ExploreLearning News

Gizmo Searching Functionality

We are very pleased to announce that the ExploreLearning site now features the ability to search our entire Gizmo library. The search terms you input will look for matches in the library based on Gizmo Title, Gizmo Description, and Keywords on the Gizmo topic.

Additionally, if you are logged into the site, you will be able to add Gizmos to your class Gizmo List(s) from the search results page by clicking on the "Add Gizmo to Class" link in every Gizmo Record.

For your convenience, the search box is located in the header (top right) of every page on the ExploreLearning.com site.

Fish Science

The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently held its annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Scientists presented research that shows the shrinking size of fish due to their overexploitation has dire consequences for the recovery of depleted stocks. Fishing drives natural selection for smaller fish that grow more slowly and have reduced reproductive potential.

If you want to learn more about natural selection, take a look at the Rainfall and Bird Beaks Gizmo!

BBC News Story: Fish shrinkage threatens survival

Gizmo Training in Norfolk

Another great ExploreLearning day! After spending a day in Norfolk working with teachers and integrating Gizmos into their lessons, I can't tell you how much fun I had. After an agonizing 3d challenge, and some very cool algebra tile examples, math will never be the same down on the coast. As a group we decided to start putting our thoughts together for the first annual ExploreLearning Summer Institute. Watch the BUZZ we'll be keeping folks updated on our theme and progress throughout the upcoming months.

As an added bonus I was convinced that any teacher who turns in some good, high quality, lesson plans or worksheets for Gizmos will be eligible for gift certificates to our Cafe Express store. So for all you other ELF (ExploreLearning Friends) if you've got some good lesson plans or worksheet send them into Eve Solomon or myself, we'll start reviewing them and sending out gift cards. Can't wait to see what folks are doing!

Thom

Site Maintenance Scheduled

In order to perform routine maintenance on our servers, the ExploreLearning site will be unavailable for approximately 20 minutes at some point between 12:00 am and 6:00 am on Monday, February 14, 2005.

We apologize for any inconvenience this causes you.

Now Hiring: Multimedia Developers and Assessment Developers

Help shape the future of math and science assessment!

We are currently in Year 1 of a major, 2-year NSF SBIR grant (National Science Foundation Small Business Innovative Research) to develop a next-generation online assessment system for math and science. We are seeking Multimedia Developers (Macromedia Director) and Assessment Developers (Mathematics).

To learn more, visit our NSF SBIR jobs posting page.

The Medium is the Message, and the Gizmo is the Quiz

For those of you who may at some point have thought to yourselves , "Wow, Gizmos are not only great teaching and learning tools, they would make great assessment items too!", you are not alone. At ExploreLearning, we've been thinking the same thing for a number of years, and thanks to the National Science Foundation we are now feverishly working on a functional system of this kind. [Backstory: last summer ExploreLearning was awarded a major grant from the NSF to develop a next-generation online assessment system that uses Gizmo-like interactivities to measure student's conceptual understanding in math and science].

In fact, I was in Phoenix recently for a NSF conference to report on the progress we're making. We had great feedback from other conference attendees, both from people in the educational software field as well as from researchers in other domains whose chief connection to education is that they have kids of their own who are struggling to understand topics like fractions or graphing motion! The buzz at the conference paralleled many of the things we are hearing and reading these days [see some URLs below], which all seem to be pointing to a need for a system that allows educators to probe students' conceptualizations of math and science topics in a more significant way than is practical using paper/pencil multiple-choice tests.

In addition to enabling educators to assess students on objectives that are traditionally difficult to measure (such as scientific reasoning ability), such a system would also generate data that teachers can use to adapt subsequent instruction more effectively -- for example, identifying specific difficulties that individual students or groups are experiencing, and then addressing these in the next lesson before these difficulties become major impediments to mastering more complex concepts/skills down the road.

Within a few months, we're hoping to be at the point where we can release some demos for the ExploreLearning community to play with and give feedback on. If you would like to be notified when we have a demo available, or would like more information on the project, just drop me (Paul Cholmsky) an email at pcholmsky@explorelearning.com

If you'd like to read more about the issues this project is addressing, take a look at:

Ready or Not (District Administration magazine; 08/04)

Includes this quote from Assistant Secretary of Education Susan Sclafani:
"You can do [hands-on testing] with a random selection of students, but you can't do that when you want to test every student. There are just too many kids," Sclafani says. "It's not cost effective to try to set up a performance-based measure. But by using simulation you can simulate those experiences and give students the chance to demonstrate what they know."

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Show Me the Numbers: How data drives school and student improvement (District Administration magazine; 09/04)

Describes how data from tests administered during a course of study are being used to manage subsequent instruction and individualize students’ learning paths.

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Open-Ended Items Better Reveal Students' Mathematical Thinking (NCTM News Bulletin, 07/04)

Wendy Sanchez and Nicole Ice are the new editors of the Assessment Issues column in NCTM News Bulletin -- several of their recent columns have called attention to issues related to our project, e.g., why open ended assessment items are so useful.

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Thanks!

Rockingham Rocks!

Here it is: The open Rockingham post area!

All you Rockingham County teachers who made it to our Explorelearning Best Practices sessions on January 31, this is your zone. Let us know what you're up to, how you are using Explorelearning, and take a second to show off! We would love to see the extended worksheets we talked about and start sharing some of those ideas with other Explorelearning users. Remember this is how you earn those points for the frequent flier trip to Hawaii :)

Keep up the good work and I can't wait to see how you are using Gizmos in your classrooms.
Thom and Eve.