Product Reviews - The EdTech Roundup
"It’s impressive to see how far they’ve come in terms of their curricular offerings, their analytics, but most importantly, their support for students and teachers."
Review by Michael Karlin
MobyMax is an online suite of learning solutions designed to provide K-8 teachers with CCSS-aligned content, assessments, and activities for all topics and subject areas. Available at the classroom, school, and district level, MobyMax can be used as a supplemental resource or as a more central component of a teacher’s curriculum. It’s an award-winning, research-tested solution that has been on the market for over 8 years.
MobyMax is available on any internet-enabled device and offers a completely personalized learning experience for any student, based on their specific needs and skill gaps.
Before diving into the review, here is a brief overview of MobyMax and how it can be used to help students meet and surpass grade level benchmarks:
MobyMax Student-Driven Learning from MobyMax on Vimeo.
Currently, MobyMax covers 27 subject areas, including science, social studies, math, phonics, spelling, and more. All of these subjects are CCSS-aligned, and starting this fall, they will be state standard-aligned as well. The complete list is shown below, and in addition to these traditional subject areas, MobyMax also offers state test prep content.
In Moby Math, Fact Fluency, Language, Vocabulary, and Foundational Reading, students begin with an initial assessment to determine their skill level and find their gaps. In other Moby subjects, students begin at their assigned grade level. However, Moby gives teachers the opportunity to customize content in all subjects by assigning specific lessons, topics, or problems.
Once students have taken their initial assessment (usually 30-60 minutes) MobyMax will create a completely personalized learning path for the students to progress through, based on their current skill gaps and needs.
At any point, teachers can edit these paths, assign out specific activities, or customize what their students are working on in any way. Or, the teacher can be completely hands-off, and students can use MobyMax when they are given time for it. In short, teachers can have as much or as little involvement as needed. Plus, teachers have access to worksheets and additional activities that can be printed off, so students can work offline as well.
For those interested in learning more about the curriculum and would like to see it in action, the videos below showcase the success students have had in both ELA and math as a result of MobyMax.
MobyMax Mastering Math Fast from MobyMax on Vimeo.
MobyMax Victories in ELA/ELL from MobyMax on Vimeo.
In terms of the efficacy of their curriculum, the research on MobyMax has suggested that around 30-minutes a week (or 20 hours a year) is enough for students to increase their skills by one full grade level. This independent research was conducted with over 4,000 students across 230 classrooms. The math results are available here, and the English results are available here.
In addition to their complete, standards-aligned K-8 curriculum, MobyMax offers a variety of other tools in their suite.
In terms of assessments, MobyMax provides a complete and customizable collection of formative and summative assessments, including benchmarker assessments to determine where students are in terms of the standards in their grade level. All of these assessments can be assigned out as teachers see the need and can be used to target knowledge based on a single standard or across an entire subject area.
In conjunction with the curriculum and the assessments, MobyMax offers real time reporting across all students. Teachers and admins can see snapshots of individual learning or classwide learning, or they can get granular and look at performance on specific standards and indicators. In short, for any type of data a teacher/school/district might need, including IEP reporting, MobyMax has it covered.
In addition to the curriculum, assessment, and reporting, MobyMax also has a “Moby Interactive” section, where teachers can pull up whiteboard activities, conduct skill reviews, and engage students in their new competitive “fluency team games.” In these games, students compete in small groups to showcase their knowledge and skills in a variety of areas.
Finally, MobyMax also offers a “Real Rewards” program, which is included at the school and district license levels. The Real Rewards are exactly what they sound like - an opportunity for students and classrooms to earn actual prizes based on their performance within the MobyMax system. Twice a year, MobyMax sounds out thousands of boxes and swag, and twice a year they give out a gift-card prize ($30 for each winning classroom). Plus, they have a blog post dedicated to how teachers could throw fun (and still educational) parties on that $30 budget.
MobyMax Real Rewards from MobyMax on Vimeo.
For more details on how schools and teachers have been using MobyMax, I have found the case studies and teacher reviews (which can be filtered by state) to be helpful resources. And in terms of professional development for teachers, MobyMax not only offers video tutorials and weekly webinars, but they can do on-site training for schools and districts as well.
Overall, I’m a huge fan of MobyMax and all they have to offer. I originally reviewed MobyMax 6 years ago, shortly after they had launched. They were great then, and they’re even better now. It’s impressive to see how far they’ve come in terms of their curricular offerings, their analytics, but most importantly, their support for students and teachers. If your classroom, school, or district is looking for a supplemental K-8 resource to provide personalized learning to students, or if you’re looking for a more substantial curricular replacement, MobyMax has you covered. For more details, you can register and try MobyMax for free for 30 days at www.mobymax.com.
Overall, I’m a huge fan of MobyMax and all they have to offer. I originally reviewed MobyMax 6 years ago, shortly after they had launched. They were great then, and they’re even better now. It’s impressive to see how far they’ve come in terms of their curricular offerings, their analytics, but most importantly, their support for students and teachers. If your classroom, school, or district is looking for a supplemental K-8 resource to provide personalized learning to students, or if you’re looking for a more substantial curricular replacement, MobyMax has you covered. For more details, you can register and try MobyMax for free for 30 days at www.mobymax.com.
The opinions expressed in this review are my own.
I was not compensated for writing this review.
I was not compensated for writing this review.
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