The teacher says she is not familiar with the program and has dropped promoting it. Aleks people told me it only takes an hour to get familiar. I have also thought he should move up a grade but no one seems to agree. At this point he has a bad attitude with Aleks and he would need a teacher to promote it and help him.
I like the idea of him bringing home his password and username so the two of you can figure it out together. I can't believe that the teacher is allowed to 'get away with' dropping the program like that at a gifted school. I would propose you ask the school to assign someone else who is more computer savy to adminsiter Alexs to your son in a different room while the other kids do math.
My son atually needed me to sit next to him while he did Aleks in 4th grade. Apparently if you make an addition error or other careless mistake, the program thinks you don't understand the current topic and gives you lots more questions to practice on. IF your son makes lots of simple mistakes, he might be spending away lot of time on simple errors.
What we worked out in the beginning was for him to do the problems and then I would check it on a calculator before he typed in the numbers and then he would check that he had typed in the answer correctly, and then I would check it before he hit 'send.' After a few days, he would do the problem, then double check himself in order to earn me to come by with the magic calculator and tell him if he needed to check again.
It was painful at first, but did wonders for his attention to detail. Talk about high stakes!
Bottom line is that your son is at a gifted school that is committed to meeting his academic needs, and you might be needed to pipe up and let them know there is a problem (although I think the C in the gradebook might be a clue!)
Love and More Love,
Grinity
