Moby Max is a Proven Adaptive Learning Toolset with Differentiated Curriculum for K-8 Students

Moby Max adds individualized, adaptive learning for writing, reading, and language skills to its powerful math skills platform.

As you might imagine, EmergingEdTech receives an endless stream of requests to write about education and instruction oriented software products and services. One of the first things I look for when considering these submissions is what teachers are saying about them. Are educators excited and passionate about this application or service? Does the product have rave reviews and impassioned testimonials from teachers who have been using it? Of course, we're focused on emerging technologies here, so we're also looking for these as well – does the product leverage technological concepts that are showing fast growing adoption in recent years, or have strong potential for mainstream implementation in the near future?

Moby Max clearly hits the mark for all of these criteria.

What is Moby Max?

Moby Max has been around for several years, under the moniker “Moby Math”. They recently added additional subjects to their retinue, and changed the name accordingly. The idea behind Moby Max is to leverage scientific data to create an adaptive learning tool set that helps students and teachers identify missing skill sets and uses progress monitoring to automatically assign effective lessons. The completely integrated curriculum system provides real-time actionable data to educators. Most importantly, results clearly show that students are motivated, learning, and succeeding (click on “Proven Results” on the top of the Moby Max home page to view some of these impressive stats).

One of the keys behind the Moby Max approach is a differentiated curriculum, with progress monitoring built in. “With the help of diagnostic placement tests, MobyMax is able to create a unique curriculum for each student. Moby targets areas where the student is struggling and doesn’t waste time reteaching concepts that students have already mastered.” Using their Find-Learn-Practice-Review Cycle and integrated motivators like Badges, Games, and Goals, MobyMax creates an efficient and effective process with which students learn up to 3 times faster than they do with traditional curricula.

What Are Teachers Saying About Moby Max?

If I've ever seen such an extensive set of testimonials for a educational product, I can't recall it. Click on the “Rave Reviews” link at the top of the Moby Max Home Page and you will get a pop up with literally hundreds of these excited, motivated teachers expressing their gratitude for what Moby Max has helped their students achieve. Here's a random set of these from just the other day that I grabbed as examples:

Melissa Artz, Macintyre Park Middle School, GA, May 1, 2013
I began my special ed students on MobyMax just a month ago and have already seen AMAZING results!! One student who was working on a 1st grade level is working productively with minimal assistance on his actual grade level–6th grade! He is able to take the lessons at his own pace and with the help of a sign language interpreter and teacher of the deaf, he is able to function with his academic peers! Not only does this excite me, it continuously thrills him, and his motivation for learning is through the roof! Thanks MobyMax! We appreciate all that you have given us!

Cara Johnson, Ridgeview Elementary School, IL, May 1, 2013
My students love this website!! They love to practice math facts now!!

Toni Sweet, Mountain View Elementary, WY, May 1, 2013
My students love MobyMax. We just finished NWEA testing and ALL my students had great growth! I love the way Moby remediates my low kids but also challenges my high kids. My students like the immediate feedback they get and are excited when they move up a level! They are very motivated to work on their assignments.

Melissa Ballance, Hobbton Middle, NC, May 1, 2013
This is an awesome program for 6th grade math students. It is really helping to fill in the missing gaps with the ESL children. I also like the focus on the language of math and the applications of problems.

For more teacher feedback, here's a video from Larry Mitchell, a fifth grade teacher at Badger Road Elementary. In it, Larry discusses the ways he uses Moby in his classroom. Larry made this video completely of his own accord. He states, “Moby Math, now Moby Max, has completely revolutionized the idea of individualized math instruction, allowing students to work at their own pace on the skills that are necessary for their success. My 5th grade students have now completed over 130,000 problems covering skills from grade K – 8 and have shown tremendous gains in all mathematical subsets. I cannot recommend this program enough; in my 23 years of teaching I have finally found an answer!”

Proven Results

Of course, the proof is in the results, and if you scroll through the reviews you'll see plenty of these attested to. Additionally, if you click on the Proven Results link at the top of the Moby Max home page, you'll see results for over 100,000 students in over 3,500 schools. These results show that students spending just 10 to 20 hours with MobyMax have experience a half a grade point increase on average, and students spending 70 or more hours with Moby Max have raised their grades by two full levels! Keep in mind that Moby Max provides lots of “integrated tools of motivation” to engage students and keep them coming back.

You can get started with Moby Max for free, but it you get serious about it, you'll want to leverage the $59 annual Teacher Pro license to get the most out of it, or the $299 license for an entire school (as a technology manager for over two decades and a higher education CIO, I can attest that $300 for an annual license for an entire school is tremendous bargain!).

Just to be clear, I have no affiliation whatsoever with Moby Max. I just know a good education technology product when I see one.