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.