Dreambox Android Tv Box

[Arridano Tillo]

DisclaimerI do not work for any edtech companies and I have no desire to work for any edtech companies. I have no skin in this game. I make absolutely no money off any apps and plan on keeping it that way. This disclaimer means I have nothing to disclaim and you are getting my straight-up opinion here.

The modeling is just off the hook. I took these screenshots while Maya (3rd grade) was working in a context for place value. She needed to think of 4 different ways to pack 703 objects among cases of 100, boxes of 10, and loose 1s.

I have found that BrainPop has THE BEST games. They seem to have set their benchmark really high when it comes to conceptual development, flexibility, and trial and error. Plus, their assortment and depth of videos rocks too!

Great post! However, my two cents here is that there is a distinction between facts based skill apps (which still have a place) and apps that are more conceptual and use models like dreambox. There are also other factors like cost (is the app free?) and what kind of data can be accessed by the teacher. It would be great to gather a list of desirable features for apps in general and then rate them based on these features. And the toilet bowl in junk pile (Sumdog app) is hilarious to students.

Thanks, Eric. There are lots of factors that could be considered. Engagement, graphics and design, whether students interact with each other, whether the teacher gets useful formative assessment, whether the program adapts, etc. And I do consider all those factors when thinking about which apps and programs are really fantastic. This is where desmos is charting all kinds of new territory. Amazing.

I love Dragon Box as well. My 12 year old completed all the levels already (wish there were more!) and even my 5 year old can do the first few levels, which is gearing him towards algebraic reasoning for later ?

Disclaimer: I trust teachers. I do work for many edtech companies and I have no desire to make money off any apps and plan on keeping it that way. This disclaimer means I have a lot of experience playing with interactive learning tools and you are getting my straight-up opinion here.

I think many great products were suggested in the comments, but here are a few more.

Duolingo is excellent.

Desmos is transforming math education.

Dreambox does make good learning tools.

Dragonbox won the internet in 2014.

Lab4U is putting lab experiments on student mobile devices.

Slice Fractions and Refraction are the best things that have happened to fraction education since Jaime Escalante brought the butcher knife to class in Stand and Deliver.

GlassLabGames is the Steam of educational games.

Graphite is the Google of educational tools.

code.org and the Hour of Code has made algorithmic literacy a educational policy point.

THANK YOU! I LOVE that you address this issue! Self-confession: I USED to be a timed math fact teacher. I stopped because I saw the anxiety it was causing and I never noticed a true increase in fluency.

Tracy, I think you are pretty much on target. As the founder of an edtech company, i constantly struggle to ensure that our designs are first and foremost, educationally sound. The graphics and audio should be engaging to students but not distracting or confusing. Ideally, the graphics and audio will reinforce memory and understanding of the key concepts, not distract from it. It helps that I spent a decade in the video game industry first where I developed Playstation games. Oddly, I had the same struggle there. Our games were fun because of the gameplay with the graphics and audio designed to enhance the experience. We were against gee whiz graphics that got in the way of gameplay.

I wanted to ask you specifically about Khan Academy. I use it extensively with my high school students and occasionally with my six year old daughter. I believe it meets all of your critical requirements. It is free like Bunny Times and even more comprehensive than Dreambox, going all the way from Kindergarten through a decent amount of college+ level math and includes topics outside math as well. I do not think it is ideal but I really think the philosophy is pretty reasonable and the vision for the use of Khan Academy matches my own. I use for a high school Algebra 2 class in place of 50% of my paper homework. It is excellent for developing fluency and supports a classroom approach with a focus on conceptual understanding and modeling.

I know you are approaching this from an Elementary context. Unfortunately, I have limited exposure to elementary so I am going to offer up a couple quizzes from high school that illustrate conceptual understanding:

Shift and Scale Parabolas

Summary: Transforming Functions

I give students space to develop a conception of vertex form for quadratics as a capturing of translations and dilations of y=x^2. The in-class work here is significant in terms of deepening student understanding of a function, of transformations in general and of looking for and making use of structure. The content is very cognitively demanding and most students need a lot of practice to be able to develop the appropriate number sense and abstract reasoning. I believe that these two quizzes support that sense.

It does make me wonder though how different groups would prioritize the various criteria you listed (and which others including Eric Milou) added to. For example, would a game that meets your criteria but is boring be more productive than one that is entertaining but has a timer. It would be lovely to have a more comprehensive database since it is so time consuming to do what you did.

In my first year of teaching, I did a unit of work where students had to play a wide range of division maths games online and evaluate them. I asked them to consider how these games helped them learn division facts. The students were enthusiastic about the project (our teacher is letting us play maths games in class!) We all came to the conclusion that to play the fluency games successfully, you needed to know the maths first.

At the beginning of the year we did a timed pretest on paper. We did the same pencil and paper test at the end of the year. When I analysed the results, I discovered that while students could answer the test twice as fast (or better), they did not improve their scores. In fact, they made the same errors at the end of the year that they made at the beginning of the year! The following year we had to participate again but this time I made a change: the first time students made a mistake, they had to close the lid (stopping the timer) and write it down in a special journal. Then they could finish the session. At the end of the session, they had to figure out the correct answer and write out the whole equation three more times. I would mark this, and look for trends across the class and for individuals, that could then inform my teaching. I think I was still focussed on having students find ways of remembering quickly rather than developing conceptual understanding.

I have a very simple questing but I had no luck getting answers. I have a NAS storage I would like to use in my smart tv for recordings. Is that possible on Android TV? So far i had linux stb (dreambox) and I used my network share via smb or nfs instead of internal hdd. Seems samsung smart TVs have no such feature (if I dont mention hacking it or any other way how to brick it). So I am hoping sony have such feature,

Sorry - but need more information in regards to your intentions. If you intend to record TV shows from the TVs tuner (i.e. Freeview) to a NAS drive, then this cannot be done. You can only use a dedicated HDD connected to the correct USB port and then 'register' the HDD to the TV. The registering process is basically to encrypt the HDD for recordings to be made.

I plan to use if for storing recordings from TV tuner. So far I had few linux settopboxes and this is very simple feature. But my stb is getting old. When I buy so called smart tv I would like to use it same way as any linux stb would. I could buy a newer linux stb (i.e. dreambox) but seems to me a waste of money for almost same features. I feel like I am only one who has a shared home storage wanting to use it for recordings.

If it cannot mout a network share is there at least option to share TV's internal drive on LAN? I just want to let TV record a show and then be able to play it for example on my computer. For the drembox this is a really piece of cake.

You are not the only one willing to do it, but it cannot be done simply because for reliability reason the TV requires a fast device connected directly to it and in any case all the recording are encrypted so you cannot read and share them anyway. You can use external app to share the internal content of the TV (Kodi can do it) but again it does not recognize and share the recording. I don't know any TV brand that can record over the network (unless you don't want to root it like with the Sammy project) and very few that may be able to share the internal recording via DLNA

A little bit of extra info - no TV (or PVR) sold in the UK will be able to do what you want to do. This is because it is a mandatory requirement (part of the Freeview HD specifications) that all Freeview HD channels are hardware encrypted. SD channels does not need to be, however most manufacturers encrypt SD channels too anyhow.

I am not familiar with freeview UK. But I dont see a problem with encrypted channels. In my case I use dvb-s tuner in linux stb with decoding card. Most of the chnanels on sattelite are also encrypted. But if the dreambox is able to decode channel it can also record it. Output recording is simple mpeg playable on ony computer I have, smartphone or whatsoever. For me this is really cool feature. As I can watch it on computer when TV is in use.

_emanuel_ Updated LibreELEC-AMLGX.arm-9.95.1-box.img.gz image has two device-tree files for dreambox one/two that I created earlier. Please test whether the LED/button bits work. There are no RC keymaps in the image - I can see the BSP kernel keymaps, but there are 4x maps. If you can explain which keymap is used in which box I will add them.

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