Integrate technology and curriculum:

You've worked tirelessly, for months or maybe years, and now you finally have the computing power your district's teachers and students need. But you still face two pressing challenges:

• Integrating all of your newly-purchased technology into your curriculum
  
• Training teachers to use technology effectively in your classrooms

You know that, unless you overcome these challenges, your technology plan will not succeed. You've invested thousands, if not millions, of dollars in hardware because you've seen the potential of one-to-one computing to empower learners, improve teacher efficiency, and save money in the long run. You've made the commitment. The money's on the line. How are you going to truly unleash the potential of your district's computers?

Replacing textbooks with computers

Teachers tell us that the math classroom poses its own set of challenges, when you're trying to make the shift from textbooks to computers.

Does this sound like a bold claim? Well, it is. We've used bold thinking to develop ISM.

We took two years to assemble a team of 22 distinguished math educators from across North America. We've drawn on our 10 years of expertise in developing educational math software to build a completely computer-based middle school math curriculum.

We've placed technology at the center of the teaching and learning process, eliminating the need for textbooks and graphing calculators.

In other words, we've made technology integration amazingly simple. Once you introduce ISM into your district, your instructional materials and your technology will no longer dwell in separate spheres.

Next topic: Improve student achievement

Improve student achievement:

Actively experimenting, not passively absorbing

Math educators have long known that it's the interaction with math concepts that ultimately leads students to understand how math really works. We learn by experimenting with ideas, not passively absorbing them. ISM takes the learning-by-doing philosophy to a new level. It's like a mathematical playground because it encourages mental gymnastics, experimentation, and—let's not forget the greatest motivator of all—fun.

Specially Designed Mathematics-driven Applets

Each ISM lesson provides a student workout: it features specially designed mathematics-driven applets to guide students through highly visual, interactive explorations of everything from multiplication to the simplification of algebraic terms.

A perfect example is the treatment of multiplication.

ISM replaces traditional static presentations of multiplication tables with an interactive grid and color-shaded areas representing partial products. Using the grid, students can enter their own numbers and actually witness the underlying mechanics of what takes places when you multiply.

ISM delivers instant feedback

Unlike textbooks, ISM delivers instant feedback on all of the exercises and problems that they answer within a lesson. It also gives them access to a series of problem-solving tools, including a powerful graphing calculator, a note pad, a glossary and a list of key formulas.

ISM Produces Self-reliant Learners

ISM's interactive approach to math produces self-reliant learners. Thanks to the built-in assessment tools, students use ISM will become much more capable of determining what they need to do to master the math. Instead of delivering concepts through a lecture, teachers will be free to coach students through the learning process. The software enables teachers to respond to individual student needs and still get through all the required material.

Next topic: Save teachers time

Save teachers time:

ISM Delivers All This Without Extensive Professional Development

You might think that bringing about such radical changes in the math classroom would mean a huge time investment for teachers. Everyone has experience with print and electronic curricula that sound too good to be true… and, in the end, are. Realistically, you don't have the time or money to invest in expensive re-training for your teachers. Our development team knows that; most of the teachers involved in building ISM have 20-plus years of experience as math educators.

Because we know first-hand the challenges you face in training your teachers, we're making sure that teachers who use ISM will just have to learn the software, not an entirely new way of teaching. Our basic motto in developing ISM has been “Evolution, not Revolution.” We realize that you can have the greatest curriculum on the planet, but if you need to spend massive amounts of time and cash re-inventing how your teachers teach, it will never work.

Let's Look at the Realities of Being a Math Teacher.

Most teachers follow a textbook-based curriculum and use a variety of print and paper-based supplements. They spend most of their time preparing and teaching the content in the textbook so students can meet the required learning outcomes.

Add to this all of the time spent marking and handling other administrative tasks and there is little time left over for anything else.

That is why even when entire districts are equipped with the most powerful laptops available, little change will typically be seen within its math classrooms. There simply is not enough time.

Why Don't Computers Help Math Teachers Now?

Computers can be a nuisance and a distraction, if they are only used as a tool or an add-on and are not central to the delivery of your math curriculum. You can require students to surf the Web, send e-mail, write essays or reports, or possibly do some work with Excel spreadsheets.

However, none of these activities come ready-made to be integrated with the curriculum in the textbook. It takes a highly-motivated teacher to devote the extra time to figuring out how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together. Even Excel, software which has obvious mathematical potential, takes time to learn, and the payoff for the time invested is seldom worth it.

Some teachers surf the Web and find collections of interactive math applets. These can be useful, but teachers have to spend hours trying to find good ones and then working out how to integrate them into their lesson plans. Even when this work is done, teachers can never be certain these applets are going to work or be available on-line during their math classes.

ISM Transforms Technology from a Time-eater into a Time-saver.

Because it integrates technology and curriculum, ISM gives teachers the time they need to make technology work in their classrooms. At last, everything is in one place. The technology is the curriculum, and the curriculum is the technology. Teachers no longer need to scrounge around the Web looking for applets and struggling to weave them into their curriculum.

And it Gets Even Better...

ISM Includes These Additional Benefits:

• Teacher Notes for every lesson that offer hints and suggestions for working with the material
• Search function that enables teachers to easily find relevent lessons, applets and exercises
• Built-in graphing calculator that takes just twenty minutes to learn and generates colorful graphs
• Built-in glossary with interlinked terms
• Assessment designed to be used in both a formative and summative manner
• Practice exercises for every lesson

Next topic: Reduce overall cost of instruction

Reduce overall cost of instruction:

Purchasing ISM is an Investment, NOT a Cost

A great print textbook is like a stylish new car. It's shiny, loaded with lots of bells and whistles, and smells great. But, it loses its sheen the minute you drive it off the lot. Publishers start working on the next edition of a textbook almost as soon as the current edition hits the printing press. Just when your teachers get really comfortable with the pedagogy and the problem sets, a new edition appears, and they have to learn the ropes all over again.

The terrific thing about ISM, on the other hand, is that its rich features only appreciate over time. Purchasing ISM is an investment, not a cost.

On a per-student basis, ISM already costs less than paper-based resources.

But the real savings come over time.

Rather than having to purchase a new textbook every five to seven years, your subscription fee to ISM will enable you to keep your teaching materials up to date without having to update your budget, too. You can continually enhance your original purchase by taking advantage of yearly updates.

Rather than pouring your district's dollars into paper-based products that soon depreciate, you'll be investing them in a digital asset that will hold, or even increase, its value over time.

One More Thing...

What you can't eliminate, of course, is the cost of upgrading your hardware. Unfortunately, computers, we all know, depreciate even faster than new cars. That's why it's imperative that you find ways to cut your costs for instructional materials. You simply can't afford to have both your computers and your teaching materials depreciating. Since your state-of-the-art computers are rapidly depreciating as you read this, you need to halt the depreciation of your curriculum.

Here's the Good News...

Redirecting the money you'd put into highly-depreciable textbooks into integrated mathematics software will free up funds for you to re-invest in hardware.

It will give you the financial breathing room you need to take your vision of technology in the classroom to the next level—whether that's the next class, the next subject, or the next school.

So, Imagine This...

You've purchase a five-year subscription to ISM, and you're now three years into using it.

• Your students actually enjoy math class because they're having so much fun they don't even realize how much they're learning.
• Your test scores are better than they've ever been.
• Your math teachers have turned their classrooms into interactive learning laboratories.
• They have time to spend exploring concepts with students and individualizing instruction for remedial and advanced students.

Now that you've invested in a solid digital asset, ISM, you can see your way clear to further expanding the role of technology to support students and teachers.

Let's Quickly Summarize 5 Key Things that ISM Can Offer Your District:

• A completely computer-based middle school math curriculum that makes the transition from textbook-based learning to computer-driven learning easy, effective, and cost-efficient

• A highly interactive approach to learning mathematics that gives students and teachers the power to dive right into the middle of math concepts — to explore and interact directly with them

• A new and effective means of fusing your technology and your curriculum that requires very little professional development

• An approach that transforms the technology in your district from a time-eater to a time saver

• A digital instructional asset that will hold, or even increase, its value over time

ISM limited time Trial:

• Register for a Free 15-Day Trial of ISM Course 3

• Moodle: Register for a Free 15-Day Trial of ISM Course 3 in Moodle (LMS)

Pilot ISM:

• Request to Pilot ISM in your school