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• A Tool For its Time
• College Bound

At first glance, Crown Point High School (CPHS) might seem like a typical high school. But the 2,500 students and 120 faculty members that walk past the Bulldog mascot every day know differently. CPHS exceeds state and national education standards, blurs the lines between classroom instruction and online learning, and integrates college courses into the high school curriculum.

Welcome to hybrid high… and the future of education. Engage, Experience, Excel

Crown Point High School has three strategic initiatives: Engage, Experience and Excel. First year students are quickly engaged to ensure a smooth transi-tion into high school and to establish a plan for lifelong success. Students then participate in effective and relevant educational experiences that incorporate a number of learning technologies and authentic instruction. Finally, upper-level students are given the opportunity to excel and earn college credit through innovative academic partnerships with local universities.

“It would be impossible to meet our goals without academic technology,” explains Dr. Eric Ban, principal of CPHS since 2008. “The most critical technol-ogy for us at this point is BrainHoney because it allows us to enhance our tra-ditional classroom instruction in order to address the needs of the 21st century learner.” Today’s student needs a more flexible schedule to participate in ex-tracurricular activities, demands 24×7 access to class materials, and expects a modern learning experience. “Our teachers have found a number of ways to utilize BrainHoney’s capabilities to their advantage and we are all meeting our goals,” said Ban.

Grass Roots Implementation Aligned with School Initiatives

Jeremy Walker, Latin teacher, Latin Club Sponsor and Director of Learning Technology was given the task of training teachers on BrainHoney. “We didn’t force teachers to use BrainHoney or require them to use the system in any specific way. Everyone clearly understands the overall goals and each teacher who chose to work with BrainHoney found a way to make it work best for them. My job is to make sure that they have the support they need to succeed.”

Over the summer, teachers were introduced to BrainHoney by participating in online collaborations with their colleagues and with Dr. Ban. Once they were acclimated to BrainHoney, each teacher decided how BrainHoney would help them the most.

Adding Online Course Offerings

Dean of Students Chip Pettit spearheaded the initiative for adding online learn-ing to the school’s course offering. “It was a logical next step for us,” said Pettit. Students needed more flexible schedules and wanted a way of getting ahead as part of our Excel initiative.” BrainHoney, with its tight integration of Florida Virtual High School (FLVS) courses made it extremely easy. “And, of course, it really is 21st century learning,” Pettit added.

At CPHS, online courses are offered in three ways: virtual, “inside the walls”, and as supplemental instruction. They have allowed students to get ahead during the summer, enabled students to free up critical time blocks during the school year for extracurricular activities or jobs, and provided an alternative to traditional textbooks in difficult subject areas.

The transition to online learning was smooth for the participating CPHS instructors. “I’m one year from retirement, and wanted to try out online teaching before I called it quits”, said Jan Lowery, a math teacher at CPHS.

“The transition to online learning was smooth for the participating CPHS instructors. “I’m one year from retirement, and wanted to try out online teaching before I called it quits”, said Jan lowery, a math teacher at CPHS. “The transition from teaching face to face to online was really easy with BrainHoney and the embedded FLVS course. I was surprised that I actually got to know my students better teaching online classes through BrainHoney than I did in the classroom.

“I’ve only met one of my online students, even though all of them are here in the building right now”, said Dan Hartman, who is teaching an Economics course both online and in the classroom. “I keep track of the online students in BrainHoney and make sure that they continue to make progress. I’ve offered up face to face support but only one student has taken me up on it so far!”

The integrated Florida Virtual Computer Science course is used as supple-mental material to the existing textbooks because it provides an alternative, more student-friendly approach to the subject and lets the teacher focus more time on the students.

Supplementing Classroom Instruction

Science teachers Jerome Flewelling, Kelly Loving, and Bryan Trippeer are each using BrainHoney to supplement their classroom instruction in unique ways.

Flewelling has aligned his instructional activities to Indiana State Standards and uses frequent checks to track his students’ progress against those stan-dards. “Using BrainHoney to build quizzes for students and then monitoring their individual progress has allowed me to connect with my students like never before,” said Flewelling.

Meanwhile, Loving uses BrainHoney to post all of his class assignments On-line. “I love being able to tell my kids, ‘it’s all up there, go find it,’” said Loving. “And it’s great to have a central place to direct students who were absent and need to make up assignments or catch up on reading.”

For Trippeer, BrainHoney is a great way to reinforce lessons taught in the classroom. Making class notes, worksheets, and videos readily available to his students, Trippeer has seen dramatic improvements in quiz and test scores. “BrainHoney has allowed me to give my students a repeat of the information I’m teaching,” said Trippeer. “It’s the ideal backup.”

Transferring Responsibility: No More Excuses

With BrainHoney, teachers take on the role of facilitator and students are given a degree of control over their education — and that can be a powerful and motivating concept. Students can participate in online discussions with their peers, access course materials and submit assignments without the oversight of a teacher.

“I really enjoy the ability to give students class material on BrainHoney,” said Jeremy Walker. “Students can’t make excuses anymore about why they didn’t complete an assignment or why they didn’t do an assigned reading. Having those things readily available to students allows for more class time and more actual learning can take place during which students are more engaged.”

Dual Credit Courses

As part of the “Excel” initiative, Crown Point has integrated the ACT college readiness standards into its core curriculum and offers dual credit courses through an innovative partnership with Purdue University Calumet and Indiana University Northwest that allows students to earn college credit at a savings of up to 90%.

“BrainHoney allows sponsoring professors at each institution the oppor-tunity to engage with our teachers and enables them to empirically defend the hypothesis that a credit earned by a high school student in a high school classroom is equivalent to a credit earned at the college by a college student,” said Dr. Ban. “BrainHoney’s flexibility and the knowledge of the Agilix team has really helped us create an innovative and scalable model for dual credit in the high school.”

A Look Aheead

What is most exciting for faculty at CPHS is not only what BrainHoney is offer-ing, but how the school will continue to find new ways to utilize the tools.

“As we continue to use BrainHoney we will be able to establish new meth-odologies and processes based on what teachers learn from it,” said Principal Dr. Eric Ban. “And the more our teachers learn, the better our students will continue to learn and achieve their goals.”

CPHS is the new Hybrid High and BrainHoney is the education tool of the future. Together they are changing the landscape of education as we know it.

Met some of the teachers and administrators at CrownPoint High School who are bluring the lines between classroom and online learning to create Hybrid High:

• Chip Pettit
  D e a n  o f  S t u d e n t s
  Added online learning to school offerings and piloting dual credit
• Dr. Eric Ban
  P r i n c i pa l
  Measures outcomes of BrainHoney implementations relative to initiatives
• Jeremy Walker
  L at i n,  D i r ec to r  o f
  L e a r n i n g  T ec h n o logy
  Supplements classroom instruction and supports BrainHoney implementation
• Ryan Collier
  L at i n,  M at h
  Piloted credit recovery with online courses
• Sabrina Shah
  S pa n i s h
  Monitors student progress with online quizzes
• Jan Lowery
  M at h
  Successfully taught online last year before retirement
• Linda Atwood
  F r e n c h
  Encourages student collaboration online
• Kelly Loving
  S c i e n c e
  Organizes class assignments and resources online
• Jerome Flewelling
  S c i e n c e
  Aligns curriculum to standards and monitors student progress with online quizzes

 For more information about Crown Point or how you can create your own “Hybrid High” please contact:

• Dr. Mark Luetzelschwab
  Sr. Vice President Product Development and Marketing
  Agilix Labs, Inc.
  733 E. Technology Ave
  Orem, UT 84097
  pr@agilix.com
  tel: (801) 932 1441

Press and media relations, please contact our PR Agency:

• Dittoe Public Relations
  2815 E. 62nd St. Indianapolis, IN 46220
  tel: 317.202.2280
  fax: 317.202.2290

© 2008 Agilix Labs, Inc.

In 2007, Rebekah Richards joined three other education entrepreneurs with  hopes of making high school education readily available to students over  the Internet. And that they did. In less than three years they have created  one  of  the  most  successful  accredited  virtual  high  schools  in  the  world—m eet The American Academy, Inc. (TAA).

Unlike traditional schools, TAA is a “virtual” school serving high school age and adult students worldwide who want to take online courses to supplement  their high school education or earn a full high school diploma. As Chief Academic Officer and Principal of The American Academy, Richards is responsible for overseeing 15 educators teaching 230 online courses seven days a week from her offices in Salt Lake City, Utah. Under her leadership, the school has also become a leading online education services partner to other public high schools throughout the U.S. looking to offer virtual courses.

Meeting the Needs of the Digital Classroom

Richards  knew  that  the  best  learning  platform  would  provide  the  perfect  combination of openness and flexibility that would conform to the needs of the school — not the other way around. Having previous experience with a host of different learning management systems, Richards was amazed by Brain- Honey’s superior level of functionality.

“We  did  a  pilot  of  Blackboard,  ANGEL,  and  BrainHoney,  running  all  three  platforms separately,” said Richards. “We call Blackboard and ANGEL ‘learning management systems’ but like to refer to BrainHoney as a ‘learning environment’  since  the  focus  is  on  helping  students  learn  and  teachers  teach rather than on the teacher’s ‘management’ of the classroom.”

For example, the gradebook in BrainHoney provides data on student progress and performance, including grades for automatically graded exams, time spent on activities, and links to submitted assignments pending grading. Additionally, BrainHoney allows teachers to easily assess student progress using pace charts that update in real time and by aligning curriculum to state standards.

This type of functionality is paramount to an open-entry, open exit system like the one at TAA. “Running the number of sections that we run with any other platform would be untenable,” said Richards. “Teachers would have to spend hours just clicking!”

Putting the Focus Where it Should be — on the Student

BrainHoney’s functionality is specifically  designed  to  emphasize  a  strong student-teacher relationship.  TAA needed  a  system  that  would  streamline the management and evaluation tasks so that teachers could simply focus on teaching and students on learning. “Research has shown that the success of a student correlates directly to their relationship with the teacher,” said Richards. “So we needed an online system that would allow teachers to focus on instruction rather than on classroom management.”

With BrainHoney, Richards found that the amount of time teachers spent  focusing on students had increased exponentially. “Our teachers don’t have to  comb  through  individual  grade  books  to  get  to  which  assignments  need grading as they had with other learning management systems,” said Richards.

“The system that the Agilix folks have built in BrainHoney really allows teachers to focus on instruction; the management happens automatically. And that is a huge win!”

Transparency in Learning — Administrators and Teachers have  Constant Visibility

Using BrainHoney to track and organize individual student data in real time, teachers can easily target students that may be falling behind or are at risk of not passing a course. This kind of actionable data helps teachers make intelligent, immediate interventions to ensure the success of their students.

With BrainHoney, everyone involved in a student’s life (including teachers,  parents and the students themselves) is provided a detailed look into how the student is performing academically. “BrainHoney provides transparency into what’s  really  going  on  in  a  student’s  education  so  that  teachers  can  make data-driven decisions,” said Richards. “That’s the Holy Grail of online education and of education in general.”

Simple Navigation and Ease of use — That’s the BrainHoney way

The simplicity of BrainHoney made the learning process fluid and enjoyable for both students and teachers. “Just by virtue of bringing our course catalogue into  the  BrainHoney  system,  the  student  experience  has  improved  dramatically,” said Richards. “It was so much easier for students to navigate and to understand what was expected of them at any given time.”

Excessive  features  can  complicate  the  learning  experience  and  hinder  a student’s  ability  to  effectively  learn  the  skills  they  will  need  to  be  competitive in college and in the workforce. “With BrainHoney, there aren’t a lot of features that are distracting,” said Richards. “The beauty of BrainHoney is its simplicity.”

Integration with Other Systems — Smooth as Honey

Since  sessions  are  offered  year-round  at  TAA,  it  was  essential  that  the  integration  of  BrainHoney  be  seamless  so  as  not  to  disrupt  student  learning.

In just one afternoon, TAA’s administration and BrianHoney’s support staffs were able to migrate every student into the BrainHoney learning platform. “We flipped the switch on a Saturday afternoon and let everybody know that we had done it,” said Richards. “But what we found was that many of our students had already logged into BrainHoney before we had time to notify them of the switch and were already up and running on it. That’s just how easy and fast it was.”

From an administrative standpoint, Richards needed to get teachers to learn the new system quickly so that they could continue to provide their students with a quality education. What Richards found was that the learning curve with BrainHoney is almost nonexistent. “It takes me 10 minutes to train a teacher in  the  technology  of  teaching  using  BrainHoney’s  online  environment,”  said Richards.

Scalability and Flexibility — How Sweet it is

With nearly 900 students currently enrolled in TAA classes (and growing every day), it is important to have a flexible system that can adapt to the ever changing  needs  of  the  21st  century  student.  “The openness  of  BrainHoney makes it easy for us to cater to the ever-changing needs of our students” said Richards.

What’s Next?

In  the  Fall  of  2009,  TAA  initiated  a  pioneering  student  recovery  program  in which students can take TAA classes to earn a high school diploma from their local school district. “Our students expressed a need and BrainHoney did all of the heavy lifting to quickly change our business model to accommodate them,” said Richards. “BrainHoney responded to each new issue with a solution that met the needs of both students and teachers.” In the future, as TAA and the student recovery program continue to thrive, BrainHoney will evolve with them and continue to meet their needs.

Given the rapid success of The American Academy, it is easy to consider the  partnership  between  TAA  and  BrainHoney  an  exemplary  model  of  innovative  business  supported  by  flexible  technology.  As TAA  demonstrates,  today’s schools don’t have to be built from bricks — they can be built by clicks. And with a partner like BrainHoney, the future of online education is looking sweeter and sweeter.

For more information about Crown Point or how you can create your own “Virtual High” please contact:

• Dr. Mark Luetzelschwab
  Sr. Vice President Product Development and Marketing
  Agilix Labs, Inc.
  733 E. Technology Ave
  Orem, UT 84097
  pr@agilix.com
  tel: (801) 932 1441

Press and media relations, please contact our PR Agency:

• Dittoe Public Relations
  2815 E. 62nd St. Indianapolis, IN 46220
  tel: 317.202.2280
  fax: 317.202.2290

© 2008 Agilix Labs, Inc.

The Making of a National Curriculum: Setting Standards

by Cheri Lucas

In striving for more accountability in schools, policy-makers keep bumping up against the same problem: a lack of consistency between what we expect children to learn from state to state. If there is no nationally accepted curriculum, then there can be no national standards by which to measure student learning. A new project called the Common Core State Standards Initiative is out to change all that, with a set of proposed standards in math and language arts for kindergarten through grade 12. The goal of these standards is to establish more uniform expectations for students across the nation, in order to make them more college and career ready. Forty-eight states are involved in the effort, led by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the Council of Chief State School Officers, Achieve, ACT, and the College Board.

This is the first step in what will be a long process to reach an agreed upon set of national standards, but, according to the Parent Teacher Association, it’s a step in the right direction. “The great benefit of the standards is that they will ensure a level playing field among states, school districts, and schools that will give all students the opportunity to be ready for their college and career,” said PTA President Charles J. Saylors.

Some believe that this will lead to greater access for parents. “Right now, parents are informed of progress, but not part of the instructional conversation,” said Mark Luetzelschwab, PhD, the senior vice president of product development and marketing at BrainHoney, an organization that assists teachers in organizing lesson plans, tracking student progress, and ensuring they’re teaching to state standards. “Having access to these standards makes it easier for you to be part of the instructional conversation. If you knew what objectives your child is covering this week, and were provided relevant information for these objectives, you could be significantly more involved in your child’s learning,” said Luetzelschwab.

What would these proposed standards mean for your child? In language arts, your child would be expected to show mastery in reading, writing, speaking and listening – interrelated skills needed for success not just in college, but also in the workplace. Students must read and evaluate literature; the document cites the novel Pride and Prejudice as an “illustrative text,” or an example of material that shows the level of complexity your child must tackle when she reads. (The document authors chose the Jane Austen novel as exemplary material because of its multiple plotlines, style and word choice particular to a time period, and subtleties in the characters’ relationships.) Other illustrative texts include a Walt Whitman passage, a sample business memo, nonfiction (or “informational text”), and multimedia sources, such as a web version of the front page of the New York Times.

“Text analysis is a critical skill, and these are all valid examples of text that need to be analyzed in college and the workplace,” said Luetzelschwab. Other material he suggests for textual analysis includes “threaded” discussions, email chains, and disconnected conversations – day-to-day correspondence your child will encounter in college and in the 21st-century workplace.

In mathematics, students would be expected to develop a deep understanding and mastery of linear and exponential functions, familiarity with other families of functions, and apply algebraic, modeling, and problem solving skills – but not develop in-depth technical mastery. According to the authors’ research, the U.S. curriculum in math is a “mile wide and an inch deep,” compared to standards in other countries in which students master fewer topics. Surveys of college faculty show the need to move away from high school math courses that survey advanced topics, for example, and toward a deeper understanding and higher mastery of fewer, but more fundamental skills at the core of advanced mathematics.

This proposed shift in mathematics means that your child would be expected to have a solid grasp of essential math concepts, giving her the foundation she needs to apply knowledge to real-world problems. “One of the most critical skills we can teach is the connection of the abstract world of math to the physical world,” said Luetzelschwab. ‘It’s very different to ask someone to find the maximum y-value of a quadratic function than to ask them to figure out how high they can throw a baseball based on measurements – and then make them validate it, model it, and find out why or why not the model and reality match up.”

While language arts and math standards are divided into sections “for the sake of clarity,” the document says, the skills outlined are truly interrelated. Reading, writing, and speaking and listening, for example, are modes of communication applied at once. But while all skills are interconnected, breaking down the objectives into categories is reasonable, said Luetzelschwab, to simplify the process of measuring if the objectives are being met. “However, just because the objectives are organized in this manner does not mean the curriculum should also be organized in these neat little buckets,” he added. With these standards, your child’s teachers should align their activities to standards from multiple categories and implement a multi-model strategy that includes observation, homework, quizzes, and standardized assessments to track her progress, he suggested.

According to the draft, students who meet the core standards are ready to compete and collaborate in a global, media-saturated environment. “The skills outlined are clearly aligned to skills that modern employers are looking for and the skills that are required to excel in college-level courses,” said Luetzelschwab. But what’s lacking, he added, are objectives addressing cooperation, teamwork, leadership, information retrieval and analysis, creativity, and problem solving.

While the proposed Common Core Standards help define what your child is learning, standards alone do not change things, cautions Luetzelschwab. “If you look at improvement in five steps – define, measure, analyze, improve, and control – the standards provide the most critical ‘define’ step,” he said.

So, what happens next? Research- and evidence-supported feedback from the public is being accepted until October 21st. After this, the standards will be reviewed by a committee. To put in your two cents on the standards initative, click here.

Cheri Lucas was a writing aide at Corte Madera Middle School for six years. She is currently working as a freelance writer and editor in San Francisco.

Visit Education.Com

Listed in the October 2009 issue of Learning Magazine

BrainHoney is a free, personalized learning platform that helps teachers track grades, differentiate instruction, and monitor students’ progress against state standards. It consists of a gradebook, objective mastery charts, automated assessments, assignment tracking, online discussions, and other learning management tools for grades K-12. Drag and drop standards into your schedule to build curriculum maps. Register at www.brainhoney.com.

Manage Classroom Online

BrainHoney is a new online service from Agilix Labs that offers one place for K-12 teachers to organize and manage all their important information. It provides and electronic grade book, curriculum mapping, formative assessments, dashboard data and more. The site is pre-populated with every state’s eucation standards, so teachers can align their coursework and see (and share) how their students are faring prior to statewide tests.

For more information visit: brainhoney.com/about.html

For more information from this media outlet visit: Tech & Learning

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

BrainHoney Delivers Free Personalized Learning Platform

Orem, UT, June 26, 2009 ‐ Agilix Labs, Inc announced the release of BrainHoney – a free personalized learning platform that combines critical elements of an online gradebook, state‐standards alignment, curriculum mapping, formative assessment and learning management into a single teacher‐friendly platform.

“All teachers should have free access to the best student‐centered, standards‐ aligned 21st century teaching and learning tools available” said Curt Allen, CEO of Agilix. “Every classroom, blended, and online teacher in the country can benefit from BrainHoney – and it only takes a minute to sign up.”

“BrainHoney helps teachers know what their students know and enables intelligent intervention – laser‐focused, timely response to the students who need it the most.” said Dr. Mark Luetzelschwab, Senior Vice President of Agilix. “For the first time, teachers can easily align ALL types of activities – projects, websites, assignments, direct instruction, etc ‐ to state standards, and then report progress against those standards without any additional effort other than maintaining a traditional gradebook”

“BrainHoney is an exceptional learning platform” said Rebekah Richards, Principal and Chief Academic Officer of The American Academy Online High School. “Teachers save time and effort while being more responsive to student needs. The BrainHoney dashboard gives teachers the data required to make intelligent interventions to help students succeed.”

Teachers at MaryMount School who got a four‐week sneak preview of BrainHoney were excited about BrainHoney: “Wonderful”, “BrainHoney is a magical system!”,”We want BrainHoney forever!”

“One of the most exciting things about BrainHoney is the way that the content and assessments are aligned using the objectives as the intermediary.” Said Dr. David Wiley, professor at BYU and founder of the Open High School of Utah. “BrainHoney allows you to do the kinds of things a tutor would do that you could never do [before] with a classroom of 30 students.”

“We are looking for innovative solutions, and we see BrainHoney as one of those innovations. It is going to change the world.” said Robyn Bagely, chair of Parents for Choice in Education.

BrainHoney is a modular system developed on the assumptions that students learn at their own pace, learning takes place both inside and outside of a classroom in many different forms, and that all learning can be aligned to objectives. It consists of a seamless integration of curriculum mapping for all 50 states, a gradebook, objective mastery charts, automated assessments, assignment tracking, online discussions, and other learning management tools. The platform is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese.

BrainHoney is free to all K‐12 public school teachers in the United States of America. Teachers join BrainHoney by selecting their school on BrainHoney’s website, then choosing their grade level and/or subjects. The state standards aligned to those subjects (specific to the teachers’ locations) are automatically connected to their gradebooks and teachers simply drag and drop standards onto their schedules to build curriculum maps. Teachers then add activities, assignments and assessments to their schedule; BrainHoney automatically aligns these to state standards to generate views of standards coverage and student objective mastery.

Schools can upgrade to the BrainHoney School Suite, which enables the administrator dashboard and daily drill‐down reports of individual and aggregate student progress against state standards, allows integrated registration and data exchange with student information systems, provides single‐sign‐on through SAML, Active Directory, SharePoint, Live@Edu, CAS, or others, and allows customized login pages and user interfaces.

More information can be found at http://www.brainhoney.com or at booth 3264 at NECC.

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About  Agilix  Labs,  Inc

Agilix Labs, Inc. is transforming education through BrainHoney, its personalized learning platform. BrainHoney (www.brainhoney.com), the latest offering from the creative team that has delivered innovative educational solutions for nearly a decade, provides student‐centered, objective‐aligned learning that improves student achievement, increases teacher productivity, delivers administrative insight, and enables parental involvement. Based on an open technology architecture, BrainHoney is the only learning solution that works seamlessly across classroom, hybrid, and online environments. Individual teachers, schools, and districts can experience the power of BrainHoney either online at www.brainhoney.com or through a growing network of education resellers. Agilix delivers its software applications to hundreds of thousands of users in countries worldwide. Founded in 2001 by the team that created Folio and MyFamily.com, Agilix is based in Orem, Utah, USA. For more information please visit http://www.agilix.com.

For More Information

Contact:

• Mark Luetzelschwab
• Agilix Labs, Inc
• (801) 932 1441 (P)
• (801) 437 2052 (F)
• pr@agilix.com
• 733 E. Technology Ave
• Orem, UT 84097
• http://www.agilix.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

 BrainHoney, not LMS, powers progressive online high school

Orem, UT, May 30, 2009 — The innovative American Academy Online High School (TAAS) announced the selection of Agilix’s BrainHoney – an innovative alternative to a learning management system (LMS) – as their core learning application.

BrainHoney provides individualized learning and ongoing standards-aligned formative assessment for classroom, hybrid, and online students. Teachers and administrators efficiently and effectively track individual student progress. The innovative design incorporates a gradebook, content, assessments, state-standards, and assignments with tools that make it easy to teach students across multiple sections, each working at their own pace.

“BrainHoney is great!”, said Rebekah Richards, SVP of Academic Affairs and Principal of TAAS. “My teachers – who have previously used all major LMS systems – can’t thank me enough for making the switch to BrainHoney. It saves them time, effort, and they are much more organized.”

Not only are her teachers pleased that they have tools to make their job easier and more effective, Ms. Richards also has a much better grasp of the day-to-day status of her students and teachers: “Best of all, I get the data I need to make sure my school stays on course. We can now truly deliver our school-as-a-service model as efficiently and effectively as possible.”

As a modular system, BrainHoney fit in easily with the TAAS enterprise technology. Built on web-services technology, “BrainHoney is an open, extensible platform with complete API access. Integration with our student records systems has been easy and straightforward.” said Gregg Rosann, CTO of TAAS.

“We are thrilled to have such an innovative group like the American Academy as one of our partners” said Mark Luetzelschwab, SVP of Agilix. “They have a great, easy-to-implement student-centered solution that serves both individuals needing a degree and high schools who need to supplement their offerings with online courses.”

For additional information or to learn how BrainHoney can help you integrate formative assessment and individualized learning at your school, college, or online program, contact sales@agilix.com.

For additional information on how to partner with The American Academy Online High School to supplement your high school offerings, contact sales@theamericanacademy.com.

 About Agilix Labs, Inc

Agilix delivers formative assessment and individualized learning solutions based on the belief that the future of education is an equitable, learner-centric, objective-aligned, lifelong learning model that adapts to a changing world.

Agilix’s most recent product – BrainHoney – is a quantum leap forward in student-centered, objective-aligned learning that will enable the shift to individualized learning in classrooms, schools, colleges, and online learning programs.

Agilix was founded in 2001 by the same core team that created Folio and MyFamily.com/Ancestry.com – one of the largest online communities in the world with over 16M registered members.

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Contact:

• Mark Luetzelschwab
• Agilix Labs, Inc
• (801) 932 1441 (P)
• (801) 437 2052 (F)
• pr@agilix.com
• 733 E. Technology Ave
• Orem, UT 84097
• http://www.agilix.com

The Ultimate Learning Platform Encourages Data-Driven Instruction and Alignment with State Standards

 Orem, UT – (August 01, 2009) — Agilix Labs, Inc announces the release of BrainHoney – a free personalized learning platform that combines critical elements of an online grade book, state-standards alignment, curriculum mapping, formative assessment and learning management into a single teacher-friendly platform.

 BrainHoney was developed with the assumptions that students learn at their own pace, that learning takes place both inside and outside of the classroom and that learning should be aligned with objectives. It seamlessly integrates curriculum mapping for all fifty states, providing teachers with a grade book, objective mastery charts, automated assessments, assignment tracking and online discussions.

 “We truly care about education and have listened to what teachers want,” said Dr. Mark Luetzelschwab, senior vice president of Agilix. “We created every aspect of BrainHoney to fill the needs of educators teaching in the 21^st century classroom. We are offering our solution free of charge to all K -12 school teachers. In our eyes, they are our country’s most valuable resource, and we only wish to serve, not sell to them.”

State standards are aligned with all course subjects and grade levels so teachers may easily track standards coverage and student objective mastery. After signing up, teachers simply select their schools, choose grade levels and subjects then drag and drop standards onto their schedules, building their curriculum maps for the semester. This allows teachers to save time and effort while being more responsive to their students’ needs.

 “BrainHoney is an exceptional learning platform,” said Rebekah Richards, principal and chief academic officer of the American Academy of Online High School. “The dashboard gives teachers the data required to make intelligent interventions to help students succeed.”

For more information on BrainHoney’s unique learning platform or to sign up, free of charge, please visit www.brainhoney.com.

 ###

 About BrainHoney

Agilix Labs, Inc. is transforming education through BrainHoney, its personalized learning platform. It is the latest offering from the creative team that has delivered innovative educational solutions for nearly a decade, providing student-centered, objective-aligned learning that improves student achievement, increases teacher productivity, delivers administrative insight, and enables parental involvement. Based on an open technology architecture, BrainHoney is the only learning solution that works seamlessly across classroom, hybrid, and online environments. Agilix delivers its software applications to hundreds of thousands of users in countries worldwide. Founded in 2001 by the team that created Folio and MyFamily.com, Agilix is based in Orem, Utah, USA. For more information please visit http://www.agilix.com. For media inquiries, contact Laura Colar of Dittoe Public Relations at 317.202.2280 X20 or laurac@dittoepr.com. 

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Welcome to an interview with Dr Mark Luetzelschwab, of BrainHoney.com, a new learning management system that state standards into the entire teaching and learning process, which, in the past, has been a stumbling block as developers attempt to create K-12 courses for learners in different schools, or as colleges develop Advanced Placement courses for individuals in high schools in located in different states. Brainhoney automatically creates a curriculum map template, populates all of a person’s state’s standards, gradebook, and mastery chart. It is all web-based.
 
1. What is your name and your connection to elearning?

(Originally Pulbliehd by the E-Learning QueenMonday, August 24, 2009–Visit her!)