WASHINGTON, D.C.—There’s a chill in the air, and for most of us, that means winter weather is not far behind. Winter means snow, and the inevitable snow days. Students love snow days, but last winter, math educators in several Washington, D.C. schools loved them, too!
A routine check of progress reports detailing activity of DCPS students in the First In Math program showed a trend during a snow day that warranted additional tracking, and a special usage report request was sent to First In Math headquarters in Easton, PA.
“The District asked for additional, specific data from 12:01 am to 11:59 pm—a full 24 hours—on February 13, 2014, when the students were at home. They wanted to know how many students took advantage of FIM while at home on the snow day, both district-wide and at each school,” explains First In Math Executive VP Nan Ronis,
“What we discovered was that not only were students using the site, they had solved more than 51,000 math problems in a short period of time,” said Ronis, who supervised the data analysis herself. “More than 500 students logging in on a snow day piqued our curiosity, so we checked to be sure nothing skewed the statistics, but the data showed that these were all unique logins.”
Ronis says there is plenty of data available to any district through the site’s District Level Assessment Pages, but she was glad to help administrators gather additional information. “We enjoy working with large districts like DCPS, because it gives us an opportunity to learn about the type of information that is important to them.”
First In Math creator Robert Sun, who has recently authored several Huffington Post articles detailing the use of technology to boost math fluency and create a love for math, says he is “pretty happy about the fact that 500 students were honing their math skills on the FIM site during a snow day. We have no data on whether that was before or after they built snowmen,” laughs Sun.
With some weather experts predicting a snowy winter for much of the United States, snow days are something many schools are looking to address through technology.
“Your curriculum continues without that time off and you’re not just putting days at the end of the year and trying to fill those days,” Superintendent Sandra Weaver of the Metropolitan School District of Wabash County in Indiana told reporter Matt Zalanick in a recent interview. (read the full article here)
Pennsylvania is the most recent state to allow e-learning when weather shuts schools, says Tim Eller, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of Education. Considering current predictions, they may have several opportunities to see the effectiveness of snow day e-learning in action.