Game taps pupils' brain waves in 1 small Arkansas school district

Mineral Springs district testing iPad math program

MINERAL SPRINGS -- A small Arkansas school district is not only shaping young minds through technology, it's using it to read them.

Third-graders at Mineral Springs Elementary School are the first students in the nation to use Qneuro's MathLab app, which adjusts the iPad game to respond to brain activity recorded through electroencephalogram headsets.

Chad Freeman, instructional technology specialist in the southwest Arkansas district, said the system blends medical technology, gaming and education.

"It is a math game that uses their brain waves to adjust the intensity of the game," Freeman said. "As they struggle, the game gets a little easier. As they get bored or distracted, it gets a little harder, and it does it in real time to maintain a certain level of engagement."

Freeman, who has been at the district for a year, took the program to Mineral Springs after meeting Qneuro founder Dr. Dhiraj Jeyanandarajan at the International Society for Technology Conference in June in Chicago. He said Jeyanandarajan told him about the game and was looking to test it in a classroom.

"As the instructional technology specialist, it's my job to evaluate the effectiveness of technology in the classroom," Freeman said. "Seeing as how this is very different than most things you see, my first question to them was, 'Where is the research?'"

Freeman invited Qneuro to introduce the product to Mineral Springs. He is also the project lead on testing the app, which is expected to be available to the general public in the last half of 2020.

"I will take the data from the study and remove all personal information and send them the raw data, and they will determine how effective it was and what changes need to be made," Freeman said.

Jeyanandarajan, a neurologist, said he uses a similar type of technology in real-time monitoring of the nervous system during medical procedures such as surgeries.

"This is just applying the same technology," he said. "The main emphasis of that is we can real-time monitor the brain and be able to tell certain things."

The idea for educational video games came from having two young children, Jeyanandarajan said.

"We just started with elementary school education because I have a vested interest in that, and I have a passion for it," he said. "Everybody thinks they are going and doing something that could maybe be a game-changer, and that's what this is. It revolutionizes education in the sense that we give teachers a very, very powerful tool that they can use to give extremely and highly personalized learning to that student's brain state as they are learning that material."

Having cutting-edge technology in Arkansas classrooms also aligns with Gov. Asa Hutchinson's goals of increasing training in science, technology, engineering and math, Freeman said.

In 2015, Hutchinson signed legislation that required all high schools to offer computer coding classes. He also recently announced the Arkansas Department of Education's Computer Science Innovation Grant Program, which will reimburse computer science programs for the cost of curriculum, software licenses, professional development and student incentives.

"This is the exact kind of thing that I think Arkansas schools especially can be a leader," Freeman said.

A new building for grades kindergarten through 12 is under construction on the Mineral Springs campus. It will open next year, and officials say it will feature top-notch technology to support the iPads that the district will purchase for each student to use. All faculty members will become Apple-certified teachers and have their own iPads, as well.

Third-graders Christen Bell and Ashton Porter said they've had fun using the system.

"It's good," Christen said. "We get to learn stuff like rounding, multiplication. I also like to get on it. It's my first time getting on the iPad, so it's really been fun playing it."

Ashton said he enjoyed the games and switched between a multiplication game that features balls to one that featured spaceships.

"It's kind of fun," he said. "Then when I saw the rounding, I was like, 'Aww, this is going to be easy,' but then when I saw the spaceships and everything I was like, 'Whoa.'

"This is all a little sciencey at the same time, but then when I started doing it I was getting all the questions right and stuff. I think I was good at this."

Principal Stacey Gauldin said the system aligns with some of the programs the school already has to evaluate and fill gaps in knowledge and skill levels.

"We had a lot of success with that last year as far as our ACT Aspire data," she said. "We can see some growth. I feel like this is only going to help with that."

Gauldin said she thought students would enjoy it because it's so high-tech.

"The kids are going to love it because it's so far out as far as the headsets and stuff," she said. "I just think it's on the forefront of things to come."

Jeyanandarajan agreed that this is just the beginning on how the technology can be used.

"The future applications are pretty broad," he said. "You can think of anything that involves learning, and so anything you want to learn faster, you want to get better memory transfer, you want to make it stick better, you want to make it more fun by gamifying the learning process -- this technology can be used for it."

State Desk on 09/24/2018

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