ExploreLearning News

School Performance to be available on the Web

Some news about school performance measurements from the Washington Post (Jan 30, 2004 Metro section, In Brief): HEADLINE: Web Site Helps Track School Performance. ARTICLE BODY: Federal, state and private education leaders launched a Web site yesterday that promises unprecedented access to information about public school performance. Virginia is among the first six states represented. The site, www.SchoolResults.org, will serve as a clearinghouse for new state report cards on education, including data broken down by school districts and schools. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, states must report data on a range of fronts, including teacher qualifications and achievement among all major groups of students. The Web site is designed to present that information in a convenient and uniform way to allow parents and policymakers to make comparisons across districts and more easily track student progress.

Congratulations to NASA

Opportunity made a successful landing last night, and Spirit has been upgraded from critical to serious condition. Landing two craft on Mars in just one month is really amazing, and being able to analyze and correct problems on a robot that far from home is phenomenal.

Link: Mars Rover Home Page

Science Gizmo Update

Just wanted to give you a quick update on what is happening on the science side of things here at ExploreLearning. I know that many of the Gizmos say 'Coming Soon' for Exploration Guides (EGs), but we are working to change that. Currently the EGs and Assessment Questions (AQs) for twenty two Gizmos are in development. As those become complete, they will start migrating to the site. The first one will probably be up and running in about two weeks!

Besides EGs, we are actively building new Gizmos. Over the next six months we hope to have about seventy five new science Gizmos up and running (with EGs and AQs). These new Gizmos are being developed to cover many topics including life science, earth science, and physical science. We have developed a tentative list of Gizmo ideas, but always love to hear from teachers, so feel free to drop us a line at support@explorelearning.com if you have any requests for new Gizmos that you would find useful.

A few Gizmos that are nearing completion include: Balancing Chemical Equations, DNA Finger Prints, and Fan Carts.

Thanks to your great feedback we have found a few bugs in our science Gizmos. This week we updated the Rotation/Revolution of Near-Earth Planets Gizmo (the EG/AQ's are almost completed also). Can you believe we forgot about the retrograde motion of Venus? The physics book I was using didn't bother to mention that little fact.

The Solubility vs. Temperature Gizmo had an incorrect solubility function for sugar (that has now been replaced with salt). In a future version of that Gizmo we plan to add additional materials that can be added to the water, and allow the user to change the quantity of water. We also noticed that we never mentioned that the beaker contains 100 ml of water (this will be added to the Exploration Guide in the next few days).

Presidential Teaching Award Finalist Praises Gizmos

Patrick Lintner, math supervisor for Harrisonburg City Public Schools (VA) and Presidential Teaching Award finalist dropped us the following very complimentary email:

Explorelearning has created interactive mathematical animations that are easy to use, fun and, most importantly, revealing. The "Gizmos" offer students and teachers the opportunity to explore mathematical relationships in ways that are powerful and focused. By simply manipulating a parameter, a graph, or a geometric figure, hundreds of "examples" are explored in seconds.

The recent addition of many new Gizmos, assessments and explorations has made the product even more useful for teachers and students. The management is truly easy to use and the gizmos fit easily into our curriculum. The ability for students to access their class on any computer means that many students can do work at home on the computer.

I use the Gizmos in a variety of ways including classroom demonstration, guided student work in a computer lab, and through assignments that I ask students to do on their own. The response has been great by both our teachers and our students.

Thanks, Pat. It's especially gratifying to read how users are finding the Gizmos not only easy to use but also easy to fit into an existing curriculum. As former teachers, we know how difficult it can be to introduce a new technology into the classroom, so from day one we've repeated the mantra "make it easy for the teachers." We want teachers to be able to spend their valuable time on teaching the core subject, not the technology.

Quick Tip: My Profile

Did you know you can change your personal information including your username and password by going to the "My Profile Page"?

To go to your "My Profile" page, just look for the icon of the jumping jack man on the top right of every main page (example icon shown to the right). Or choose the "My Profile" link located in the footer of every main page on the site.

Blogs as Teaching Resource

Teacher and blogger Paul Bradley has created an excellent resource for ways a teacher can use a blog in their class.

http://edtech.teacherhosting.com/

Bradley pretty much covers everything including how to get started with your own blog (AKA content management) software or service.

Blogs are incredibly powerful and have a lot of potential for classroom use. When I get a chance, I'm going to play around with setting up some demo blogs showing various ways a teacher blog could be integrated with the ExploreLearning site.

If any of you beat me to it but setting up your own blogs, please let me know. I'd love to feature ideas here to share with EL teacher community.

Play on Mars!

With the current success of the NASA Mars Rover Mission I've become fascinated by the data that Spirit is sending back to Earth. I wish I could control a robot on Mars!

NASA has answered my wish by providing Maestro software. The program allows you to control your own simulated rover on Mars using the actual data obtained by Spirit. After learning how to control the rover in a lab setting you can let it explore a virtual 3D Mars. Don't get your rover stuck in a crevasse.

Apple posted a story about the background of the program.

The software (runs on Windows 98 and higher, Mac OSX, and *nix) can be downloaded from NASA. I am still learning how to control my rover in the lab environment before I venture out to Mars.

Blogs as a Teaching Tool

I know most (or all) of you ExploreLearning teacher-users are engaged in math and science instruction, I still wanted to pass this along.

A story in the Washington Times (hat tip to Joanne Jacobs for the link) suggests that student weblogs (or blogs) can improve student writing:.

Blogging may not wash with wizened educators, or those who distrust modern advances, but a group of educational experts sees blogging as a way for students to hone their writing skills while discussing ideas they otherwise may never have encountered.

I'm a former writing teacher, so this gets me excited about the possibilities of how a teacher might formally include blogs into a curriculum.

Do any of you have students who maintain a blog? This New York Times article points to what a growing trend blogging has become among today's students.

WAMMO!

If any of you live around Washington D.C. and work with Macromedia products (particularly Director), feel free to drop by the WAMMO meeting this evening. I'll be there to chat with others about the great features in the new version of Director, and maybe learn a few new tricks. Education never ends, it is a lifelong experience.

NEW FEATURES ONLINE TODAY

We're pleased to announce that we've added more new site features and functions for teachers:

IMPORT GIZMOS: Now you can copy a list of Gizmos from one class to another on your personal home page! If you want the same Gizmo list to appear on more than one tab, just click Get Gizmos and look for Option 2: Import Gizmos From Another Class.

IMPORT STUDENTS: If you want all the students in one of your classes to enroll in a different class, now you can just copy the whole roster from one tab to another. On your personal home page, click Manage Roster and then Import Students.

ZAP CLASS: If you need to delete all the Gizmos and remove all the students from a class, click Zap Class. Zapping a class will effectively reset a tab to the "empty" state it was in when your subscription began. WARNING: When you zap a class, the results are permanent -- you'll have to create a new Gizmo list, and your students will have to re-enroll!

NEW ASSESSMENT RESULTS COLOR SCHEME: We've tried to make the color coding for assessment results a bit more intuitive. Read Edward's post to see the before and after illustrations.

SUBSCRIPTION COUNTDOWN: Whether you're using a free 30-day trial subscription or you've purchased the real thing, eventually the clock will run out. Next time you log in, look in the top left corner of the page for a gentle reminder of when your next renewal date comes around.

We hope you enjoy these new additions, and keep the suggestions coming!

"Why Janie Can't Engineer"

In the Washington Post, we ran across another article in the ongoing exploration into why math and science careers don't attract more women.

The article by Post writer Pat McNees includes some interesting teaching guidelines aimed at getting girls interested in science at school, including this advice to "get messy."

Help girls get past the "yuck" factor. Science is messy, so put aside your desire for clean girls and surfaces. Girls who are afraid of getting dirty aren't born that way -- they're made. In after-school science programs, girls all over the nation are being encouraged to get messy, explore, analyze, dissect, hypothesize and make mistakes. … As an adult, you can help girls resist the pressure to behave in "feminine" ways. Encourage them to get good and grubby: to dig in a riverbed, change a tire or explore an engine. Let them learn they have a right to be themselves.

Read the whole story when you get a chance.

Assessment Results Color Codes (Oops!)

As several of you have kindly pointed out, our current color scheme for conveying student assessment results is, well …, dumb. There's really no other way to put it.

For instance, we are using the color red to indicate those students who answered all the questions correctly (refer to image below). Red, of course, is generally used to indicate "danger" or "stop" or some other warning to get your attention.

Seeing how I was the one responsible for coming up with the original color choices, mea culpa. I really don't know what I was thinking.

To that end, we are modifying the color coding scheme. You can view both the old and new color schemes in the images below (presented at 66% scale).

Note: These new color scheme will go into effect tomorrow, Friday at approximately 1500 EST Monday, Jan 12.

Old color scheme:

New color scheme:

A "Must-Have" App

OK. It doesn't get any better than hearing praise like this given to us by Joe Hill, the Directory of Math and Technology of Rockingham County Public Schools in Harrrisonburg, VA:

ExploreLearning is one of those rare "must-have" applications of computer technology for math classrooms.

I am always on the lookout for new technologies which will boost our students' interest in and understanding of mathematics. The Gizmos of ExploreLearning provide such a tool, enabling students to inductively study both math and science. …

From a technology standpoint, ExploreLearning is ideal: no software to install since it is web-based and features exceptionally easy management for teachers. From an educational standpoint, it is instructionally sound, motivating for students, and comes with lots of options for teachers including individual student accountability. Plus, the folks at ExploreLearning have been great to work with.

Thanks so much, Joe. That is really fantastic to hear.

The Software Behind The Gizmos

We love making Gizmos^TM. Every year our Gizmos get better, and one reason for that is the software we use to create the Gizmos continues to improve. Macromedia Director is the primary tool used to create our Gizmos, and Macromedia just announced that a new version will be released in February.

Director MX 2004 will include several new features that will help with development of our Gizmos. Most notable (for our web-based delivery) in this release are the named sprites and channels, improvements with Flash sprite handling, Flash components, JavaScript coding, and improvements to the authoring environment.

Every time Macromedia releases a new version of Director I get rather excited and can't wait to use the product to create great Gizmos. For our site we will not make use of the new features immediately, but will begin investigating exactly what can be done with the various features. Once the new Shockwave Plug-in has been out for a reasonable amount of time, our Gizmos will start using some of the new goodies, but we will be sure to let you know well ahead of time so there won't be any surprises waiting for you one morning.

I've presented many Director workshops at national or regional AAPT meetings, and will be sure to show off all the new features at my next workshop! For those that are interested, keep reading the Buzz and I'll be sure to let you know when/where the next workshop will be (most likely in the fall/winter).

Thanks to all those at Macromedia that worked long hours to get this new version of Director released!

The Music and Magic of Words

On of my favorite sites on the web is WordSmith.org where they provide you with a "word of the day." It's a great way to not only build your vocuabulary but also learn a little history and various cultural trivia as well.

For instance, this week's theme at WordSmith is "words that are coined after earls." Heh heh … I didn't even realize there are words coined after earls, but here we have today's word:

orrery — A mechanical model of the solar system that represents the relative positions and motions of the planets around the sun. After Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery (1676-1731), who was given one of those models by John Rowley, a London instrument-maker. They were invented by George Graham c. 1700.

And speaking of orreries, have you seen our Rotation/Revolution of Near-Earth Planets Gizmo? I think the 4th Earl of Orrery would be proud of our virtual mechanical model of the solar system.

Spacecraft Out and About, Mysteries Abound!

This Saturday evening the first of two rovers will try to bounce over rocks and roll to a safe stop on Mars. More information can be found on the NASA Mars Rover Site.

NASA will collecting dust from a comet in about four hours. The Stardust spacecraft is more than 242 million miles away from Earth and has its 'shields up' right now. Detailed information can be found at the NASA Stardust Site.

Here on Earth we have gotten used to a compass pointing North. Could that be changing? Find out more about the decreasing magnetic field of the Earth in this BBC News Story. Since time doesn't want to feel left out, it seems as if the rotation rate of the Earth has changed a bit and we haven't needed a leap second for the fifth straight year.

Science sure is fun!