07 Jan Edublox Online Tutor Explained and Your Questions Answered
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- What is Edublox Online Tutor (EOT)?
- EOT develops foundational learning skills. What are foundational learning skills?
- EOT is multisensory. What does multisensory mean?
- Edublox programs are based on learning principles. What are these learning principles?
- How was Edublox developed? Does it really work?
- How long does it take generally before one starts seeing results when doing Edublox?
- How long must one work with a student before his problems will have been solved completely?
- My child has dysgraphia. Where can I find help?
- My son has dyscalculia. Where can I find help?
- Our daughter has been diagnosed with dyseidetic dyslexia…
- Is EOT intended only for children with learning difficulties?
- Do all children enjoy the program?
What is Edublox Online Tutor?
Edublox Online Tutor (EOT) houses a number of multisensory brain-training programs that enables learners to overcome learning obstacles and reach their full potential.
EOT is founded on pedagogical research and 30+ years of experience demonstrating that weak underlying foundational skills account for the majority of learning difficulties. Specific brain-training exercises can strengthen these weaknesses leading to increased performance in reading, spelling, writing, math and learning.
EOT has been optimized for children aged between 7 and 13, is suitable for the gifted and less gifted, and can be used at home and in school. EOT is effective for a variety of learning difficulties including dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia and ADD/ADHD.
EOT develops foundational learning skills. What are foundational learning skills?
Foundational learning skills refer to the skills that make reading, spelling, math and learning possible.
Learning is like building a house. The first step is to lay a foundation. Unless there is a strong and solid foundation, cracks will soon appear in the walls, and with no foundation, the walls will collapse.
In the same way one needs to lay a proper foundation before it becomes possible for a child to benefit from a course in reading, writing and arithmetic. If this foundation is shaky, learning “cracks” will soon appear.
Simply put, EOT is a system of cognitive exercises, aimed at building a strong and solid foundation for learning.
Foundational skills should not be confused with processes, strategies or techniques. The difference between these can be explained by using the game of basketball as example. In order to be a basketball player, a person first has to master the foundational skills, e.g. passing, dribbling, defense, and shooting. Only after that can he be taught strategies or techniques.
EOT develops and automates the foundational skills of reading, spelling, writing, mathematics and the skills required in the learning of subject matter. A list of the most important foundational skills addressed by EOT includes:
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- Attention and concentration
- Accurate perception
- Visual discrimination of color, foreground-background, form, size, and position in space
- Visual analysis and synthesis of position in space
- Auditory discrimination of foreground-background, and position in time and space
- Auditory analysis and synthesis of position in time and space
- Decoding and integration of information
- Visual closure
- Imagination
- Visual, auditory, sequential, short-term and working memory
- Concept of numbers
- Reasoning and logical thinking
- Fine motor coordination
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Edublox’s Reading Tutor offers application in the form of reading, spelling and vocabulary exercises. Edublox’s Dysgraphia Program offers application through reading, spelling and/or handwriting exercises; and Edublox Math Program through mental arithmetic, the understanding of math terminology, and math concepts such as word sums, reading time, etc.
EOT is multisensory. What does multisensory mean?
It is said that people not only learn at different rates, but also in different ways. Some students want their teacher or lecturers to write everything on the board. Others prefer to listen. Some like to sit in small groups and discuss a question; others like to listen to a lecture, translating it into pictures or doodles in their notebook. Such individual learning preferences are known as learning styles.
Learning styles are generally divided into three categories: (1.) visual learners, who need to see it to know it, (2.) auditory learners, who need to hear it to know it and (3.) tactile/kinesthetic learners, who prefer a hands-on approach.
Although there is some value in adjusting to a preferred learning style, we should not overlook that a child must be prepared for the real world and real time. “In the real world, and real time, learning styles theory is often an academic luxury,” writes James Atherton in an article entitled Learning styles don’t matter. Therefore it is essential to teach a child a versatile learning approach from a young age, which means that he will be able to use multiple senses when learning. We must not improve only his strengths, but also his weaknesses.
There is no doubt that a person’s weaker senses can be improved. A blind person, being deprived of sight, usually develops all the other senses to a remarkable degree. To learn to read Braille, for instance, his tactile sense must be developed to a remarkable degree. This fact is important because it shows without the help of complicated tests that every sense can be developed and improved.
EOT is multisensory and addresses the visual, auditory and kinesthetic skills of a learner — all at once.
Edublox programs are based on learning principles. What are these principles?
The first learning principle is that human learning does not take place on a single level, but is a stratified process. This characteristic is worldwide accepted as a didactic principle. The way in which the school system throughout the whole world is organized is an acknowledgement of this. One 
cannot send a child to university first. He must start in the first class and then progress year after year to the higher levels of education. Unless he has mastered a sufficient amount of the learning material presented to him in one year, to form a firm enough base on which to build the knowledge of the following year, he will not make progress in the next class.
Another simple and practical example is the fact that one has to learn to count before it becomes possible to learn to add and subtract. Suppose one tried to teach a child, who had not yet learned to count, to add and subtract. This would be quite impossible, and no amount of effort would ever succeed in teaching the child to add and subtract. This shows that counting is a skill that must be mastered before it becomes possible to learn to do calculations.
In the same way, there are also certain skills and knowledge that a child must have acquired first, before it becomes possible for him to benefit from a course in reading.
How was Edublox developed? Does it really work?
Over the last 30+ years, the company behind the Online Tutor e-learning platform, Edublox, has helped more than 150,000 people in approximately 40 countries to read, learn and achieve through home kits and learning clinics internationally.
It all started as a school readiness program with only a few cognitive exercises in 1979. Purely as an experiment, in 1980, the program was used for a learning-disabled child who completely overcame his learning difficulties as a result. Over many years, in a quest to perfect the program and later programs, our team has done extensive research on learning, learning principles, brain development and neuroplasticity.
School results define our success. Annually, since 2010, we have been requesting Edublox clients, long-term and new, to complete an online survey to help us measure our performance. In our latest survey the key question, “Did your child’s academic performance improve at school?” received a 94% positive rating.
Our other 640+ documented successes include research from Singapore in 2014 with 27 Grade 6 students and a matching control group. The results were analyzed by the CEA in the Faculty of Education at the University of Pretoria, and showed a statistically significant improvement in focused attention over a period of five days (18 hours of training). Over and above the effect size is large.
The experimental group in Dr. Jaidan Mays from the University of Johannesburg’s study showed an improvement of 1.3 years in visual memory and 1.5 years in visual sequential memory, after receiving intensive Edublox training over a five-day period (22.5 hours hours of training).
Dr. Lee DeLorge in Ohio tested 67 students aged 5 to 18 with ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia and non-specific learning disabilities. The processing speed of 94% of the learners improved significantly:
* 35 ADHD students: 52.45% combined increase (37.24% pre-test avg/89.69% post-test avg);
* 13 dyslexic students: 46.76% combined increase (41.31% pre-test avg/88.07% post-test avg);
* 2 students with dycalculia: 57.38% combined increase (39.76% pre-test avg/97.14% post-test avg);
* The remaining students were non Specific LD: 64.14% combined increase (30.40% pre-test avg/94.54% post-test avg).
A long-term study of 60 deaf learners in Grades 1-3, who did Edublox daily for a year, demonstrated a significant increase in reading and spelling performance, as compared to the control group. Another study at the University of Pretoria by Dr. Wynand de Wet found an increase in nonverbal IQ scores of 11.625 in deaf children after 27.5 hours of Edublox instruction, which was confirmed by our own trials of hearing children: an improvement of 5.6 in verbal IQ and 12.5 in non-verbal IQ after 40 hours of instruction.
Lastly, visit our reviews section for many testimonials and case studies, covering Edublox users from all over the world, at various stages of implementation and for various needs — from improving the cognitive skills of children without learning difficulties to overcoming dyslexia, dysgraphia and math problems.
How long does it take generally before one starts seeing results when doing Edublox?
While one usually starts seeing improvement within a few lessons with regards to the number of blocks or items that the learner can handle when doing the Edublox exercises, this improvement will not transfer to the learner’s schoolwork immediately. This takes time.
When transfer occurs it is usually sudden and noticeable. As an example, a mother who worked diligently for half an hour per day, six days per week, wrote:
After this initial — and usually clearly visible — intellectual jump, it happens that the learner finds himself on a plateau again, followed by another leap forward. This pattern can repeat itself many times.
The above scenario could be described as a “staircase effect”. However, one may also see a “snowball effect”:
How long must one work with a student before his problems will have been solved completely?
One must make sure that a learner’s problems have been solved completely before discontinuing the program. The minimum time that is required to achieve this is about one year, but it can take up to two years if the learner has severe learning problems.
If one discontinues the program before the foundational skills of learning have been thoroughly automated, there is the danger of a relapse. On the other hand, once the foundational skills have been automated and the learner is clearly no longer behind, the problem will not return if the program is discontinued.
The mother who wrote the above commentary continued with Edublox for a full year. Three months after discontinuing the program she wrote:
Sometimes it is helpful to gradually wean the learner from the program rather than abruptly discontinue the program. Once the learner has overcome his or her difficulties, one may consider decreasing the number of minutes spent on each session or the number of sessions per week.
Remember that education is a process, not an event. Teaching a person to read takes time. There is no instant recipe to teaching reading, neither is there a quick-fix to overcome a reading deficit. The same applies to spelling, writing, math etc. Be patient!
My child has dysgraphia. Where can I find help?
The term dysgraphia is often used when discussing writing disabilities. Dysgraphia can refer to extreme problems with handwriting, spelling, and written composition. It can also refer to handwriting difficulties only. However, many children with dysgraphia also have reading difficulties. For this reason, our Dysgraphia Program consists of four variations:
- Dysgraphia & Severe – Moderate Reading Difficuties
- Dysgraphia & Moderate – Mild Reading Difficulties
- Dysgraphia & Spelling Difficulties
- Dysgraphia (Poor Handwriting Only)
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My son has dyscalculia. Where can I find help?
Edublox’s Math Program consists of three levels: Basic, Intermediate (work in progress) and Advanced (work in progress). To implement the program you need to subscribe to Development Tutor, and then contact us for free access to the hands-on exercises.
Our daughter has been diagnosed with dyseidetic dyslexia…
A program that has been tailored to specifically address dyseidetic dyslexia can be found here…
Is EOT intended only for children with learning difficulties?
Edublox Online Tutor is definitely not exclusively intended for children with learning difficulties. It can also be used to improve the learning and reading abilities of children who have no problems at all. One should consider that we do not provide athletics training only to children who are uncoordinated. We take the talented ones, and through judicious training and exercise, we are able to turn them into great athletes. The same applies on the mental plane. If we take the talented, intelligent and creative children and expose them to Edublox training, we shall be able to turn them into great mental athletes.
