About The HELP Math Program

Mission/Philosophy of HELP

The program is designed to help English Language Learner students (ELLs) in general, and Spanish-speaking students in particular, increase academic performance in mathematics by providing language acquisition support. Our goal is that HELP will:

• Enable students to achieve proficiency in grade-level state assessments that have been designed for native English Speakers.
  
  
• Provide students with greater confidence in their ability to do well in math and to help motivate students to complete their high school education and move on to higher education.
  
  
• Improve students' overall English literacy and language skills.

Management Team

John Ramo, M.Ed., is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Digital Directions. Mr. Ramo has over 25 years experience in educational technology and distance learning. Mr. Ramo founded and built a successful educational software company based in Washington D.C. in 1979, and engineered a profitable IPO in 1997 on NASDAQ. He is an award-winning producer of educational multimedia software for clients such as The Smithsonian Institute, Philips Media, Simon & Schuster, Jean Michel Cousteau, Jodie Foster, the National Science Foundation and worked with the American Association for the Advancement of Science to develop the first multimedia encyclopedia of the environment “Earth Explorer” for middle school students. Mr. Ramo is a former Special Ed Teacher. He holds a Masters in Education Fellowship awarded from American University.

Michael Willis, M.S. is President and Head of Production of Digital Directions. With over 25 years experience in the field, Mr. Willis is a pioneer in the use of technology in online education. He has held senior executive positions with Paragon Solutions, Digital Creators—where as President and COO he led a successful acquisition of the company in 1998—Philips Interactive Media, and Jones Intercable. Mr. Willis is executive producer of over 250 leading-edge interactive CD-I and CD Video programs for the national and international markets and executive producer of over 1,000 hours of national cable network programs. Mr. Willis is currently an Adjunct Professor at the University of Denver . He has been an Adjunct Professor and lecturer at several universities throughout the country, teaching courses in multimedia, technology, and entertainment. He holds an M.S. in Education from the Johns Hopkins University.

Barbara Freeman, M.B.A., is Chief Operating Officer and HELP Project Director. Ms Freeman currently sits on Colorado ’s English Language Acquisition/No Child Left Behind Policy Advisory Council and is an advisor to the Colorado Mentoring Institute for Latino Leaders. She is the creator of the HELP program and has spent hundreds of hours observing, field-testing and working with students, teachers and administrators to translate conceptual analysis to useable HELP lessons. Ms. Freeman has 20 years of international experience in risk management and technology consulting, research and analysis, and business development. She has managed global client engagements and implementation teams on projects valued up to $40 million and affecting 5,000 employees, and created sustainable businesses for Blue Chip clients and government agencies in the U.S.,Europe, and Asia . Ms. Freeman started her career on Wall Street. She holds an M.B.A. from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

Paul Para, M.S is Chief Technical Officer of Digital Directions. Mr. Para has over 25 years experience in interactive computer-based training, and was one of the first to use interactive simulation of software applications as the primary means for delivering high quality training. Mr. Para has broad experience over the entire interactive training development process, such as designing and developing authoring systems, designing and developing Learning Management Systems, designing and developing course content, and managing the design and development of large interactive training development and delivery projects. Mr. Para is responsible for the managing and development of award winning courseware for such companies as IBM, The Army Corps of Engineers, Houghton Mifflin, Hardcourt Brace, Softkey, and Individual Software. He holds and M. S. in Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology.

Creators and Supporters of HELP

The HELP initiative is a public-private partnership between Roaring Fork RE-1 School District and Digital Directions International, Inc. With the support of the Colorado Department of Education, and the backing of State legislators, HELP has been co-developed by instructional designers, assessment experts, educators and administrators with a stake in the outcome. HELP Program principals include:

In addition to the HELP management team, Digital Directions Board of Advisors includes:

Luis Franco-Alfonso, M.A., Spanish Translation is a certified and published translator and author. He has worked in statewide parent involvement projects, developing policy and delivering (bilingual) training for parents, educators, and the business community. He has worked for Andersen Consulting, Capital One and has taught at high school, university and corporate levels.

Effie Papatzikou Cochran, Ed.D., Applied Linguistics, is Professor, City University of New York, and an internationally regarded sociolinguist. She has published extensively and is editor of the acclaimed book Into the academic mainstream: Guidelines for teaching language minority students, adopted by TESOL; and co-editor of TESOL Issues in Gender, Language Learning, and Classroom Pedagogy. 

Lynda Franco, M.A., Education: Sheltered Instruction, has taught content-based ESOL in the U.S. and abroad for 26 years. She was Director at the Colorado Department of Education with the role of training teachers on the SIOP Model, and has worked for the Center for Applied Linguistics, Leap Frog, PBS, etc. She is a published author of ELL texts and has worked on national literacy initiatives, including Reading First, Reading Success Network; and co-authored numerous publications.

Yolanda Gayol, Ph.D., Adult/Distance Education, is an internationally recognized specialist in distance education. She is a visiting research scientist on evaluation of learning technologies at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, advisor to the World Bank, USAID, and a faculty member at Fielding Graduate University (Educational Leadership & Change).

Bob Mohl, Ph.D., Math and Media Technology is a multimedia educator with a B.S. in Math and Ph.D in Education and Media Technology, both from MIT. He has played a leading design or producer role on multimedia research & commercial products including MIT Media Lab's Aspen Movie Map, Apple's Visual Almanac and cd-rom titles Countdown, Planetary Taxi, Top Secret Decoder, SimTown, etc. As Creative Director for Floating Point Media, he has consulted on educational projects for Bank Street College, American Museum of Natural History, LeapFrog, Britannica, eScore, Maxis, Jostens Learning, Futurelab Science Simulation Lab, Lego etc.

Farimah Schuerman is a leading Education Technology Consultant and managing partner at Academic Business Partners. She was formally a Principal with the KnowledgeQuest Education Group. Ms. Schuerman is well known in the educational technology community for her experience and ability in strategic planning, sales and marketing for the K-12 and higher education markets. Her expertise has benefited companies that provide media products in traditional and new technologies, as well as emerging companies whose services are delivered on the Internet. She has worked extensively with companies delivering video-based learning and e-learning. She was an executive marketing manager at Pearson Education, where she launched two online efforts for its higher education group. Simon & Schuster's College NewsLink was a joint venture with the New York Times; Pearson Distributed Learning was the distance learning start-up for the largest education publisher in the world.