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Perhaps, but we have been working awfully hard to produce a final build of a software suite called Epaati, that will assist teaching children from both grade 2 and grade 6 (8 respectively 12 years old) maths and English.

He couldn't find any software to keep those paper check marks on a smartphone, so he wrote his own app about two years ago, in a two-week burst of coding. He called his task-specific app Attendance and put it on the iTunes store for other professors, charging a couple of bucks (and adding features as colleagues suggested them). So far he has earned about $20,000 from the more than 7,500 people who have virtually shouted "Here."

A professor at the University of California at Davis is asking drivers to help him with his research on roadkill by logging any dead squirrel, possum, or other critter they see along the highway. At first he asked people to write down the location and details about the carcass on a scrap of paper and upload the information to a Web site when they got home. Then the research team built an iPhone app to let citizen-scientists participate at the scene. It's more convenient, and it gives the researchers better data, because a phone's GPS feature can send along exact location coordinates

That's just one of many research projects adding smartphone interfaces to so-called "crowd science," in which the public is invited to add structured data to an online database. "For crowd science, I think it's definitely the next step

The underlying principle is simple: Students learn math by doing math, not by listening to someone talk about doing math. Interactive computer software, personalized on-demand assistance, and mandatory student participation are the key elements of success.

What is critical is the pedagogy: eliminating lecture and using interactive computer software combined with personalized, on-demand assistance.

Students spend the bulk of their course time doing math problems rather than listening to someone talk about doing them.

Sixth grade: Sixty-nine students, 1-2 hours a week, 45 percent passed. Of those who did not pass, four students gained more than a year’s progress in math on the TAKS test. Sevents grade: Twenty-six students 1-2 hours a week, 65 percent passed. Of those who did not pass, 3 students gained more than a year’s progress in math on the TAKS test. Eighth grade: Sixty students 1-2 hours a week, 63 percent passed. Of those who did not pass, 12 students gained more than a year’s progress in math on the TAKS test. After the second administration of the TAKS test, the total eighth grade pass rate rose from 74 percent to 86 percent. The only real difference was the use of Ascend Math for three weeks, where students worked six to nine hours a week before the second administration of the test. We had a few eighth grade students who have never passed a TAKS math in middle school or their entire academic lives until this year. We attribute this to the use of Ascend Math.

A major aspect was getting students to work on the program with fidelity. After meeting with students and parents, a rigorous schedule was implemented, along with automatic daily reminder phone calls and second calls to parents to inform them of the next day’s schedule. Students who missed a tutorial session are assigned a makeup day.

Parental buy in was important!