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The Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (IMACS) is pleased to announce Elements of Mathematics: Foundations, a new series of online courses designed for bright secondary school students. EMF is a self-contained program that allows the talented student to complete all of middle and high school mathematics up to Calculus before leaving middle school. The curriculum is the result of more than a decade of research and development by an international team of mathematicians and educators and has been in use with gifted and talented students for over 20 years.
Acceleration vs. The EMF Approach
For mathematically talented schoolchildren, subject acceleration is an oft-advised tool for addressing their need to learn more challenging material. Through subject acceleration, a student works on math curriculum that is normally taught at a higher grade level. While acceleration does help bright students avoid repetition of material in which they are already proficient, by definition it cannot help them avoid the tedium that is the standard US mathematics curriculum.
EMF is not an accelerated version of the standard US mathematics curriculum. Instead it provides a deep and intuitive understanding of foundational concepts. This allows the suitably talented child to progress quickly through material for which others would require significant drill and practice. The curriculum then proceeds to cover concepts in a mathematically consistent way, going well beyond the typical gifted math class offered in schools or online. Topics from the standard curriculum – and much, much more – are taught in an intellectually engaging way.
Six Ways In Which EMF Is Unique
• The EMF curriculum was designed from scratch specifically for gifted and talented children to leverage their advanced capacity for learning and to engage their unique ways of thinking.
• EMF provides a deep, intuitive, and lasting understanding of mathematics as a cohesive body of knowledge that opens the door to scientific discovery and technological advancement.
• EMF focuses on the powerful and elegant ideas of mathematics, the kind that gifted and talented children find deeply satisfying and inspiring.
• The EMF curriculum exposes students to subject areas not found in the standard curriculum such as operational systems, set theory, number theory, abstract algebra, and probability and statistics.
• EMF maintains a level of mathematical rigor found typically at the university level while making advanced concepts accessible and fun for a younger audience.
• EMF gives students a true sense of what it takes to excel in college math courses, which is not the same as the skills needed to do well in standard math classes or at math competitions. EMF students do not have to “unlearn” certain habits before they can move forward with more rigorous math courses.
Is EMF Right For Your Child?
EMF courses are self-study and require a certain level of intellectual maturity. Talented students who have completed all of elementary school math but have not yet completed algebra and geometry would gain the most from EMF. However, students who already have some experience of algebra and/or geometry may still find benefit because EMF introduces concepts that are not covered in standard high school mathematics classes.
Parents who register their child at www.elementsofmathematics.com will be offered the option of having their child take a free online aptitude test to help determine their child’s level of readiness.
“In an online world, colleges have to think hard about how they are going to take communication, which comes over the Web, and turn it into learning, which is a complex social and emotional process.”
-David Brooks, New York Times, May 3, 2012
Over the last 15 years, the advances in our ability to share information broadly and quickly have been nothing short of astounding. More recently, we have started to witness technology’s influence on education. As Peter Haskell, math department chairman at Virginia Tech, said in a recent article, “How could [computers] not change higher education? They’ve changed everything else.”
Computers are indeed changing higher education, as well as elementary and secondary school education. The Danville School District in Indiana announced that it will be piloting an iPad-based program to educate its students by ability level and not by the traditional grade levels. Many see technology as the much-longed-for solution to the 21st century, individualized education that creativity expert, Sir Ken Robinson, espouses.
IMACS has been grouping students by ability level and using technology to provide customized learning experiences for over 20 years, and we’ve learned much in the process. We understand why it is tempting to leverage existing technology, as is, to try to improve education—development costs are little to none, and the solution seems to “fit” the problem “well enough.” However, our experience tells us that a more thoughtful approach yields better outcomes for the students involved.
The popular approach to incorporating technology in education seems to follow the “defense-to-daily life” path. By this we mean that amazing inventions first created for military purposes made their way into daily life after people asked, “How else can this be used?” Examples include digital photography, which came from spy satellites, and the GPS in your car that keeps you from getting lost.
Within the education debate, the analogous line of reasoning is, “We have the technology to distribute and exchange information on a global scale at relatively low cost. Education, in its most basic form, is information. Therefore, technology can be used to widely deliver education. Technology also enables us to track and analyze massive amounts of data. Student performance is essentially data. Therefore, we can use technology to determine when an individual student has learned a topic and is ready to study the next topic.”
One obvious problem is that this approach relies on quantifiable student performance, the kind that computers know how to “think” about. What’s that? None other than answers to multiple choice questions, stand-alone numeric answers, or simplistic word answers. In other words, this approach to individualized learning uses the type of assessment you find with one-size-fits-all standardized testing, which we know does not effectively measure mastery.
Consider the ability to apply learning to novel situations, which is a component of mastery that is generally recognized as the highest of the so-called “learning outcomes.” How could standardized test-like questions ever measure the ability to recognize underlying parallels and to transfer skills acquired in one context to another? Educational technology, while still a net positive, has its limits. It’s hard to imagine a situation in which a computer could reliably grade an essay on “Compare and contrast the lifestyles of the middle class in Manila, Philippines, and Quito, Ecuador.”
For technology to deliver on the promise of turning out well-educated students in greater numbers, methods should be developed for automatic evaluation of student performance that go beyond the multiple-choice paradigm. This includes designing questions that truly test the depth of a student’s understanding, along with systems to assess the quality of answers to such questions. In other words, the technology should be made to fit the curriculum and not the other way around.
Taking this approach means that one does not have to compromise on curriculum development. One has the freedom to create original course material based on what is shown to be effective, knowing that the technology to support it will follow. This is one of our founding principles at IMACS, where we have been researching, developing, and implementing these technologies in our online mathematics and computer science courses since the beginning. The depth of understanding that our students develop leaves us confident that we made the right choice for them.
Education reformers must decide if they will use the building momentum to spread mediocrity all over the place, or if they will push for the bold change necessary to teach students the 21st century skills that they need. Students deserve better than to have the technological tail wag the pedagogical dog.
For innovative courses in gifted math and online computer science, try IMACS! Register for our free aptitude test. Solve weekly IMACS logic puzzles on Facebook.
In our prior blog post where we discussed the importance of effective teachers for gifted students, we also made the point that such teachers should be armed with higher quality curricula better geared toward bright kids. This week, we delve more deeply into what raises the quality of curricula and renders them more suitable for bringing out the best in talented students.
Fast Forward vs. Delve Deeper
Let’s start with the obvious. Gifted students often understand new information after having it explained to them once. This is in contrast to a typical student who benefits meaningfully from review and reinforcement of new topics. There may be times when gifted children benefit from review, but they generally find repetition unutterably boring. Consequently, bright kids who are subjected to curricula that emphasize review can develop a dislike for school or, in the worst case, of learning.
Advocates of free online resources often point to online technology as a remedy in situations like this because you can skip over the boring parts of a lesson and cover more topics. But who wants to spend time and mental energy searching through a lesson to avoid the repetitive parts? More importantly for talented children, are we really aiming for quantity of topics over quality of learning as a badge of honor for the brightest among us? Gifted students’ time would be better spent gaining a deeper understanding of a subject using material that was specifically designed with their ability level and thirst for knowledge in mind.
Challenge and Failure as Preparation for Success
Online curriculum development for talented students is about more than just going faster and avoiding repetition. It’s about presenting challenging ideas along with the appropriate interactive tools to explore and understand them. It’s about asking questions that require genuine thought to answer rather than just a cursory understanding—or worse, a simple memory—of something. It’s about asking questions in such a way that, in the process of determining the answer, the student’s understanding gets deeper.
Parents and administrators should recognize that accelerating through standard curricula is not the same as studying coursework designed to challenge the gifted mind. Challenging talented students is essential for putting them on a path toward future success. These kids have the potential to solve our most intractable problems and invent products and processes not yet imagined. As anyone who has accomplished even one of these amazing feats will tell you—it’s not a sprint but a marathon fraught with many false turns. This relates to the much-quoted findings by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck that praising intelligence undermines motivation and performance as compared with praising effort. A child who has not learned to put forth great effort in conquering ability-appropriate challenges or in developing resilience in the aftermath of failure will never reach his or her full potential.
Address Misunderstandings Immediately
For many subjects, including mathematics and computer science, ideas learned at one stage serve as the foundation for learning more complex ideas at later stages. Likewise, a misunderstanding of an earlier concept jeopardizes the understanding of future concepts that build upon it. It can be difficult to dislodge misconceptions that have had some time to settle:
Thus, any praiseworthy online education program should cause students to address a misunderstanding at the moment that they are having it. If you wait until some later time to give a student corrective feedback on their work, the moment of maximum learning has already passed. Remember that we’re talking about young students who are simultaneously learning various new ideas across multiple subjects. When a student is already focused on learning the next topic, it’s less effective to try to bring his or her mind back to an “old” idea.
How an online education program goes about detecting and addressing flaws in student understanding is critical to whether the program is really delivering on its promise to teach in the truest sense of the word. This is not a trivial exercise that can be accomplished by a system that instantly tells you whether a multiple choice selection or one-word answer is correct. Gifted kids can typically regurgitate information from memory or reflect back basic knowledge without much effort. But this doesn’t mean that they understand a topic at a depth commensurate with their ability. Any online curriculum that purports to educate yet relies on several, even many, simply structured questions as a measure of true understanding is short-changing its students, especially the bright ones.
Simply put, talented online students deserve curricula that address their unique intellectual needs along with technological tools designed to fit the particular curriculum and not the other way around. They deserve more than the same material they can get in school with improved presentation and a fast-forward button. Delivering on the promise of educating students online is possible, but it takes much more thought, planning, and investment to do than is widely accepted in the current media coverage and commentary.
Are you a gifted and talented middle or high school student? IMACS offers online courses designed just for you! Take our free aptitude test. Solve weekly IMACS logic puzzles on Facebook.
Mathalicious blog recently posted a well-written and compelling article about the consequences of our nation’s sudden elevation of the popular video tutoring Web site, Khan Academy. If you haven’t read the piece, you absolutely should because it explains beautifully the key reasons why parents and school administrators should be cautious about jumping on the bandwagon of free, technology-based resources as a means of effective teaching.
We won’t rehash here what’s already been said well by Mathalicious, nor do readers of this blog who like KA need to rally to its defense. IMACS acknowledges that KA is a valuable resource that has a place in the overall education portfolio for many students. But we also strongly believe that KA, or whatever the next free resource to be Web-ified is, is no substitute for high-quality curricula and the effective teaching thereof. This is particularly true for gifted and talented children.
Free Resources Are Good at Presenting Information and Sparking Curiosity
Children, bright ones in particular, are born self-directed and self-taught. As they enter school and progress through the regimented structure of age-based, test-driven instruction, it’s no surprise that this natural thirst for learning diminishes. For a gifted child this is intellectual torture, and the pain has only spread across our nation as budget cuts erode the quality of or eliminate altogether public school gifted programs. So it’s no wonder that many talented children and their parents have come to value a Web site like KA.
What’s not to like? KA offers a myriad of topics for a curious mind to explore. You pick which video to watch, and you decide when to move on if it’s boring. And KA’s founder, by most accounts, is pretty good at explaining concepts in a non-threatening way. For typical kids, this can be a superior alternative to classroom instruction. For gifted kids, this is a wonderful way to spark curiosity and access above-grade-level material. Those of us from an older generation are reminded of cherished times flipping through encyclopedia volumes, letting the books fall open where they may, and reading about some new topic that we’d never heard of before. Whereas the World Book cost parents a small fortune and took up a big chunk of bookshelf space, KA is free and fits on the smartphone in your pocket! So far, so good. Here comes the “but.”
Pedagogy Still Matters, Especially for Mathematically Talented Kids
But how does that spark become a burning fire of passion, dedication, effort, and tenacity—qualities necessary for a gifted child to achieve his or her full potential? A key component of the answer is teachers. More specifically, teachers who understand how to inspire bright children, who can guide them when they struggle, and who know how to unleash the power of their natural talent. Optimally, these teachers should be armed with higher quality curricula better geared toward kids who only need to be told things once. They should have the experience to know that the places where talented kids struggle are often different from the usual stumbling blocks for the general population, and they should understand that high-fliers sometimes need help in overcoming the fear of failure.
Nowhere is this more evident than in math where the abstract nature of its concepts and language call for an experienced and interactive guide. To a gifted child, the difference between one-way, rules-based, memorization-laden math instruction and student-involved, teacher-guided, reasoning-based interaction is like intellectual starvation versus a bountiful feast. The nourishing environment of the latter allows mathematically talented minds to devour, understand, apply, and sometimes grow the body of knowledge. No pre-recorded video that restates, however pleasantly, the usual instruction found in US math classes, with the added benefit that you can rewind and repeat for reinforcement, is going to elevate a mathematically bright child to the next level.
Bright Online Students Should Have Access to Supportive Instructors
At IMACS, we made a deliberate choice to use an interactive teaching approach that incorporates substantial student-led exploration guided by effective teachers. Our collective experience on how talented kids learn best, which questions they tend to ask, and where and why they tend to struggle has been gathered over decades of teaching our curriculum in a classroom setting. This wisdom has been painstakingly built in to our eIMACS online courses, which feature tools that provide immediate feedback at exactly the moments students most frequently need it.
Needless to say, a gifted child is wonderfully unique and creative. So it comes as no surprise to us that our students come up with questions from time to time that we hadn’t anticipated. This is exactly why each eIMACS student is assigned a principal IMACS instructor to answer these questions and provide individualized guidance when needed.
We know what you’re probably thinking, and yes, this blog post is self-serving. But it’s also what we genuinely believe because we’ve borne witness to the success of these ideas, having taught thousands of bright students this way over the years. As such, we feel compelled to share our experience with readers, especially parents and others who may be making decisions now or in the future on how to best foster mathematical talent (or any talent for that matter). As with coaching in elite athletics, effective pedagogy is essential to the full and fulfilling intellectual development of gifted children, and its value should not be discounted so readily. Don’t let talk of free videos convince you otherwise.
Looking for online courses in gifted math and computer science with top-notch teachers? Try IMACS! Take our free aptitude test. Solve weekly IMACS logic puzzles on Facebook.
a break from his studies to enjoy the sunshine.
Did you know that eIMACS serves students in over 10 countries around the world? This week, our blog post features current student, Hossain Md. Jihad Turjo. Turjo is a talented 11th grader at Mastermind School in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In addition to excelling in his eIMACS courses, he has also earned top marks from other prestigious online programs for bright students, including Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) and Stanford’s Education Program for Gifted Youth (EPGY). When not immersed in his studies, Turjo enjoys reading novels and has even had three published book reviews for CTY’s Imagine magazine:
• “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” by Jared Diamond
• “H.I.V.E.: Higher Institute of Villainous Education” by Mark Walden (Click on the ‘Preview’ button to read Turjo’s review.)
• “The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind” by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer
How did you first become interested in computer science?
My first programming experience of any sort was at school in 8th grade – we had the basics of Visual Basic as part of our coursework curriculum. There were quite a few incidents which hooked me to programming during the six months or so that I had Information and Communication Technology (ICT) at school as part of my curriculum. An example of such a case would be when we were learning to program a calculator for adding numbers with the digits 0, 1 and 2. The “calculator” would have virtual “buttons” labeled +, 0, 1, 2 and =, and would have a screen for displaying the numbers typed in or the result.
Of course, the very thought was horrid to me – the numbers lacked 70% of the digits, and I could only do addition. At the moment, our teacher was not inclined to be very explorative either. So I decided I could do better, and pretty soon I had a calculator with all the digits, an operation display alongside a numbers display, all the operations instead of simply addition, and functions for taking nth roots, raising numbers to any exponent and reciprocating numbers.
That was the kind of small trivial thing that later snowballed into a massive interest in computer science and programming – and eIMACS was perfect for it.
Residing in Bangladesh, how did you find eIMACS, and what made you decide to take one of our online computer courses?
I found eIMACS while browsing the net for computer science courses that are on offer for young and talented students. So I made an inquiry about what courses might be on offer for me, considering that I was a complete amateur in the field of computer science. The next day, I spoke on the phone with a senior IMACS instructor who suggested that I start off with University Computer Science I, that apparently being a very good beginner’s course. So I took the Aptitude Test, managed a good enough score, and started the course that very day. I guess the main deciding factors in what made me choose eIMACS was the promptness and enthusiasm of the instructor’s reply, the fact that he offered to be my instructor even though I was a novice, and the course description on the IMACS Web site.
As a student who has taken or is taking several online courses in math and science from different vendors, how did your experience with eIMACS compare?
In addition to UCS1 from eIMACS, I have taken Honors Chemistry, Honors Biology, and AP Calculus BC from CTY and AP Physics C: Mechanics from EPGY. I am now continuing AP Statistics from Northwestern University’s Center for Talent Development (CTD).
The courses from eIMACS and CTY were all self-paced allowing me to work on the lessons and the tests at whatever time suited me most, contrasted against a fixed course in which lessons are taken by an instructor, normally during his office hours. That was a thing I really liked about eIMACS and CTY – the self-paced option, seeing that a fixed course would be extremely hard for me to keep up with due to the huge time zone gap. Also the quality of presentations for both the eIMACS and CTY courses was really high.
CTD’s AP Statistics course, which has been a satisfactory experience thus far, is next best, and then EPGY’s Mechanics course after that.
UCS1 from eIMACS is the clear winner when it comes to the best course among these. It started at a very basic level in a way that made it extremely easy for me, a novice to understand. I loved the user interface and the way computer science code was introduced to the rookie. The course got progressively more challenging and, I might add, more fun. An awesome thing about UCS1 was the way the tests were taken entirely online. I mean, it is kind of tedious to have to write out answers on a give question paper, scan it and then e-mail it, the way I did it with CTY. But given that one was a math course, where steps and working are extremely important, I guess that was the most suitable option for CTY.
As to instructor availability, I think it’s reasonable enough to say my IMACS instructor was the one I had the most contact with. He was simply more cheery, more communicative and more encouraging than my instructors from the other programs. I’m not saying the others didn’t have those qualities, but my IMACS instructor had it to a great extent.
UCS1 is taught using the programming language Scheme, whereas many introductory courses take students straight into Java, especially since the College Board’s Advanced Placement exam is currently in Java. What’s your view on the eIMACS approach?
I felt that UCS1 did an awesome job in introducing me to the field of computer science. The approach of using Scheme seems to me to be much better. I have seen Java code for web pages a few times, and it did look quite a degree more complex than Scheme. Hence I would say the IMACS approach in using a simpler language (simple is a relative term) as a beginning language is all the more effective for its simplicity. I found I was able to focus on learning the programming concepts instead of worrying about whether I was getting the syntax right. And if anyone was very interested in Java, they can always take the AP Computer Science course from IMACS. So I would say that the IMACS approach is a very effective method.
Your goal is to major in computer science at a US university. What would you like to do after that? Do you have a career vision in mind?
I would simply love to become a top programmer or “Head Game Designer” at someplace like Microsoft or Sega. There are some pretty awesome games out there and someday I want to be the one bringing to life better themes than those games did, coupled with a much better game-playing experience. Sky Target and The House of The Dead series are classics that are impossible to forget – both Sega productions. Someday I hope I can do better.
IMACS delivers flexible and high-quality online computer science courses anywhere in the world. Register for our free aptitude test. Play along with our weekly IMACS logic puzzles on Facebook.
As news reports will remind you daily, education today in the United States is facing some of its most serious challenges. While extracurricular activities like music, art, and physical education were the focus of past budget cuts, the more recent crisis is taking aim at classes for advanced and gifted students. The Wall Street Journal recently published an article about Advanced Placement students taking courses online after the traditional AP classes were cut from their schools. So if you find yourself seriously thinking about online classes for your child, whether out of necessity or choice, how do you get the appropriate credit at his or her school? The first challenge is to find a quality program with quality people. You’ll see why this matters beyond the obvious reasons as you read the below advice that we give to the parents of our students.
Officially approved course. Whenever you are trying to establish credibility for someone, it helps to have someone who already has credibility vouching for that person. That’s why in a courtroom, some people make good character witnesses, and others, not so much. It works the same way with online high school classes. Teachers and administrators just don’t have the time or resources to review in detail every program that is presented to them for consideration. So it helps if they can look to an authoritative body that has already done the analysis. When the College Board, for example, audits an Advanced Placement curriculum and lists it on their Web site as an approved online course, you know you’ve found a program that not only meets the rigorous requirements of the audit process but also puts you in a good starting position to make the case for credit.
For online classes not specifically designed to prepare for AP exams, there are respected institutions that schools look to for help in assessing their quality. For example, check out educere.net, which is used by many districts throughout the US to provide courses not offered through their schools. This and similar portals review online courses according to their own set of strict criteria.
Track record. There are two different types of track records to look for. Obviously, you want a program with a history of excellence. When you find one with core people and a curriculum that have stood the test of time, you know you’ve probably found a quality provider. In addition to looking for longevity, ask to speak with parents of current and former students. Ask about alumni. It’s nice to hear that this one went on to Harvard and that one went on to Yale, but let’s get real. These might have been smart kids who would’ve done that anyway. The real question is, what more have these students been able to accomplish as a result of taking this online course that they would not have otherwise? When an online provider can stand up to this kind of scrutiny from you, they are more likely to do the same when being considered for credit by your child’s school.
The second kind of track record is whether or not the provider has successfully assisted parents in getting their online courses accepted for credit. While the exact process will differ from school to school, the essence is likely very similar. School personnel need to be persuaded that the online course material meets their standards for the credit you are seeking. Just like with a good attorney, experience goes a long way when offering proper counsel to parents on what evidence to present to whom. Think of it this way. If you’re on trial, do you want a lawyer whose past clients are all in jail? I think not.
Find an ally. No matter the course, when trying to receive approval for credit, you absolutely need to find someone at your school who is forward looking to discuss this with. It could be a guidance counselor or other administrator. Ideally, it would be someone who’s handled similar situations before with positive outcomes. This is the person who is going to help you navigate the path to approval. If you’re fortunate, the process might involve meeting with the appropriate decision maker from the school; sharing detailed information about the course curriculum, online provider’s history, and any official stamp of approval from an authoritative body; and presenting examples of your child’s work, including scores and grading methodology. More typically, you’ll need several meetings with the same or more people to address follow-up questions and requests for additional information. As you might imagine, it behooves you to keep a detailed file right from the beginning, and also to be nice. Not a pushover, but definitely nice.
Communication. So you’ve presented your file full of evidence, and your school is still not sure about whether to give your child credit. What do you do? It may be time to step back from being the information middleman and let the educators talk directly to each other. Do your part to introduce and facilitate communication between your school’s decision makers and the right people from the online course provider. That would be your child’s principal instructor (a quality program would have assigned one) or someone else who can speak intelligently and in detail about the course curriculum. If you are successful in gaining credit for the online class, then counselors or administrators at your child’s school will want to stay in communication with you and/or the online course provider to get regular updates on your child’s progress. Communication is essential throughout this whole process, so make sure you choose a provider who is willing and able to make themselves and the necessary information available whenever they are needed.
What has worked for you in trying to get an online course approved for credit? Share your best advice here.
Maximize your credit with an IMACS course. Take our free aptitude test. Play along with our weekly IMACS logic puzzles on Facebook.
Meet Katherine Wu:
• eIMACS Computer Science alumna
• Webmaster for the Hopkins Undergraduate Research Journal
• Lab manager for The Center for Language and Speech Processing where she will be conducting research this summer
• Author of “Breaking Barriers in Computer Science,” soon-to-be-published in the undergraduate research journal The Triple Helix
• One of only 50 students selected from across the US and Canada to participate in the Google FUSE 2011 computer science retreat
Are you suitably impressed? We are. When Katherine found us, she hadn’t even taken a computer programming for beginners class. But she knew what she was looking for – a solid introduction to programming and individualized instruction that would allow her to excel at a faster pace through more challenging material. Well, Katherine just sailed through her freshman year as a Computer Science major at The Johns Hopkins University, taking mostly junior and senior level CS courses along with a graduate level CS seminar, and is already deep into her summer research schedule.
When asked to reflect on her first year at college and experiences so far in CS, here’s what she said: “I was anything BUT picky about club and academic experiences my first-year in college. If there’s something you’re interested in doing, there are no ifs-ands-or-buts about it; take the chance and do it! If anything, you’ll always form new relationships and learn something new. I look back, especially on my experiences in Computer Science, and all I can say is ‘Wow! It’s like a whole other world.’ I took my first courses with IMACS, and they were the ones who sparked my passion in Computer Science and supported me all the way up through taking the AP Computer Science exam and beyond. I’m proud to say that IMACS is not just your typical course provider, but a community that strongly cares about your personal learning and achievements. I think they are one of a kind.”
Lucky for Katherine, the foundation she built at IMACS gave her the skills and confidence to handle upper-division coursework. Lucky for us, she’s happy to share her story (and even her video bloopers) with you. Check out her video below, and follow her summer research adventure here.
If you’re a former or current student or parent and would like to share your IMACS story, email us at info@eimacs.com.
Get a headstart on college with IMACS. Take our free aptitude test. Play along with our weekly IMACS logic puzzles on Facebook.
There’s an old Pink Floyd song that goes like this:
We don’t need no education.
We don’t need no thought control.
No dark sarcasm in the classroom.
Teacher, leave them kids alone.
Hey, teacher! Leave them kids alone.
If you don’t know who Pink Floyd is, go text your dad. If he’s old enough to know, then he’s probably of a generation where taking a class meant being in a bricks & mortar school, sitting in an intentionally uncomfortable desk, and listening to a teacher lead a mostly one-way lecture. If the teacher had to step out of the classroom, it would not be unusual for pandemonium to break loose and any semblance of learning to go out the door with her. So it comes as no surprise when some parents are skeptical that students can learn without a teacher being present in the same room. They just can’t imagine how online classes for high school students can work for their child. The reality is that online courses can work really well if you have at least three crucial ingredients:
Curriculum Experience
Experience matters, whether you’re talking about education, medicine, law, or any field where learning through doing makes a huge difference in the quality of outcomes. With online high school courses, as with traditional classes, curriculum experience is key. Remember that curriculum is not just about what topics are covered and in what order. It’s not just a list you can cobble together from Google searches. The best curricula are developed over extended periods with real student feedback and are time tested to have actually worked in physical classroom settings.
A good curriculum is also determined by how the material is presented. Are the lessons designed in an engaging way that invites the student to be part of the learning process? Or is it more like reading a lecture with a few colorful graphics tossed in? Having the experience to know how to pull students in can make the difference between a child who wants to stay focused on the lesson on screen and a child who is willingly distracted by the latest updates to their friend’s Facebook page.
Sophisticated Real-time Feedback
Okay, so now you think you’ve found a program with a good curriculum that has proven over time to be effective with real students. Next question: Can your child access the knowledge in a way that mimics the natural interactive style of humans? Or is he simply being shown a series of multiple choice questions without any catalyst to stimulate critical thinking? A good indicator would be if the technology, whether it’s a Web site or a software program, was developed to anticipate where students might stumble. This is another place where having taught the same curriculum to real students in a real classroom is a huge benefit to program developers.
Naturally, you will also want the technology to be designed with interactive features that provide immediate feedback to students when they need it. It would be like having a teacher right next to you saying, “Not quite, try again,” before you botch the rest of you work with an early mistake. Wouldn’t it have been great if when you were in school, you could find out right away instead of days later if your homework was wrong so that you’d have more time to correct your thinking before the test? (I hear you now, “That could’ve been me at Harvard!”) Speaking of tests, be sure that you have online access to your child’s scores for assignments and tests so that you and your child can monitor his progress.
Live Help Available in a Timely Manner
Sometimes, you just need a human touch. Like when you’ve exhausted the automated telephone menu and you just need to dial ‘0’ to reach the next customer service representative who will be with you shortly. Or in most cases, not so shortly. You’ll want to look for a program where each student is assigned a real instructor who monitors the student’s progress and is available for questions. Make sure that you can contact the teacher by phone or by email. The best programs have instructors and technical support available in some form seven days a week, including evenings. And if you do come upon a new situation that requires live help, program developers will be very thankful that you brought it to their attention because it helps them improve the online experience for you and future students.
Now that I finished writing this blog post, I have no idea how those Pink Floyd lyrics are relevant other than when the topic came up, the song popped into my head and now I can’t get it out!
What other features would you want to see from a provider of online courses?
Choose IMACS for a world-class online learning experience. Take our free aptitude test. Play along with our weekly IMACS logic puzzles on Facebook.
(With apologies to Doreen Cronin, author of Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type)
There once was a stable of horses
Who thought it was time to join forces
And protest their labor
With more than just “neigh” for
A better job, advised their sources (i.e., the cows).
The farmer said, “What good are you
Except as my wagon-pull crew?
I’ll send you to IMACS
To learn more than syntax.
If not, then it’s off to be glue!”
(Unfortunately, our classrooms are not equipped for horses, so we directed them to our online computer courses at eimacs.com.)
No school had yet enrolled equine
In computer courses online.
They paid us in oats,
And we don’t mean to gloat,
But everything turned out just fine.
The horses got out of their jam;
They now build apps to filter spam.
So who do you turn to
If you want to learn to
Write your own computer programs?
Why, IMACS, of course!
We’re the ultimate source
To upgrade your personal RAM.
Do you have a clever (and family-friendly) limerick about math or computer science to share? Email us at info @ eimacs.com.
Stop horsing around and come on over to IMACS. Take our free aptitude test. Play along with our weekly IMACS logic puzzles on Facebook.
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