ExploreLearning News

The Student-School Disconnect

In a recent column at Tech Central Station, Joanne Jacobs suggests there is definite "digital disconnect" between many students and their teachers:

[For many students] using the Internet is like using a TV or a microwave or a telephone. It's normal.
 
But when they're in school, it's a problem. They can't get to net-linked computers locked in the lab. Their searches are blocked by intrusive anti-porn filters. Some teachers don't give Internet-based assignments; others don't know how to design an engaging, useful assignment using the Internet.

To support her argument she draws on information emerging from recent youth forums sponsored by the U.S. Education Department.

Do you, as a teacher or student, draw similar conclusions from your own computer/web experience at school?

High Praise Indeed

This is the kind of user email that gets the EL Team all giddy and baying at the moon. Teacher and EL user Ginnopaoli Kelley writes,

I would like to take this time to tell you how incredible your product has become. I began using your site when you first became live and have loved every minute. My students have learned so much with your Gizmo’s that I recommend your site to any and every math and science teacher and pre-service teacher I encounter.

Thanks for the kind words, Ginnopaoli. (Now if we can get our Director of Multimedia Design to stop his moon baying! :)

Showcase Showdown

Two of our ExploreLearning Team Members, Dave Shuster (founder) and Rob Gordon (Dir. of Production) are up in Pennsylvania attending the Digital Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Showcase. The goings on include,

An opportunity for area educators to examine electronic curriculum materials that propose to meet national and state standards, or manage and assess student progress. … Prominent companies have been invited to demonstrate their curriculum related products during the day.

Sounds like just the place for ExploreLearning reps to be. If any of you will be attending, be sure to catch up to Dave and Rob and say hello.

In With the In Crowd?

Dave Shuster, ExploreLearning's founder, shares this bit from a recent EL road trip:

Ted [EL's CEO] and I attended last week a very cool and exclusive event called "The Nation at Risk: Reflecting on Two Decades of Reform". The event was put on by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the J. Paul Getty Trust, and was attended by 60 people in New York.

In attendance were the current Education Secretary, Rod Paige, former Education Secretary (and former S.C. Governor), Richard Riley, former education secretary, Dr. Lauro Cavazos (served under Reagan and Bush 1) along with many other big deal kind of people like Matt Miller who has been writing some very interesting stuff on public education in the Atlantic Monthly, a couple of other former governors (Albert Quie of Minnesota and Tom Keane of N.J.), most of original ten members of the commission that created the report "A Nation at Risk" back in 1983, and various other public sector luminaries such as Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie corporation and former president of Brown University for 16 years and all around big deal in education. Similarly, Barry Munitz, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust and former chancellor of the California State University system …

I actually got to talk a bit with several of the former commissioners and Secretaries Cavazos and Riley, among others. It was pretty cool. We had lunch at a nice Hotel in NY and Dinner at Gracie Mansion!

So how did we get invited? Beats me, but we were the only private sector people there. No MS, no Dell, no Apple, no publishers, no anybody like that. Just two folks from our humble, little ExploreLearning company. I'm amazed all over again as I write this.

I love that last bit about the mystery surrounding the invitation. It's a good omen methinks.

Introducing The EL Buzz Blog

Welcome to our revamped ExploreLearning Weblog!

If you're unfamiliar with the term weblog or blog here's a definition from WhatIs.com:

A weblog (sometimes shortened to blog or written as "web log" or "Weblog") is a Web site of personal or non-commercial origin that uses a dated log format that is updated on a daily or very frequent basis with new information about a particular subject or range of subjects. The information can be written by the site owner, gleaned from other Web sites or other sources, or contributed by users.

A weblog often has the quality of being a kind of "log of our times" from a particular point-of-view. Generally, weblogs are devoted to one or several subjects or themes, usually of topical interest, and, in general, can be thought of as developing commentaries, individual or collective on their particular themes.

The Buzz Weblog is where you'll find information about a variety of ExploreLearning topics from how to use Gizmos to site status announcements to, well, pretty much everything. You can think of this blog as "your one-stop-shopping" point for ExploreLearning information (with an occasional dose of humor tossed in as well).

To make it easier for you (and us!) to keep the various entries (or postings) organized, each one will be tied to a particular category. You can see a list of the current categories to the sidebar on the left. And at the very bottom, or footer, of each post you'll see what category (or categories) it's been placed in the the author. This one you're reading now, for instance, is in the "site announcement" category.

Also in the footer to each post you'll see a link called "comments." Take that link if you wish to add your input to the topic at hand.

Finally, in the footer, you'll read the name of the post's author. At least initially, that'll be me, Edward Cossette. I'm officially the Director of Visual Design at ExploreLearning but, as it the nature of our business, we all do a little bit of everything. I've been at EL since the very beginning (employee #3!), I'm a former teacher and I've been blogging actively on my own, personal sites for several years now, so I hope you'll find me a suitable host.

As the days go on, you'll see other names attached to the Buzz Weblog items as well.

Welcome to the blog!

Changes Afoot

Sorry for the lack of postings here on the EL weblog. I'm actually hard at work on redoing our entire EL "news" structure and hope to launch that in the next day or so. Meanwhile, I don't want to spend too much effort posting news until that work is complete. Stay tuned …

In other news, those of you in K-12 schools using Windows/Intel machines will be interested in this: Acer Offers Free Wireless for K-12 Education

From the press release:

Acer America Corporation, one of the leading worldwide suppliers of PC solutions, today announced "Wi-Fi 101," an initiative of the San Jose-based company that will provide free wireless access points and installation to select K-12 schools nationwide.

PDF Problem

We are pleased to announce that we've fixed the known issue involving lesson plan PDF files associated with certain Gizmos not displaying properly.

Personal Firewalls

With the benefit of user feedback, we've identified and isolated a problem that occurs when users are behind a personal firewall.

Our programmers believe they have solved the problem and the fix is currently in testing phase.

We expect to resolve this issue soon. Thanks for your patience and support

Assessment Problem (Bug)

We are pleased to inform you that the known issue concerning clicking the Check Answers button below the Assessment Questions for a Gizmo when you are not logged has been resolved.

Principia Woochuckia

Yesterday the sky took on its winter look for the first time this autumn. You know what I mean? Emily Dickinson describes it perfectly in her Poem No. 258:

There's a certain Slant of light,
  Winter Afternoons--
    That oppresses, like the Heft
      Of Cathedral Tunes--

Exactly. And fittingly yesterday the arborist (also known as the guy with a pickup and chain saw) dropped off my first load of wood for the coming winter.

Which brings me to today's math topic: How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

While we don't yet have a Gizmo to answer this question of the ages, this doesn't mean mathematicians haven't deeply considered the problem. If you're wondering, according to Stephen Lavelle "roughly 1*10 18 kg of wood could potentially be chucked by a woodchuck operating at maximum efficiency (this is only an approximate maximum limit)." There you have it. Heh heh …

Knocking on Wood

At the risk of incurring a jinx, we are happy to announce that we made it through our first fully active, high traffic day yesterday (Monday) with everything on the newly launched site running smoothly. And we've also fixed the known issue involving lesson plan PDF files associated with certain Gizmos not displaying properly.

On Teachers and Type

Yesterday Dave Shuster (EL's founder) and I went to Baltimore County to do hands on user training with our new site and Gizmos in general. As a former teacher myself, I tell you it's always invigorating to reconnect with those of you in the profession and hear your enthusiasm and success stories. (And I'd be lying if I said I don't really miss being in the classroom from time to time. There is a certain magic to the relationship between teacher and student that you just don't find elsewhere.)

In other news, have you heard about the new font, Read Regular, designed specifically to help people who suffer from dyslexia? According to Wired News,

Unlike traditional typefaces, which reuse the same forms for multiple letters -- such as b and d, or p and q -- the Read Regular typeface makes each letter significantly unique so that dyslexics can more easily distinguish one character from another. Additionally, Read Regular features simplified forms and extended openings in letters like c and e.

That's great news. And if you have any interest at all in typography and its history, I highly recommend Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style. After reading it, you'll never look at a printed page (or words on a screen) the same way again.

Designing in Public

Since the new ExploreLearning site went live a bit later than we had planned, going out on Friday and available thru the weekend, when traffic and use is much lighter, today will begin the real test of how well things are going. One of the ideas we are committed to as part of our relaunch is the notion of "designing in public." That is, we are going to be very forthright in keeping all of you abreast on what we are doing and why. As well, we will address what is working and what isn't working and what steps we are taking to fix those things that aren't going as well as we'd like. As we mentioned in the introductory message, as with any new software product, there are likely to be bugs that we haven’t uncovered yet. We pledge to continue to test and improve the site and resolve any issues as quickly as we can. And again we ask for your help. If you run into any problems, big or small, with the any aspect of our site, please do tell us by sending an email to support@explorelearning.com with specific details of the issue. One thing we hope to have up and running very soon is an ExploreLearning User Group mailing list that you can subscribe to and will be a way for us to offer user support and stay in close contact with all of you. I'll post more details of this forthcoming mailing list here as soon as it's ready.

Known Issues (Post launch)

We have two known issues to report regarding site functionality: + Lesson plan PDF files associated with certain Gizmos are not displaying properly. We expect to resolve this problem during the week of October 20. + Clicking the Check Answers button below the Assessment Questions for a Gizmo when you are not logged in will result in an error message displayed in the pop-up window. We expect to resolve this problem during the week of October 20.

Welcome to ExploreLearning

You may already be a fan of our predecessor sites ExploreMath and ExploreScience. Our talented team of teachers & programmers design Gizmos to make learning easier and more fun.

With a focus on exploration and ease of use, Gizmos have attracted millions of teachers and students searching for better ways to teach and learn math and science.

If you haven't already done so, read the full text of our introductory message.