Arcademic Skill Builders is a website containing educational games "that offer a
powerful approach to learning basic math, language arts, vocabulary,
and thinking skills." From the website:
This program stems from experience, systematic
observations, and research in attempting to understand student learning
in school and social situations.
The software was inspired by arcade games and the
intense engagement they fostered between the game and player. We
reasoned if this kind of engagement could be focused on educational
content, it would be truly a magical approach to certain kinds of
learning.
Philosophically, the games embrace research on learning dealing with
‘automaticity’ and ‘fluency.’ Automaticity is fast and accurate object
identification at the single object level. Fluency involves a deeper
understanding, and anticipation of what will come next.
Fluency impacts three types of critical learning outcomes:
- Retention: the ability to perform a skill or recall knowledge long after formal learning programs have ended
- Endurance: the ability to maintain performance levels
- Application: the ability to apply what is learned to perform more complex skills in new situations.
These engaging educational games provide focused repetition practice
that enables fluency to be achieved more quickly. With what we now know
about automaticity and fluency in academic performance, we can help
students achieve masterful levels performance faster than ever before!
View our manual for more on our philosophy, and teacher success stories on how teachers are using the games to improve student performance.
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