you every month after you start using

Help it grow better and more

Although PracTutor is still in its juvenile, stage learning to grab the ropes consistent efforts are being made to make it overcome the initial hurdles and grow more wider by diversifying its spectrum. To make the magic of PracTutor touch the lives of every student, contribution from parents and teachers is very much expected.

Continuous feedback and comments will ensure that the product comes out according to what it should be like for the learners and the teachers. Sharing it with your friends and colleagues will help the product shape up in the way every parent wants.

About PracTutor

PracTutor is a customized learning and practice environment to help students in Grades 1 to 8 master Math and English. PracTutor is trying to solve the challenge of how can we make any student love, learn and enjoy Math and English.

Building Adaptive Learning Systems in USA, that usually supports Personalized Learning

It is a well researched finding that if technology based learning systems is encouraged to reach to an advanced stage; it will enable content and customized strategies. It is also a matter for concern in which way the learning data, collected by this system, be used to enhance the ability of the system and become adoptable to varied numbers of learners and their learning adaptability. 

As far as adaptive instructions are concerned, it is not a new thing, because it has been constantly observed since the days we talk about Socrates. More than three decades ago, i.e. in the start of 1980s, it was the experiences of the education researchers (Corno and Snow 1986), that adapting instructions to students works as the major factor in the domain of successful learning. If researches of those days are referred, (Bloom 1984), it is found that one-to-one tutoring was a great success, in which learning experiences and time provisions are adapted by the tutor, so that individual needs of the students can be addressed to.

Digital learning systems are known as adaptive, because they are capable enough to dynamically get converted to the learner as their responses to the collected information, as and when they are in their learning sessions, rather than basing on the ongoing information; they are learner’s age, gender and test scores. As the learner goes on working, adaptive learning system make use of gathered information, their way of representing the concept, the difficulties there-in, the task or problem related sequencing, along with the nature of feedbacks and hints provided.   

With which adaptive instructions are related?

Adaptive instructions are related to personalized, differentiated and individualized learning. The minimum contribution from adaptive learning systems is individualized pacing, but if it is a bit more sophisticated, it can differentiate the nature of activities that has relations with learning that is based on the responses of the students. For supporting personalized learning, different systems are being developed in these days, in which pacing & method of instructions, varied learning objectives based options and contents are incorporated.

No doubt, sessions like ‘one-on-one’ with a skilled tutor, who has the dynamisms of understanding the needs of the students and responding to their needs, can offer the most personalized experience to the taught. Digital learning system has advanced to such an extent that students can acquire, diagnose and dynamically respond. Any good teacher will continually assess the understanding of the students as well their level of engagement. The extreme purpose of this system is to customize the contents and strategies for different students, of course there is no doubt that doing this individually for all students is very difficult. 

According to (Oakes 2005), there is every possibility that in the class room environment, teachers may vary in their learning approaches, where different types of prior achievements rule the roost. If any teacher wants to differentiate in teaching in the classroom environment, he / she have to rigor to considerable skills and efforts and adapt different types of resources with different types of difficulties. 

Intelligent Adaptive Learning: An Essential Element of 21st Century Teaching Part II

In our previous article of “Intelligent Adaptive Learning: An Essential Element of 21st Century Teaching Part I” we saw “What is Intelligent Adaptive Learning all about and why is it required” Let us explore the subject further more

Increase inDemand of Intelligent Adaptive Learning

With more and more learners, students and faculties moving to online education, box instructor or adaptive learning has come up as the most sophisticated solutions. Intelligent Adaptive Learningcontributes in bigger way (much more meaningful way) in developing engagingenvironment and through grasping relations between the learner and the online tutor. It is a commonly established fact that understanding the needs and developing the solutions based on those very needs is beneficial for all.

A few challenges of Intelligent Adaptive Learning

In online education, all the students might not be on the same platform of intelligence and understanding as each student comes from totally distinct geographical, cultural, economical and intellectual background. For such students regular methodic approach of imparting education does not serve as a plausible option. Thus, inferential technology has been used to form the Intelligent Adaptive Learning. With the help inferential technology adaptive learning is expected to grow leaps and bounds. Now, that this system has come out as an open-market paradigm, it is going through an optimistic phase of impact on various aspects such as affordability, accessibility, quality challenges of global education as well as training pertaining to e-learning systems.

Importance of intelligent adaptive learning

One of the greatest advantages that intelligent adaptive learning provides is that it gives the learner the privilege of selecting his own modular components which are especially suitable for their learner-centric environment. Moreover, it also provides flexible solutions through which they can adapt themselves dynamically and which also suit their real-time goals. At present, three models have been created for teaching learners of different levels:

• Expert model
• Student model and,
• Instruction model

Intelligent adaptive learning finds its usage in classrooms as well as in distance learning education fields. It is also used in group collaboration applications.  

Each individual is uniquewe have hundreds of reasons to believe it. Since many centuries humanity has been trying to bridge the gap between high level and low level, be it education, financial status or other socio economic factors. As far as learning is concerned with rise of intelligent adaptive learning techniques, by the mid of 21st of century we can expect all the people getting access to the unique, specially customized and affordable learning systems. These Intelligent Adaptive Learningsystems will be flexible and can be tuned in to match the understanding and interest level of an individual. Through Intelligent Adaptive Learningsystem, everyone will have the same level of knowledge, information and understanding of the subject at the end of the curriculum. This will also create better learned and thoughtful individuals, who will be able to use it for pursuing their further goals more effectively.

Geographical barriers have already started dropping with the coming up of the internet, at least in the virtual world. But the high speed of adaptive learning looks assuring enough to bring the same shift in the outlook of real world as well. In short though as of now Intelligent Adaptive Learning systems are yet in their cradle phase yet soon enough Intelligent Adaptive Learning systems will create better learned generations that shall be enhanced forever.

Intelligent Adaptive Learning: An Essential Element of 21st Century Teaching

Lately there has been a lot of discussion going on intelligent adaptive learning techniques. The latest “Y” generation technology that is concentrated towards developing the teaching and learning techniques in schools has become famous as adaptive learning. The intelligent adaptive learning method evolves personalized instructions according to the need of each student, his level of understanding as well as interests.

WhoGets Benefit of Intelligent AdaptiveLearning?

Adaptive learning helps improve adaptation and grasping skills of each student on individual basis and the subject of learning is well absorbed by the students. With the technological changes evolving and improving rapidly for a student as a learner it is important to stay updated.It is the duty of the schools imparting higher level of education to upgrade their education system as intelligent adaptive learning system has already become an essential element of the 21^st century teaching. In fact, both tutors as well as students get benefit from adaptive learning.

Why is intelligent adaptive learning required?

Through intelligent adaptive learning technology unique and tailor made services and content are provided to schools or learning groups so that learning process with improvisation and efficiency is adapted by every individual or student. One of the important highlights of adaptive learning process is that it uses the progress of the learner and his academic success to form future strategies for learning.

The whole process involves adaptive interaction, tracking the feedback and then, delivering the content and the information. Personalized intelligence is the right term that effectively describes the intention of adaptive learning. From studying learning orientation to academic background this technique involves an attempt to track down the multiple sources that blend to form a personal intelligence of an individual learner.

How does adaptive learning work?

The need for such a new technique has been felt as more and more people are enrolling for online education.Hence, the students are in need of more personalized solutions that can match their needsof grasping and learning in a better manner.

Adaptive learning requires computers as the major interactive device for teaching. The computer presentations are adapted and undergo a makeover depending upon the learning needs of the student. These changes are carried out based on the response of the students to the tasks and questions are asked by the computer. The main aim of intelligent adaptive learning is to provide the learner the interactive presence that a physically present human teacher provides.

Recent researches have suggested that it is possible to impart information through traditional learning methods but to impart knowledge by useof non adaptive and traditional approachesid meaningless. Usually in traditional methods the student’s participation is almost nil. He is just a passive receptor. Adaptive learning transforms the learner into a collaborator rather than the passive receptor and thus adaptive learning makes the learner understand the topic in a better and engaging manner.

Today, adaptive learning is not only been used for learning, but commercially it is adapted in business training. From web applications to desktop computer applications adaptive learning has spanned every area of online learning process. Read more about Demand of Adaptive Learning and Importance of Adaptive learning in “Intelligent Adaptive Learning: An Essential Element of 21st Century Teaching Part II”