Press Release

Dallas, Texas — April 14, 2010 — A new study by the Henrietta Szold Institute, the National Institute for Research in the Behavioral Sciences in Jerusalem, shows that students who used an interactive core curriculum designed specifically for one-to-one computing classrooms achieved higher gains in reading language arts and mathematics than students in comparable schools using traditional teaching methods and curriculum.

 

The study examined the educational impact of a digital teaching platform and curriculum system, called Time To Know, on students in two public elementary schools in Israel. One was an inner city school with many students from low-income households or state-run group homes, and the other was located in an upper middle class neighborhood. The study also included two comparison schools with similar demographics and achievement levels.

 

Students in the treatment and comparison schools took a pretest at the beginning of the 2008-09 school year and took the same test as a post-test at the end of the year. Fifth grade students who had used Time To Know for two years showed higher gains in their test scores in all three subject areas — Hebrew, English, and mathematics — than fifth grade students in the comparison schools.  The gains in reading language arts were particularly significant.  In the Time To Know schools, students achieved average gains of 21.7 points in reading language arts in English.   In contrast, students in the comparison schools achieved gains of 10.3 points in the same subjects.

 

The study is welcome news to educators in the United States where several states and school districts have invested in one-to-one computing models — which provide every student and teacher access to his or her own personal portable computer  — but have achieved only mediocre results. Many experts believe the disappointing outcomes are due, in part, to implementations that have been driven more by the technology than by how the technology will be used to improve the quality of teaching and learning.

 

“When properly implemented, one-to-one computing can deliver great benefits to K-12 educators and students. Unfortunately, most implementations have languished from a lack of well-defined academic goals and teacher buy-in, inadequate professional development, and a paucity of core curriculum programs that exploit the strengths of 1:1 computing,” said Tom Greaves, co-author of America’s Digital Schools 2008, an authoritative, wide ranging study on education technology trends. “The Time To Know digital teaching platform was designed to overcome all those deficiencies, and the Israeli study offers clear evidence that it does.”

 

“Measuring learning quantitatively is critical to understanding the educational value of any new approach to teaching and learning,” said Ziv Carthy, general manager of Time To Know.  “With Time To Know, the teacher guides the class using an engaging curriculum that is integrated with tools for classroom management, planning, assessment and collaboration. The results from this independent study show that students clearly respond to this approach, and that Time To Know had a very positive impact on their learning. We look forward to seeing similar results in U.S. elementary schools as they implement the Time To Know digital teaching platform and begin to transform teaching and learning in their classrooms.”

 

Introduced in Israel in 2007 and launched in the United States this school year, Time To Know is a complete, interactive curriculum system designed specifically for today’s one-to-one computing classrooms. By creating a new educational product category, the Digital Teaching Platform, Time To Know is helping school districts improve the quality of teaching and learning, while fully realizing the vision of one-to-one computing. For more information, please visit www.timetoknow.com or call 888-559-6560.

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