Elevated Math

e, review instruction they are struggling to understand and skip areas they know – all with the swipe of a finger. They no longer have to wait for a teacher or be embarrassed. Math is now fun! These lessons had their start in 2001 when Joe Irby formed BestQuest Teaching Systems and began creating these lessons with the conviction that all children can learn when provided with the appropriate tools, effective instruction, and a supportive environment. Dr. Maryscott Glasgow, a classroom teacher and university educator, joined the company the next year to direct the production of Algebra’scool and Math’scool educational software. These programs are now used in over forty states, in more than 1,500 school districts and 11,000 classrooms. Every year over a million students learn math from lessons in these programs. Their goals are to teach higher order thinking skills and address every learning style (audio, visual, and kinesthetic) in order to reach all students, even those who are struggling. They strive to create lessons that improved the competitive edge of students, engaged their senses and aroused their interest. Twenty writers and editors worked on creating the scripts for these lessons. These math experts included mathematicians, university professors, teacher educators, secondary classroom teachers, middle school classroom teachers, and upper elementary classroom teachers. They came from all areas of the country—the Northeast, the South, the West, and the Midwest. The production took over four years and involved three teams of animators and art direction from top Hollywood talent. Professional voice-over talent kept the instruction clear and precise. The programs have earned over a dozen media and education awards, including the most prestigious award in educational publishing, the Golden Lamp Award. When Apple introduced the iPad, Lewis Hall and Elevated Lab Press acquired the rights to adapt the lessons for this device. Gleaning the feedback from teachers who have used these programs, Lewis and Maryscott (Scottie) re-edited, revised and updated the lessons, adding enhancements, such as a white-board on which to work out problems, assessment tests, and over 15,000 interactions to give the student more immediate feedback. Together with the technology in the iPad, these enhanced lessons resulted in an educational tool that has been unsurpassed in quality and teaching effectiveness, at less than 1/10th the original cost. There are approximately 120+ hours of instruction in the Elevated Math App with 70 hours of quality animation, by far the largest app in the iTunes Store. Besides grouping the lessons into the original math programs and math standards (numbers and operations, geometry, measurement, algebra, data analysis and probability), they have created separate bundles that align with the National Core Standard Curricula. Working with top college entrance exam tutors, they have created other bundles of lessons that are highly relevant to helping raise SAT and ACT test scores. Also included in Elevated Math are a series of career-oriented live-action videos that help answer the frequent question: “Why do we need to learn this stuff?” These short documentaries focus on individuals who are using math in their jobs and include a jazz musician, a stunt pilot, an animator, a landscape architect, a chocolatier, and fifteen others.