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E d Te c h S h o w D a i l y W e d n e s d a y, J u l y 1 , 2 0 1 5 1 4 DREXEL SCHOOL OF EDUCATION OFFERS NEW APPROACH TO OBTAIN GRADUATE DEGREE Drexel University's School of Education offers an entirely new approach to obtaining a graduate degree. The new approach allows the student total flexibil- ity to study the topics most relevant to the individual and his or her individual career growth. The MS in Educational Improvement and Transformation is structured around Professional Development Concentration Sets (PDCS) on topics that are timely, appro- priate and immediately applicable to today's educator. Through the PDCS, stu- dents gain a broad base of knowledge in multiple areas of education, allowing the students to sample several areas to deter- mine their specific interests, and to gain knowledge in multiple fields. This unique master's degree pre- pares students to lead significant initia- tives in formal and informal education sectors. Students work with their adviser to develop a course of study that is grounded in their specific career goals. The PDCS' topics are of paramount importance to today's edu- cators: Learning in Game- Based Environments, Learning Technologies, Creativity & Innovation, E-Learning Leadership, Instructional Design, Evaluation & Assessment, Educational Policy, Leadership in Educational Settings, Special Education Leadership, Collaborative Special Education Law & Process and Urban Education. The MS in Educational Improvement and Transformation (EIT) requires a Capstone Project that the stu- dent develops with a Drexel faculty member to address a need or issue in the student's workplace or relevant setting. Upon completion of the MS in Education Improvement and Transformation, stu- dents will have acquired a broad base of knowledge about edu- cation. They will be prepared to enter into a diverse and exciting career field, and will be equipped with the knowledge needed to pursue a career in any of the eleven Professional Development Concentration sets. Students in the MS in EIT program also learn the value of leadership as the program hones leadership skills in con- text of each of the targeted areas of inter- est. Students leave the program with a skill set that enables them to become leaders in education. For more detailed information about the programs, visit booth #1964 or Drexel University's School of Education's web- site, www.drexel.edu/soe. LEARNING TO READ WITH AN APP CURRICULUM FOR STUDENTS WITH AUTISM AND INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY Early Reading Skills Builder is a new, just released age neutral blended cur- riculum for teaching the task of reading connected text, with comprehension, to students with intellectual disabilities and autism. It's proven to be effective with two years of classroom research funded by the Department of Education Institute for Educational Sciences (IES) under a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant awarded to Attainment Company. The innovative blended curriculum uses systematic instruction to teach reading skills, including the phonemic elements in the English Language. The app or software technology sounds out each phoneme, teaching three new letter sounds in each lesson. Sounds are learned in isolation, as beginning sounds as a part of whole words and as blended sounds that make up a word. Sounds are sequenced to sound out words. Sight word instruction with automaticity is combined within the curriculum as well. A few addition- al words are taught in order to add con- nectors to make a story, then the stu- dents are set to read a story with the sounds and words that they have learned. Comprehension questions are incorporated into each story to ensure that students not only read the text, but also understand what they have read. Writing instruction is provided in the curriculum to combine com- prehension and tactile responses with reading development. In each consec- utive lesson, students get more practice with the sounds they learned in the last lesson by including the last three sounds as review while learning the next three. The tech- nology measures student success and automatically customizes instruction based on student responses to provide further review or move them forward when they are ready. In the research classroom, some participating students were also non- verbal and used the specialized technol- ogy to demonstrate their phonemic prowess and understanding. In the final year of SBIR research and development, 32 classroom students participated in a Randomized Control experimental pro- tocol and demonstrated statistically sig- nificant gains in reading skills as com- pared to the control group. Educators have long awaited a com- plete reading curriculum designed for all students who need to work on building the skills to become readers, especially students in middle and high schools. ERSB in the only proven reading cur- riculum for special education designed to teach reading skills in an age neutral manner. ERSB is an essen- tial curriculum for students in middle school and high school still working on learning to read to build their skills so that they can read to learn. See the Attainment website Early Reading Skills Builder, www.attainmentcompa- ny.com/ersb, for complete information on this blended curriculum, peer reviewed publications documenting research results and great videos of stu- dents who learned to read with the Early Literacy Skills Builder curriculum! For more information, go to attainment company.com or stop by booth #2349. CURBI PARENTAL CONTROL SYSTEM Parents now have the ability to remotely control their children's internet and mobile app usage on Apple mobile devices regard- less of connection mode: home networks, public Wi-Fi or 3G/4G mobile internet. The advanced features of the curbi parental control system help parents to curb, block and watch their children's activity on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch mobile devices. Parents can use curbi to teach their children healthy habits by setting and enforcing rules, as well as timeouts. The curbi parental control system is an advanced yet flexible service that is easy to use and quick to install on a child's iOS 6 or newer device. Once installed, the mobile device can be controlled by parents or guardians from any Web browser or via the curbi app on iOS devices. Developed by a team of parents in response to their own frustrations with enforcing mobile device rules with their children, curbi is designed to be a positive parenting tool to help set healthy screen time and Internet content and app limits. curbi is free for a 14-day trial from www.curbi.com or the App Store with a monthly subscription of $6.99. For more information, visit www.curbi.com. CAN TECHNOLOGY DO FOR MATH STUDENTS WHAT IT DID FOR WWII PILOTS? By Robert Sun, Inventor of First In Math Seventy years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced a massive chal- lenge: how to quickly produce 100,000 competent pilots to fight in World War II. Early aviation schools were experiencing fatality rates as high as 25 percent. The question was, "Should the U.S. hire hun- dreds of new flight instructors? Or is there a better way to teach pilots to fly?" The answer, as it turned out, was the latter. Edwin Albert Link Jr., son of an organ maker, was passionate about learn- ing to fly. In the late 1920s he invented a simulator made of bellows, hoses and pumps that allowed novices to practice flying in a low-risk environment. When World War II hit, the govern- ment purchased thousands of these devices, by then known as "Link Trainers." By war's end, more than 500,000 pilots had logged millions of practice hours in Link Trainers. The device, coupled with improved teaching methods, solved FDR's dilemma. Today, with our nation's economic future in the balance, U.S. schools are faced with the task of producing millions of young people skilled in mathematics. The solution will not be found on the teaching side. There's nothing wrong with the way the U.S. has taught math since the 1940s. Generations of how to boost our children's math skills in order to maintain our nation's competitive strength. The response from the educational establishment remains focused primarily on teaching as the solu- tion. Instead, shouldn't we be ask- ing ourselves, "Is there a better way to learn this complex skill?" As Edwin Link correctly reasoned in the twentieth centu- ry – and as we must once again realize in the twenty-first – systemized, self-direct- ed practice utilizing the latest technology is the answer. Technology now enables us to offer the equivalent of the Link Trainer for math education. If we embrace this approach, we can overcome our "practice gap" and solve one of our nation's most important learning challenges. For more information, visit booth #2937, or go to firstinmath.com. American children, well schooled in math, have put men on the moon and invented the integrated circuit chip, among thousands of other innovations. What our children need is a better way to practice math. With the possible exception of breathing, there isn't any skill that can be mastered without practice. An average toddler takes 3,000 steps and falls 18 times a day before becoming proficient at walking. Why should math be the outlier? The reason many nations outperform the U.S. in math education is because practice is embedded in their cultures. The Chinese word for learning/study is made up of two characters: the first stands for "accumulation of knowledge" and the second character stands for "con- stant practice, as in little birds learning to fly." During the past decade, our political and business leaders have fretted over