The Whizz

Math-Whizz has made an appearance in the US on local TV in Seattle, Washington state. King5’s Jane McCarthy looked at the successful integration of Math-Whizz into the Everett School District curriculum. Click here to watch the clip and read the accompanying story.

The segment, shown Friday 13th on King5’s morning show, focussed on the usefulness of the service for staving off ’summer learning loss’ (discussed on our blog here):

“Since using the program, Everett teachers have seen some students gain a year of math knowledge in just three months.

“And with summer approaching, they don’t want all that knowledge to slip away. Studies show that summer break isn’t always good for the brain because students can lose months of knowledge.”

Mary-Anne Stine, Everett School District’s Curriculum Director, pointed out that “[students] lose up to two or three months and struggling students even more,” over the summer break.

It seems a number of parents and teachers had the same concerns in mind when they visited our US site and subscribed to Math-Whizz following King5’s report - we’ve had a phenomenal response and hope it will continue!

If you are a teacher or a parent in the US interested in Math-Whizz online tutoring, email Ben Keogh at ben.keogh@whizzeducation.com.

30,000 schools will shortly get to read about Maths-Whizz Online Tutoring in the Autumn 2007 edition of Royal Mail’s schools newsletter, Teacher’s Post.

Sherfield School’s Pat Preedy is quoted in the Teacher’s Post piece - she, and teachers from Mead School, The Hampshire School, and new subscribers Langtree School, are flying the flag.

This is great news for us. As we don’t formally advertise the new schools online service we’re trying to build grassroots interest with the help of teachers and parents. Teacher’s Post will help enormously, as will the recent Independent Schools’ Inspectorate report on Mead School which specifically mentioned our online tutoring service for schools (though, unfortunately, not by name).

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Earlier this month, Whizz Education began a partnership with the Middle East’s largest learning solutions provider, Universal Knowledge Solutions (UKS), that will aim get our Maths-Whizz Online Tutoring service into hundreds of schools across the region.

As UKS say in their press release of 8th October, Maths-Whizz Online Tutoring is:

“…a solution that does not only answer the needs of the students in terms of ease of use, simplicity of presentation and clarity in explanation, but also the needs of parents and educators in being able to track students’ performance, identify gaps and measure improvement.”

We can’t put it any better than that!

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Click here to see the enlarged image.

Maths
Maths-Whizz

Publisher: Whizz Education
CD-roms for school PCs with online resources for home use.
Price: schools (reception and key stage 1) - £750 (initial cost plus site licence), with annual renewal of £150; home: £27.50 per month, £269 per year
whizz.com

This online maths subscription program lets children enter with their own password and then welcomes them with a huge singing hippo. Maths-Whizz rewards young mathematicians’ hard work by letting them decorate their virtual bedroom. The more problems they solve, the more stuff they can choose - a hamster that needs regular feeding, a lizard that plays the piano, snakes in a basket. (more…)

Maths-Whizz. Price: £27.50 per month; £269 per year. Available: Call 0800 066 9980.

FINDING maths tuition in your stocking may sound as appealing as receiving a comedy cardigan.

But kids don’t even realise they’re studying when they’re playing on the site. It is aimed at four to 12-year olds and shadows the National Curriculum.

Studies have shown that honing maths skills improves coordination between the two halves of the brain and can improve other areas such as music and language. (more…)

Maths with flying ants A new online service offers home tuition in mathematics for primary schoolchildren, writes Sue Leonard. An interactive maths program that is being used in hundreds of schools across the UK will be available in children’s’ homes from this month. Maths-Whizz is a primary teacher’s resource on CDRom.

Now Maths-Whizz. com offers an online tutoring services for computer savvy children aged 5 to 11, to help those struggling with maths or those just wanting to get ahead in class and tests. The service, which will costs parents £27.50 a month, says it can assess each child individually and help them progress at their own pace. The hope is that children will come to enjoy maths, using computer animations to study concepts such as subtraction, fractions and longdivision. (more…)

Learning is fun!We meet the award winning teachers’ resource putting the wow factor into maths

Simplicity and flexibility are the key factors for Maths Whizz Teachers’ Resource

Classrooms have been more animated recently. The reason for this, many say, is Maths Whizz Teachers’ Resource – already awarded as best maths software in the primary school category in the 2006 BETT Education awards. With its focus on simplicity and flexibility and putting mathematical theory into a context that children can understand the software is now used daily in over 2000 schools.

Maths-Whizz Teachers’ Resource is a software package that enables teachers’ to teach more effectively. The software combines interesting animated exercises that enhance learning, with a clear objective basedguide for teachers straight from the numeracy strategy. (more…)

Maths: Add ICT into the equation

The use of computers in maths lessons can help overcome a mental block, says Amy McLellan

If the thought of simultaneous equations has you breaking out in a cold sweat and Pythagoras triggers flashbacks to gloomy afternoons of incomprehension and boredom, then the chances are you haven’t been near a modern maths class in years. Today’s mathematics lessons are punctuated with colourful PowerPoint presentations, interactive 3D problemsolving games and online sudoku puzzles.

This is not dumbing down, according to the people who make the software pupils still need to work through the methodology and grasp the concepts behind the mathematics. But the use of ICT is helping displace some of the fear that so many of us harbour when it comes to using numbers. (more…)

Any child can master maths – it all amounts to confidence, says our expert

If eight oranges cost £1.60, how much do six cost? Just reading that question makes me come over all panicky and cornered, and brings back memories of a particular teacher who wore sandals with socks and used to sneak off for crafty cigarettes in the book cupboard. When it came to children who didn’t “get” maths he just used to shout the same question a bit louder until you either pretended to understand or you cried.

I’m not alone: we’re a nation scared of maths, according to Countdown queen Carol Vorderman. “Every day, just walking down the street, in taxis or shops, I get comments about numbers. What I’m told most often is, ‘I’m scared of maths’,” she says. (more…)