Have you ever seen something designed for children and thought, “Dang, I wish they’d had that when I was a kid”?
And no, this time I’m not talking about Lego’s latest Milennium Falcon kit. (Although I’m sorry but that thing is wasted on the youth of today, wasted I tell you.)
This time I’m talking about a computer game, a math game, at that.
Anyone who knows me knows that math and I are not friends. Let’s just say I have an OK working knowledge of things mathematical — although my buddies know better than to let me keep the score in darts or golf — too many numbers.
All that being said, while scouting about for a column idea, I came across a release noting the fact that the Newfoundland and Labrador English School District (NLESD) had just added a new math resource to its approved list.
Developed by St. John’s start-up Clockwork Fox, “Zorbit’s Math Adventure” is an adaptive learning system that offers K-3 students engaging math-based games. It packages the play-and-learn approach with a solid list of resources for teachers to help get the most out of their students’ math adventures.
Recently, I sat down with Clockwork Fox CEO Ed J. Martin to find out more.
Clockwock Fox started out as the digital division for N.L. film and television production company Best Boy Productions, founded by Martin’s father, Ed Martin senior.
First came an initial math game, but while kids had fun playing it, the game didn’t exactly help a lot to teach them math, Martin said.
Back to the drawing board, bringing in educators to help craft the new game. This time, they hit pay dirt.
“At this point it was basically an IOS App. We got it tested by Kent State University and the study showed that kids who played the game for as little as one hour a week over a six-week period showed a six-month advancement in their math skills. So, great growth,” Martin says. “They also did a more qualitative survey that showed kids had more positive attitudes towards math as a result of using Zorbit.”
Since then, the company evolved into Clockwork Fox, a stand-alone educational technology startup with a full integrated K-3 math platform designed to accommodate just about any math curriculum used in North America.
Along the way, it teamed up for a couple of years with industry giant Scholastic in a highly beneficial Canadian distribution agreement and today, Zorbit is being used in several school districts across the country.
First up was the Calgary Catholic district in the fall of 2017, which signed a deal with Clockwork Fox to add Zorbit to its resource list. Then came some bigger fish — district-wide partnerships with Ottawa Catholic, the Greater Essex Schoolboard (Windsor, Ont.) and the Prairie South district in Saskatchewan. The latest is NLESD which, like Calgary Catholic, will add the system to its bank of approved resources, leaving the decision to incorporate Zorbit into the classroom up to individual schools.
Add it up and Zorbit will be used by tens of thousands of students across these districts and others where individual schools across the country have added the platform on their own.
Martin chalks up this success, in large part, to the way Zorbit is crafted as more than just a fun way for kids to learn about math.
“When we started out we were very much, ‘we’re a game, we make great games.’ We’re at the stage now where we’re much more than a game,” Martin said. “We really are a whole platform for teachers, and the games are one part of that platform.”
Teachers can use the system’s “dashboard” to keep track of their students’ progress. If the data shows that students are finding a particular area of math difficult, the system will suggest a range of in-class activities to help the students.
“We have this big library of teaching activities, hundreds of activities that are all really closely curated to be really effective to teaching math and helping kids learn. These are all organized by the different curriculum standards, but it’s also linked to the assessment. So the teacher can go in, have the kids play the game, see where the gaps are, click a button and it’ll take you to a list of activities that will help you specifically target that area.”
So, with the latest relationship with NLESD, from here on, the future is all about math for Clockwork Fox.
“Our mission is all about helping to guide better math learning in classrooms and to really help teachers help every student find their love for math. We’re a start-up so, obviously, we think in terms of growth and trying to capture large portions of the market, but I think what we’re really about is having that impact in the classroom.”
Martin admits math sometimes gets a bad rap and sometimes kids develop math anxiety early.
“We really fundamentally believe everyone actually is born with a love of math. It’s just the way we approach it sometimes that makes it seem more challenging,” he said. “We want to eradicate from the English language, ‘I am not a math person.’ … No one ever says ‘I’m not a words person.’”
Mark Vaughan-Jackson is The Telegram’s business editor. He can be reached via email at [email protected].
