ExploreLearning News

"Feel Good" Education Story of the Year (A Must Read)

If you want an incredibly uplifting story of teacher and student achievement, please read Wired's "La Vida Robot," the story of a team of undocumented Mexican immigrants at a West Phoenix high school who competed in a contest to build an underwater robot that could survey a model of a sunken submarine. (And won!)

I don't even want to pull a quote from the story, as you need to read the whole thing for yourself.

New Feature: The 5 Minute Gizmo Pass!

Starting today, visitors to ExploreLearning.com can access every Gizmo in our library with our new "5 Minute Gizmo Pass."

Previously, non-subscriber visitors to the ExploreLearning.com could preview just one Gizmo per day. We realized that, as our Gizmo library expanded (and it's always expanding), allowing just "one Gizmo per day" isn't enough. Now all visitors will be able to get a real sense of Gizmos' broad course coverage in math and science.

Summer Vacation in Jurassic Park

Summer is still a few months away, but when I read this story, all I could think about was the Jurassic Park movie from a few years ago. I'm sure that the park won't be ready this summer, but maybe one day ;)

Dinosaur experts have extracted samples of what appear to be soft tissues from a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil bone. T. rex is perhaps the most famous dino and Montana has yielded excellent fossil specimens.

I wonder how a T. rex cell would compare to a human cell?

"Eventually, you do plan to have dinosaurs on your dinosaur tour, right?" -- Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park (1993)

"Oh Oscillators!" The Physics Hit Parade

A recent edition of The Wall Street Journal had a feature on Dr. Walter Smith, a physics teacher and founder of the site www.physicssongs.org.

Six years ago, Walter Smith, an associate professor of physics at Haverford College, whipped out a baritone ukulele and played a tune he wrote about 19th-century Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted to a puzzled class of undergraduates. Since then, he has composed and performed 34 other songs about relativity, magnetism and wave oscillation. He also made a startling discovery: He isn't alone. It turns out that quite a few physicists like to dabble in ditties. …

And, the students like it as well as several have gone on to create their own physics songs (all of which are available at the website).

Now if you combine a physics ditty with a physics Gizmo, you're talking some seriously fun learning.

But can anyone compete with this guy when it comes to singing and having fun?

Employment Op: Seeking Gizmo Designers (Science)

We are actively seeking Science Gizmo Designers who will be responsible for designing highly interactive simulations and virtual manipulatives that support students in understanding and mastering scientific concepts. Note: Technical / programming skills are not a requirement for this position.

To learn more, read the full job posting.

More Pi Humor

If' you aren't completely worn out from yesterday's exhaustive yet always exciting Pi Day related festivities, here's some more Pi humor for you.

Meanwhile, we're already getting ready for next year's Pi Day here at ExploreLearning World Headquarters, where we treat all math related fests with maximum earnestness. Personally, I'm going to rock the house with a variation of a popular tune by the artist Prince. It goes a little like this …

So tonight we gonna party like it's 3.145
we gonna, oww, we gonna party like it's 3.145

(Then again, maybe not.)

Newport News Teachers Explore Gizmos

ExploreLearning had a great time visiting the Newport News Public Schools' Aviation Academy for a day of professional development. The event, organized by Martha Askew, Secondary Supervisor of Mathematics and a long time ExploreLearning Friend (ELF) gave Teachers and Technology Curriculum Integration Specialists (TCIS) a chance to navigate ExploreLearning.com and experiment with Gizmos related to their courses of study. The group created some fabulous worksheets and lesson plans. The lessons are posted on Step.com - an online resource center for Newport News teachers.

As you may have read in previous blog postings, any teacher who turns in quality lesson plans or worksheets for Gizmos will be eligible for gift certificates to our Cafe Press Store. So for all you ELFs (ExploreLearning Friends) send your lesson plans or worksheet to the attention of Eve Solomon or Thom O'Brien. Upon review, we will contact you and send out gift cards. Can't wait to see what folks are doing!

Mmm...Monday is Pi Day

Be sure to celebrate Pi Day on Monday, March 14th. Pi has been studied for thousands of years, and has an interesting history.

Did you notice that March 14th could be written as 3/14, and pi is approximately 3.14. As Mr. Spock would say, "Fascinating."

Math Challenges Students on SAT

As I was listening to NPR this morning I heard that the new SAT exam has increased the difficulty of the math questions. I hope you have all been learning a lot of math from our Gizmos!

Good luck to all on the SAT tomorrow morning. Don't forget to set the alarm clock.

Seeking Gizmo Subject Ideas

For all of you teachers out there that use our site, now is your chance to speak up. The developers here at ExploreLearning are getting ready to start building lots of new Gizmos, and we want your ideas! As you use the site have you ever had the thought, "I wish there was a Gizmo that does yada yada yada." If you could drop us a line about your yada, the Gizmo idea might make it on to our list, and you could be using it in the upcoming year.

Don't miss out on this opportunity! We always want to make Gizmos that teachers want and will help students learn concepts in state standards.

You can send your Gizmo ideas to . Remember, the more details you include in the idea, the greater the chance of getting that idea turned in to a Gizmo. If possible, be sure to include your name in the message.

To get you started, here is how the idea for the Fan Cart Physics Gizmo could have been written.

I have an idea for a Gizmo that would help me when teaching about Newton's Laws. In the Gizmo, there would be a cart that has a certain mass. On the cart you could place one or more fans (which have a mass) that would cause the cart to accelerate. Fans could be switched on and off, and be placed on the cart in either a forward or backward direction. Students would be able to get data about the position, velocity, and acceleration of the cart.

If I was really a friendly teacher, I might have included a sketch of what the Gizmo would look like :) That is definitely not required though, since we know how busy teachers are every day.

The Carnival Of Education Blog Roundup

Be sure to check out the EduWonk's Carnival of Education, "a variety of interesting and informative posts from around the EduSphere (and one or two from the Larger 'Sphere) that have been submitted by various authors and readers."

ExploreLearning Hosts Students for annual "Tech Tour"

"Gizmos rock !" That was the reaction of students from Orange and Madison County (Virginia) High Schools who visited ExploreLearning's offices as part of the annual Virginia Piedmont Technology Council ) Tech Tour last week. The VPTC Tech Tour enables approximately 150 high school students from the Central Virginia area to visit local technology companies. Students have the opportunity to talk to and interact with technology professionals and learn about the knowledge, skills and abilities needed for a career in technology.

We at ExploreLearning were really impressed with the students' knowledge of math and science, especially their knowledge of moon phases and the relationship between the moon and the tides. Obviously math and science teachers in Central VA are doing a great job!

Many thanks to the efforts of so many fantastic, willing volunteers from the VPTC who organized this fantastic event for high school students and to my own colleagues here at ExploreLearning who volunteered their valuable time to share advice and their experiences working in the technology arena.

For more information about the VPTC, visit their website at www.vptc.org

Eve Solomon esolomon@explorelearning.com ExploreLearning's Education Specialist

Effective *and* Efficient on the Easternmost Tip of Canada

Isadore Snook, a mathematics e-teacher at the Centre for Distance Learning and Innovation in Newfoundland, Canada, writes, "...I used a Gizmo on rational functions in the classroom and the students loved it. It condensed my lesson by 20 minutes or more...I have a Master's of Education in Information Technology and I have always been keenly interested in learning objects.  Your "Gizmos" happen to be the BEST I have ever used."

I was very happy to read Isadore's comments because they highlight how Gizmos can make your instruction more efficient as well as more effective. Being able to cover fundamental topics more quickly means that you have more time to discuss additional / advanced topics, or can devote more effort to remediating specific areas of difficulty. Gone are the days when educational software was so cumbersome that integrating it into your lesson plans meant things moved more slowly and you covered fewer topics rather than more!

Thanks for writing to us, Isadore!

Class Code Letter and Number Confusion

Previously, we indicated that we had made changes in our Class Code font to try and eliminate problems several users were having in trying to discern differences between an "l" (lower-case "el") and an "I" (upper-case "eye") and a "1" (numeral one) as well as difficulties with "O" ("oh") "0" (the numeral zero).

In many cases, however, the problem persisted even after the font face change.

We have now removed all instances of 1,l,I,O, and 0 from all newly created ExploreLearning subscriptions. This should eliminate the problem for those users.

Unfortunately, due to database limitations, we cannot go back and change the Class Codes of ExploreLearning classes that were created prior to the change. Please accept our apologies for this.

ProQuest Acquires ExploreLearning

We are happy to announce that ProQuest Information and Learning has acquired ExploreLearning.

Read the full press release here.

ExploreLearning operations will remain in Charlottesville, Virginia, and customer service and technical support contacts will remain unchanged for customers.

The best part of this news for the customers and ExploreLearning team members is that the ProQuest acquisition will allow us to grow and to reach even more teachers and students than previously.

Push and Pull: Fans in Action

The current issue of the The Physics Teacher magazine (March 2005) contained an article about building fan carts for studying Newton's Laws in your classroom. A wealth of studies can be performed in the lab with the carts. If your students need to spend additional time experimenting with the carts feel free to let them explore the Fan Cart Gizmo, which allows you to perform almost every experiment discussed in the article (everything but the torque/angular acceleration experiment).

The Gizmo is a great tool for using during classroom discussions, in your office when students have questions, when you are preparing a quiz or test and want images, or for students in the evening when they are reviewing content at home.

Feel free to explore Newton's Laws with the Fan Cart Gizmo!

The Physics Teacher home page

ProDev in Florida

On February 16, ExploreLearning took a trip down to Florida to welcome the newest members to the Gizmo team. The mathematics department at Parkview High School spent the afternoon getting trained on setting up their homepages, establishing their profiles and getting a first glimpse into the power of Gizmos.

By the end of the session the teachers were ready to start integrating Gizmos into their daily lessons. Even more than just integration, a few of the teachers were ready to start making some extremely challenging handouts and study guides using the Gizmos' screen capture utilities. As a group the teachers were very excited about using Gizmos and were happy to see how easy it was to work within the site and the depth of content.

Go Parkview and Go GIZMOS!!