Like other innovators in my district, I recognized that technology can be a very effective tool to enhance learning.
New Haven, CT (PRWEB) March 18, 2014
Connecticut-based C8 Sciences, developer and marketer of a sophisticated brain cross-training program known as ACTIVATE™, announced the use of its cognitive program by students at Christa McAuliffe Middle School in Palm Beach County, Florida. ACTIVATE™, as designed and developed by the leading neuroscientists at the Yale School of Medicine, targets the eight most critical areas of executive function. These categories include sustained attention, working memory, speed of processing, response inhibition, cognitive flexibility, category formation, pattern recognition and multiple simultaneous attention.
With both a limited budget and time to access computers, Christa McAuliffe Middle School guidance counselor, Alwynne Lamp, was looking for a way to improve the sustained attention, working memory, response inhibition and cognitive flexibility of the students in her school. “When our students were unable to access computers due to testing, several of them liked the ACTIVATE™ program so much that they kept playing at home, until it would not let them progress any further,” explained Lamp. “They were disappointed that they couldn’t continue until the testing window was over, though were also eager to see the NIH Toolbox results to demonstrate progress.”
At the middle school level, according to C8 Sciences representatives, the goal of the ACTIVATE™ program is to increase the students’ ability to plan, organize, pay attention to details and manage time while dealing with “increased academic expectations and class schedules.” As the school guidance counselor, Lamp used the technology developed by C8 Sciences and Yale to focus on the neuroplasticity of the brain to improve “executive function” among her students. “Like other innovators in my district, I recognized that technology can be a very effective tool to enhance learning,” Lamp added.
Beyond Lamp and her Palm Beach middle school, guidance counselors across America have reported benefitting from the adoption of the ACTIVATE™ program because of the way it breaks down the executive function of students they counsel into basic cognitive functions. With this information, counselors can provide students the fundamental tools, resources and guidance they need to be successful. Additionally, administrators can easily see how the program is being used via real-time progress alerts and usage breakdown.
The ACTIVATE™ protocol fuses a game-like computer program and adaptive physical education curriculum that feeds this aforementioned real-time data to teachers and administrators on the exact status of a student’s EF skills at any given time. The teachers and caregivers access this data utilizing “teacher dashboards” which lets them track progress at a glance – further, a newsfeed alerts teachers and caregivers of vital information that they can then use to make decisions as they provide a “differentiated education.”
“With the increasing demand for proof and substantiating recommendations and decisions on placement, many educators and administrators such as myself love the extensive tracking built into C8 Sciences’ ACTIVATE™ program,” concludes Lamp. “Strengths of the students using the program are easily recognized while weaknesses are made visible, allowing our educators to increase student achievement for all the children that they serve.”
For more information about C8 Sciences and its ACTIVATE™ program, visit http://www.c8sciences.com.