Dreambox to help Kindergartners learn math through games |
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Dreambox to help Kindergartners learn math through games
After nearly three years in development, Dreambox Learning this week officially unveiled its first online education product: a new adventure game designed to teach five to eight year olds math skills. Tested on 1,400 kids, parents and teachers, the Bellevue company's K-2 Math offering automatically adjusts programs based on the child's learning. The idea is that kids are having so much fun immersed in the games, that they don't realize they are learning.
K-2 Math has more than one million different "learning paths" that kids can embark on and four gaming themes: pirate, pixie, dinosaur and pets. The product, which sells for $12.95 per month, competes with Knowledge Adventure's JumpStart.
Founded in February 2006 by former Microsoft executive Ben Slivka, the Bellevue startup raised $7.1 million in 2007.
They obviously have ambitious plans. In a press release, CEO Lou Gray claims that the new product "will transform how kids learn via the Web." (In a blog post, he also writes an open letter to President Barack Obama.)
More from The New York Times, which notes that Dreambox built five test versions of the product before the current release.
(pirate, pixie, dinosaur, and pets
About John Cook
John Cook is co-founder and executive editor of TechFlash. He has been covering the technology beat for nearly a decade, writing about startups, entrepreneurs and venture capital, most recently serving as a reporter/blogger at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
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