A purpose-built adaptive learning system for the Building Thinking Classrooms methodology -- combining thin-sliced curriculum delivery, interest-tailored problems, and individual spiral practice into one seamless classroom experience.
Building Thinking Classrooms is a research-backed framework by Dr. Peter Liljedahl that shifts students from mimicking procedures to genuinely thinking mathematically. Students work at vertical whiteboards in randomized groups -- visible, collaborative, and in productive struggle.
Seven systems that work together invisibly -- so the teacher can teach and every student can think.
Students roll a die. The platform assigns randomized groups and boards, animated across all 13 screens. Liljedahl's research is unambiguous: visible randomization changes classroom culture. This makes it effortless and consistent every single day.
Each station receives curriculum-aligned questions in carefully incremented steps. Correct answer → advance. Wrong twice → a parallel question at the same level. No group sits idle. No group is abandoned. The thinking keeps flowing.
A start-of-year interest inventory maps each student's world. The same mathematical concept is then wrapped in contexts that resonate -- hockey stats, game design, visual art -- so the thinking starts from a place students already care about.
Outside group time, students receive solo practice problems tailored to their personal interests -- and spiraling in previously covered outcomes throughout the year. Skills stay warm. Gaps resurface before they become failures.
Live view of all 12 stations on your iPhone. Colour-coded priority queue tells you who needs help, who is productively struggling, and who hasn't been visited. Consolidation freeze locks all 13 screens simultaneously for whole-class discussion.
Ceiling cameras capture every board when groups submit an answer. Work is tagged with curriculum outcome codes, saved to Google Drive, and searchable by outcome, date, or group. A full year of student thinking, organized automatically.
At the start of the year, students complete a brief interest inventory -- sports, music, gaming, art, cooking, fashion, whatever they actually care about. The platform uses those responses to wrap problems in familiar, engaging contexts, at both the class level for group work and the individual level for solo practice.
The curriculum outcome is identical. The thinking required is identical. The entry point is one a student actually wants to walk through.
Thin slicing -- Liljedahl's term for carefully incremented problem sequences -- only works when the gaps between steps are genuinely small. That requires knowing where each concept sits in the full K-12 progression, not just within a single unit.
This platform is built on a complete, outcome-tagged curriculum map. Every question knows its grade level, its prerequisite concepts, and what comes next -- so the thin slice is always calibrated to where that student actually is.
The curriculum map supports multiple jurisdictions. Alberta, BC, Ontario, Common Core -- same questions, correctly tagged for each. One platform that works for any Canadian or American BTC classroom out of the box.
Die rolled, groups assigned, boards revealed. Visible randomization fires every session -- no exceptions, no favourites, no negotiating.
Each station's first question is calibrated to the group's level and wrapped in the class's interest context. The math begins from a familiar place.
Correct answers advance the thin slice. Wrong answers trigger intelligent branching -- parallel questions or prerequisite diagnosis -- without teacher intervention at every decision point.
Dashboard shows exactly where to go and why. Boards captured automatically. Consolidation moments surfaced live when they matter most.
The platform doesn't just check answers. It tracks attempt patterns and makes principled decisions about when to branch, when to escalate to the teacher, and when to step back into prior knowledge -- informed by a complete K-12 curriculum map at every branch point.
Outside of group BTC time -- at home, during a spare, or in a practice block -- students work through individually assigned problems. Two things make this different from a worksheet: the problems are tailored to that student's specific interests, and the system continuously spirals in previously covered outcomes throughout the year.
Forgetting is predictable. The platform uses that predictability deliberately -- resurfacing outcomes at intervals calibrated to keep knowledge fresh, not just to fill time.
The queue algorithm watches all 12 stations in real time. It knows who pressed the silent help button, who answered wrong twice, who hasn't had a visit in 15 minutes -- and crucially, it distinguishes productive struggle from genuine confusion.
"Stalled with no help request is possible productive struggle. Don't rescue immediately." -- BTC principle, built directly into the queue algorithm.
Every layer of assessment in this classroom shares the same curriculum outcome codes. Formative evidence from group work and individual practice, summative data from SmarterMarks -- all pointing to the same outcomes, so reporting is synthesis rather than translation.
Wipebooks. Vertical surfaces. Randomized groups. The platform doesn't replace the physical classroom -- it supercharges it. Every hardware decision was made to respect the BTC environment and EPSB facility requirements.
Touchscreen 2-in-1s in tent mode sit on or beside each whiteboard tray. No drilling, no mounted hardware, no wall damage -- EPSB facilities-friendly by design. Students reach the screen comfortably for answer submission and individual practice.
Wide-angle PoE IP cameras mounted on the suspended wood frame ceiling. Nothing at student height to knock over or fidget with. Calibrated once and forgotten.
Answer submission, whiteboard saves, individual checkpoints, and practice sessions all happen on the station screen. Alberta's phone policy respected entirely -- by design, not as an afterthought.
A complete classroom kit -- 12 touchscreen 2-in-1 laptops, 5 ceiling cameras, and the networking and mounting to tie them together -- sized to fit the Best Buy Teen Tech Grant cap with margin. The grant funds exactly this kind of technology-in-learning initiative.
Software development cost: $0. Built entirely in-house on existing infrastructure. The ask is hardware, not development fees.
BTC has spread faster than any educational framework in recent memory. The platform teachers need to run it properly doesn't exist yet. That's the opening.
Purpose-built BTC platforms exist anywhere in the world. The problem is universal. Every BTC teacher manages question flow manually. This solves that.
Of BTC practice in this classroom before a line of code was written. Every design decision comes from lived experience, not theory.
Teachers implementing BTC across North America. A polished platform with interest-tailored questions, spiral practice, and curriculum mapping has a ready audience the moment it ships.
The platform builds over the summer. By September, students in this classroom experience something that doesn't exist anywhere else in education. The only ask is hardware support -- the software is already being built.