Pearson reportedly announced it has developed a series of research based, customized math programs for Florida, including the new Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley enVisionMATH Florida for K-8 to meet the requirements of more than 2.5 million students in each of Florida’s 67 school districts.

Officials at the company claimed that it is helping educators who are focused on selecting 21st century learning materials that teachers will use beginning in the 2010 school year for the next six years to provide the foundation for students’ success in college and in their careers.

“The new enVisionMATH Florida is directly correlated to Florida's Next Generation Sunshine State Standards,” said Dr. Francis “Skip” Fennell, co-author of enVisionMATH Florida, Professor in the Education Department at McDaniel College, Maryland, and ex-president of the NCTM.” enVisionMATH Florida takes the ‘big ideas’ in the next generation Sunshine State standards and presents them in a scope and sequence that is proven to provide the conceptual learning and problem-solving skills that will put young learners on the path to success in math.”

The company said that in preparation for introducing standards-aligned math programs in grades K-8, the state has inaugurated a new set of guidelines for teaching math as part of its “Next Generation Sunshine State Standards” benchmarks that are based and built on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Curriculum Focal Points for grades PreK-8.

Pearson said that the tools within the program are based on decades of widely accepted teaching norms so that teachers can provide a solid foundation in math for all levels of students and easily recognize when intervention is needed.

“This is especially important to assure that Florida’s growing population of English language learners receives the same opportunity for quality instruction as their peers,” said Fenell. “Florida shines as the poster child for developing new math standards based on NCTM’s Curriculum Focal Points.”

Pearson claims that its new educative tools, especially enVisionMATH Florida, help students to grasp the fundas of algebra in kindergarten itself so that they grow up with a sound foundation and preparation to effortlessly handle higher level math in middle school, high school and college.

“The state clearly has recognized the importance of emphasizing the key areas of math by reducing its benchmarks from over 80, to an average of 17 clearly defined standards for math achievement per grade,” said Fenell.

Recently Milton-Union School District in West Milton, Ohio, had reportedly selected Pearson’s Web-based student data management solution PowerSchool Premier for implementation by fall 2009 to support nearly 100 teachers and more than 1640 students.

In terms of Web based schooling solutions, a survey of technology leaders for kindergarten through to grade 12 (K-12) educational institutions at the 2009 Consortium of School Networking, or CoSN, Conference reportedly unearthed that 80 percent of respondents were interested in desktop virtualization as an implementable solution in school classrooms.

The survey also reportedly indicated more than 45 percent of respondents wanted delivery of applications and resources to the right students at the right time; more than 43 percent desired simple delivery of semester, quarter or course-based instructional applications and resources; and, 42 percent of respondents demanded reduction of IT costs by extending the lifecycle of existing hardware; and, 42 percent preferred if IT personnel had more time to work on other projects.

Don’t forget to check out TMCnet’s White Paper Library, which provides a selection of in-depth information on relevant topics affecting the IP Communications industry. The library offers white papers, case studies and other documents which are free to registered users.

Vivek Naik is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of Vivek's articles, please visit his columnist page.

Edited by Erin Harrison

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