Some parents have asked if they could change the 'frequency' of scheduled assignments (Practices, Assessments).

The short answer is YES - and it is quite simple.

NOTE: You must be a paying subscriber to be able to change the frequency of scheduled assignments.

Steps to follow -

1. Log into www.indianmathonline.com with your email (parent's email) address and password
2. From the screen that displays, look at the section called "Actions"
3. Click on the link "List Practice Schedules" (or List Assessment Schedules, or List Reading Schedules)
4. From the screen that displays, click on the action "Edit" corresponding to the schedule you wish to change
5. From the screen that displays, look for the field "How often would you like to....?" and change the frequency to any choice you wish.

NOTE 1: If a reading schedule has finished, you might not be able to change the frequency. You can define a NEW one as you wish.

NOTE 2: Feel free to 'experiment' with the frequency a few times to find the 'right' balance for your child - we recommend to parents that they spread the assignments out at least 2 days apart so that the Child does not feel overwhelmed by the intensity of assignments.

NOTE 3: By default the system sets the frequency to "Every Week" to ease in the diverse children that use our program.

A number of parents have asked us how to clear assignments (Assessments, Practices) from the display. Reasons for doing this vary from deleting older assignments to clearing up assignments so that the children don't feel overwhelmed.

Here are the step by step instructions for deleting assignments:

1. Login to www.indianmathonline.com with your email address and password (as the Parent)
2. From the screen that displays, look at the left most column and 'click' the check-box next to the assignments (Practices or Assessments) that you wish to delete
3. Once you have selected the assignments, look for the action "Delete selected rows" at the top of the table and click on that action.

The above sequence of steps should take care of deleting assignments you do not wish to see in your display (permanently).

There is confusion amongst some subscribers between the Login password and Security password (the one our program requires you to create or use for completing Payment related transactions).

We will not disclose the rules behind the use of these two things - the only thing we will say is this: they are different.

Login password is the password you use along with your email address when you login (at www.indianmathonline.com) to our application.

Security password is the one you enter whenever you have to complete a payment related transaction inside our program.

If you need further help, you can contact us via the regular support screen within the program.

For the most part, our questions use the measurement system that is widely used in the American system. Once in a while, we do get in questions that use measurement system that do not use American system; instead they use metric system used by British or India or other Asian countries.

We promptly hear from parents about this and they demand that we correct them and they lecture us that we are confusing their children.

We agree that it is a bit confusing. That admission aside, let us take a different perspective - your children are going to grow up to compete for jobs with children across the globe {if you haven't read the book The World is Flat, I highly recommend you purchase a copy or borrow from a library and read it}.

So, learning a metric system that is used in a part of the world that your child is likely to compete is not a bad thing, after all!. Did we devise our program intentionally for you to learn these new metric systems? No! But having encountered a different metric system in a few questions, it is not a bad way to learn a few new things! Is it?

After all, you are subscribing to a program being developed by a bunch of Americans with help from Chinese and Indians (who have lived in various parts of the Europe before arriving in America) and Hispanic Americans!

Many parents ask us (sometimes complain too! - see note at the end!) if they should move their child to a higher grade (or lower their child a grade or two) if their child is getting through the math problems easily (or having difficulty with the practices or assessments).

Here are some suggestions to guide you through this: 

1. If your child continuously scores Good or Excellent (proficiency rating as determined by our program) in practices and assessments for a period of 3 weeks or more (assuming a minimum of 3 assignments a week), then it would be an appropriate time for you to consider moving your child to the next higher Grade.
2. On the contrary, if your child struggles with proficiency rating of Average or below for a period of two (2) weeks or more (assuming a minimum of 2 assignments a week), then it would be an appropriate time for you to consider moving your child to one or two grades lower. We only recommend this in the spirit of not letting your child lose interest in math as well as not letting your child lose confidence in math. As with any subject / area of study, you want to build on success.

One of the features (we think it is a cool feature) of our program is that you are NOT constrained to keep your child locked in a particular Grade. We frequently hear from parents that say that our program has helped their child(ren) test their child's math knowledge on topics that they have not yet studied formally in school.

Now to the steps involved in changing your child's enrolled grade in our program:

• Login (at www.indianmathonline.com) as the parent (with your email address and your password)
• From the screen that displays, click on the menu "My Account" (you can find the menu at the top of the page)
• From the screen that displays, click on your child's name
• From the screen that displays, select a different Grade in the drop-down for the field "Select a Grade to enroll your child"
• Once you have selected a new Grade, click on the action / button "Save"

Once you have "Saved", the system will use the newly selected Grade to assign future assignments for your child. Please allow 4-6 hours for this change to take effect - the background process that is responsible for assigning assignments runs frequently and will recognize this change and will do the necessary "thing".

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DISCLAIMER: The recommendations and suggestions made above are NOT scientific, but based on practical use of our program. We are working on enhancing our program to use intelligence based data to recognize when a child should be moved to the higher Grade (automatically) or downgraded (with the assistance of the parent). Until such time, the above recommendation are just that. So, please don't flood us with emails such as "you said in that blog entry that ..." or "we did this on your advise..." . We are providing our "collective" judgment and we think you will benefit from this collective experience.

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(And now to those complaining - if you think it is a waste of time - I am sorry, if you think it is a waste of time for your child to practice math problems and you find out that your child is getting through the problems easily - we didn't intentionally devise the program that way!)

A number of parents ask us frequently if our program supports curriculum for Kindergarten. The answer is mixed - Yes and No.

No - because, we do not formally have a grade in the drop-down (during enrollment) called "K" (or Grade K).

Yes - because, we support math problems under the topics Addition and Subtraction (one-digit addition and one-digit subtraction; and if your child is adventurous and a fast learner, similar to my 7-year old daughter, we have 2-digit additions and subtractions to keep them challenged).

So, whenever, we get this question, we recommend to parents that they choose "Grade 1" and focus their child on the topics Addition and Subtraction; and gradually introduce other topics. [This is typically how schools in India keep the young child engaged!]

That said, we are focusing some of our content development time in the first half of 2009 to formally introduce content for grade "K". We will keep you posted when the content is available for "K".

Personally, IMO has worked for my 7-year old when she was in "K" - and we are starting my almost 5 year old on IMO. I will keep you all posted on how the second one does - her challenge might be 'patience'!

A number of you have asked if you can use Mac Safari with Indian Math Online.

The short answer is NO!

Here is the reason -

Indian Math Online requires browsers to support Math Markup Language (the ability to display complex mathematical notations). Our testing so far has shown that Safari does not support Math ML.

That is the bad news!

The good news is - you can download Firefox for Mac. Once you have installed Firefox, you will need to download the proper math ml font support. Here is the link for that.

We have tested the above approach - if after trying, you still have difficulty, please write to us at support@indianmathonline.com and we will try to troubleshoot further!

This is a common question we get from our parents - when my child gets a question incorrect, how can Indian Math Online (IMO) help?

Currently, there are two ways IMO can help a child when he or she gets a question incorrect:

1. Each question is categorized into a Topic within a Grade. For each topic, we have provided a written explanation of the topic along with examples. We refer to this concept within our program as "Solution Explanation" (SE). A parent (or the child) can access the SE for a particular topic by following these steps:
   • Login as the Parent
   • From the screen that displays, click on the 'View Results' for a the particular assignment
   • From the screen that displays, click on the link "Total Number Incorrect". You will find the notation SE displayed next to it and clicking it will prompt you to either save the document or open it.
2. In addition to the concept explanation, we have also developed multi-media illustration of each topic. We refer to these as learning or reading assignments within our program. These multi-media concepts are developed using Adobe Flash and you Adobe Flash Viewer to view them. You can view samples at www.indianmathonline.com/samples

Obviously, there is an alternate method you could use - which is outside the scope of our program. You (as the parent) could print the math problem and take it to your child's math teacher or tutor and ask for assistance. Of course our goal with the program is to 'empower' the parents such that the answers are within our program (see notes below). If you feel there are one or two questions that we can get our math teachers to explain in detail for you, we are happy to consider that and we will do our best to accommodate your request.

NOTE 1: These learning aids are NOT available as part of the IMO Basic Subscription plan.

NOTE 2: I mention above that "Currently" we have two forms of learning aids - well, we are actively working on adding "Step-By-Step" instructions for each of the question - in other words, we intend to provide one way to solve each math problem. This feature is expected to be released some time in the coming months (the scale of our database makes it tough to release for all grades!)

Many parents have asked how to subscribe to Indian Math Online after their child has completed the Free trial period. Here are the step to complete the subscription process!

1. First, Login at www.indianmathonline.com as the parent with your email address and password (there is NO need to re-register)
2. From the screen that displays, click on the action / button "Begin Your Child's Full Subscription"
3. Follow the on-screen instructions in selecting the subscription plan and complete the payment process

We thank you in advance for your interest in our program and hope that your child continues to enjoy the challenges of Math!

If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer and are having difficulty opening assignments, please read the document at the following link.

{he found another reason to postpone / skip traveling to India or China!!!!}  - Here is the full article.

Memphis high-tech entrepreneur Bob Compton, producer of the stirring documentary "Two Million Minutes," has been suggesting, in his genial way, that I am a head-in-the-sand ignoramus. This is because I panned his film as alarmist nonsense for suggesting, based on profiles of a grand total of six teenagers, that the Indian and Chinese education systems were superior to what we have here in the much-beleaguered United States. When we debated the issue on CNBC, Bob told me I should get on a plane and see for myself instead of relying on my memories of living in Asia in the 1970s and 1980s and my reading of recent work by other reporters.

Sadly, even in the days when The Washington Post was flush with cash, there was no money to send the education columnist abroad. But I am happy to report I don't have to go because an upcoming book from education scholar James Tooley goes much deeper into the Chinese and Indian school systems than Bob or I ever have, and takes my side. Tooley shows that India and China, despite their economic successes, have public education systems that are, in many ways, a sham.

Tooley's book, "The Beautiful Tree," reveals him to be the kind of traveler who often strays off the main roads, driving official escorts crazy. He covers not only China and India, but also Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya. He wants to discover how the world's poorest people are educating themselves, and surprises himself repeatedly.

His story began in 2000 with a commission from the World Bank's International Finance Corp. to study private schools in a dozen developing countries. The British scholar went to India first, staying in five-star hotels and evaluating the well-funded, exclusive urban private schools for the elite that so impressed Bob Compton. Tooley was restless, however. It bothered him that the schools he examined were getting international assistance despite serving mostly affluent families. He decided to explore the slums of the city of Hyderabad, and discovered back alleys full of a very different species of private school. They were tiny enterprises in converted private homes. They catered to the children of day laborers, rickshaw pullers, peddlers and mechanics. The parents earned only about a dollar a day but were willing to spend two dollars a month to send their children to these makeshift mini-academies.

Tooley wanted to know why. There were free public schools with well-trained, well-paid teachers available to these parents. The problem, the parents told him, was that unlike the little private schools for the poor, which did their best to earn what the parents paid them, the public schools seemed set up for the convenience of teachers, not students or their families. Tooley said parents told him, "Teachers partied at [the public] schools, . . . or taught only one class out of six. . . . But aren't the teachers well-trained? I asked. Yes, they might be very good at studying but they are not very good at teaching."

Could this be? Tooley toured one of the public schools the parents were avoiding. "Upstairs, the first class we visited had 130 students cramped together, all sitting on the floor, there being no desks or chairs anywhere in the school. The teachers are absent today, I was told apologetically," he wrote.

Tooley has since organized large studies of private schooling for the poor, a phenomenon that has escaped much scholarly attention. His 2004 effort to launch such research in China brought him to the back roads of Gansu, one of the poorest provinces. He was told that there were NO private schools in the province, such things being against government policy. With the help of a resourceful Chinese graduate student at Newcastle University, where Tooley was teaching, he wandered off again into places scholars do not go, and found plenty of little private schools like those in India.

These informal schools were often started by young peasants with educational ambitions who could not qualify for, or afford, college. They saw private teaching in their homes as a way to spread literacy, gain local prestige and earn extra money. One of the schools Tooley visited charged $2.25 a term and had 52 students, 38 girls and 14 boys. The overabundance of females stemmed from the fact that although there was a government-run school in the area, it charged four times as much, so families followed the old custom of spending precious cash on educating only their sons.

When Tooley reported his findings to the provincial education bureau in hopes of getting permission to do a full survey of private schooling, the official in charge reacted in a way that was familiar to me. China is very different from what it was when I was the Post correspondent there 30 years ago, but the old bureaucratic traditions live on. The Gansu official regarded Tooley coolly and said, "We will need to be convinced that there is a research project to be done. In your case, it is hard to see how this is possible because the People's Republic of China has achieved universal basic education. This means that public education serves all the poor as well as the rich. So there are no private schools for the poor, because the People's Republic has provided all the poor with public schools. So what you propose to research does not only not exist, it is also a logical impossibility."

That adventure ended happily, at least for Tooley and those of us with hopes for the new China. Tooley's graduate student, needing the research for his doctoral thesis, used his own connections in the bureaucracy and bypassed the recalcitrant official. The study went forward, revealing at least 586 private schools for the poor in Gansu province.

"The Beautiful Tree" is too rich to summarize adequately, but this is what I got out of it: Bob Compton found some excellent science and math schools in India and China, but he barely nicked the surface of the way those countries teach most of their children. American public schools have many flaws, but anyone who reads Tooley's book will never again consider trading what we have here for what passes for universal education in the world's two most populous nations.

Indian Math Online currently allows only one child to be enrolled under 'free trial' for a given parent. The intent of our program is to enable the parent and the child to test drive our program, the mechanics of the software and the rich content of the program.

However, if the Parent insists on having more than one child under the free trial, we recommend the parent create a separate email address and enroll a second child using that second email address.

We warn you that consolidating disparate free trial accounts into one later poses significant technical problems and could be frustrating!

Unlike other programs, canceling subscription to Indian Math Online is quite simple. There are no restrictions on when to cancel or penalties for early cancellation. We also do not offer refund for early cancellation - we have tried to keep the management of the program simple!

If you paid your subscription using your credit card, please follow these steps for canceling your subscription:

1. First Login to Indian Math Online at www.indianmathonline as the parent with your email address and passsword
2. From the screen that displays, click on the menu "My Account" {look at the top of the screen for the menu}
3. From the screen that displays, click on the button / action "Cancel" next to the child for which you wish to cancel the subscription and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the cancellation process.

After you follow the above directions, if you still have questions, please email us at support@indianmathonline.com.

November 3, 2008, 6:09 pm

Start-Up Teaches Math to Americans, Indian-Style

Screen shot of Indian Math Online.

The New York Times recently reported on a study that found, once again, that the United States is failing to develop the math skills of its students, particularly girls, especially compared to other countries where math education is more highly valued.

Indian Math Online is a start-up that aims to take on that disparity by teaching math to American kids using techniques from Indian schools.

Bob Compton, an Indianapolis-based venture capitalist and entrepreneur who co-founded Indian Math Online, hatched the idea when he was producing “Two Million Minutes”, a documentary comparing high school education in India, China and the United States. He realized that Indian teenagers who were the same age as his daughters were three years ahead of them in math.

“If you don’t get mathematics to the highest level you possibly can in high school, your career options shrink dramatically in the 21st century,” Mr. Compton said. “Our society basically tells girls they’re not good at math. I was determined that was not going to happen to my daughters.”

Mr. Compton and Indian Math Online’s co-founder, Suresh Murthy, hired a team of math teachers and software developers in India to build the site and its curriculum. At first, the site was meant for their daughters, but soon friends started asking if they could use it and word gradually spread. It has lessons for students in grades one through 12 and offers several packages for $12.50 to $20 a month.

Two-thirds of the students using it are children of Indian and Chinese immigrants. Mr. Murthy’s children are an example. “He grew up in India, and he worried about his daughters falling behind in the global competition to be educated for the 21st century,” Mr. Compton said.

The site’s curriculum is based on some crucial differences between math education in India and the United States, Mr. Compton said. Math homework in India consists of math problems that students work through, as opposed to the United States, where homework is heavy on reading about math topics in a textbook. Math teachers in India have college or graduate degrees in the topic, he said. Meanwhile, most American students in grades five through eight learn math and science from teachers without degrees or certification in these topics, according to a National Academies report.

Indian Math Online gives students a diagnostic test for their grade level and then breaks down the results by topic area, such as factors or prime numbers. It sends parents a report showing the topics in which their children are strong and weak and sends students learning modules full of practice problems. It will soon add online chat and live tutoring from math teachers in India for an extra fee.

By testing specific subject areas, Indian Math Online picks up weaknesses that a typical school test would miss, Mr. Compton said. When his youngest daughter was in seventh grade, for example, she took the diagnostic test and discovered she missed every question on prime numbers. Yet she had always received good scores on school math tests.

“It identified and diagnosed a missing fundamental math concept that her teachers hadn’t noticed,” he said. “And yet, it would have caught up with her later on, and we wouldn’t have known why she was struggling.”

Mr. Compton said that children of Indian and Chinese parents use the site consistently, but American children often lose interest after a couple months. He compares math to athletics — youths must practice a bit every day to master it. “For some reason, American kids seem to be willing to put in the work with athletics, but not put it in with the one subject that’s going to matter more to their lives than any other activity.”

Here is a story that has been in the news lately...this version is from CNN.com

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Math mistake sees hundreds of teachers laid off

• Story Highlights
• School district miscalculated budget, faced $84 million deficit
  
• Jobs of 40 counselors, assistant principals also cut
  
• Cuts represent 3 percent of district's 11,500 teachers
  
• Job cuts, other measures expected to save district $68 million
  

(CNN) -- The Dallas, Texas, school district laid off hundreds of teachers Thursday to avoid a projected $84 million deficit.

"Today is a day of tremendous sadness throughout the district," Dallas Independent School District Superintendent Michael Hinojosa said in a written statement.

"These teachers and counselors are people who devoted themselves to helping Dallas students, and we will do everything within our power to help them find new jobs."

The district laid off 375 teachers and 40 counselors and assistant principals Thursday, and transferred 460 teachers to other schools within the district.

The deficit was caused by a massive miscalculation in the budget, CNN affiliate WFAA-TV reported.

Children, one crying, crowded Thursday around Mary Crose, a music teacher at San Jacinto Elementary School.

"I've had them since they were in kindergarten," she told The Dallas Morning News, as she wrapped her arms around two of the children. "We've been through a lot at our school, and it's going to be so hard. We need the prayers and support of everyone in Dallas."

"Why do you have to leave?" a girl wailed, through her tears.

"I've been looking at some of the notes they've already written," Crose said, unfolding several pieces of notebook paper. A pink heart had been drawn on one. Words were scrawled on others in crayon.

"My kids are going to lose out because I'm a very good teacher, and so they're going to lose out because they won't have me," a tearful Sandy Keaton, a second-grade teacher at San Jacinto Elementary, told WFAA. Watch teacher's tearful lament »

The 375 teachers represent about 3 percent of the district's more than 11,500 teachers. Last week, 152 employees -- including clerks, office managers and teacher assistants -- voluntarily left their jobs, the district said. On September 29, 62 central staff members lost their jobs.

Voluntarily resignations and transfers spared 88 jobs, WFAA reported.

The district estimates that the job cuts and unfilled vacancies will save $30 million. An additional $38 million will be saved by cutting various programs throughout the district.

The Dallas Independent School District is the nation's 12th largest, with more than 160,000 students.

"The children are going to suffer," Karina Colon, a prekindergarten bilingual teacher at San Jacinto Elementary, told The Dallas Morning News.

Colon kept her job, but was crying for her colleagues. "I should feel happy," she said.

The Dallas Independent School District will hold a job fair Tuesday for all employees who were given notice. More than 110 employers will attend the fair, which was put together by the district, the United Way and the Dallas Regional Chamber.