ExploreLearning News

Enroll Now! EL Summer School for Teachers

Join us July 27 and 28 in Charlottesville, Virginia for a hands-on workshop using ExploreLearning Gizmos.

ExploreLearning Summer School offers opportunities for middle and high school teachers to immerse themselves in ExploreLearning Math Gizmos.  Learn to integrate Gizmos into your school's curriculum and to differentiate instruction using Gizmos. 

The $450 registration fee includes:

• A one-year ExploreLearning Teacher Plus Students Subscription (retail value $799)
• Hands-on workshops led by distinguished educators
• Take-home materials
• Lunch with ExploreLearning developers and content writers
• Dinner and concert at historic Ash Lawn-Highland
• Networking opportunities, and more!

*Registration for teachers with existing ExploreLearning accounts will be discounted. See registration form for tuition discount.

email: summerschool@explorelearning.com
phone (toll free): 866-882-4141 ext 232

Check out our schedule of events and information on accommodations at www.explorelearning.com/summerschool.

Visit EL at Booth 135, NECC

ExploreLearning's founder and president, Dave Shuster, along with EL's Chief Operating Officer, Michael Latsko, are attending the NECC 2005 event in Philadelphia. They can be found in the ProQuest booth, number 135 in the exhibit hall.

They have an interactive whiteboard in the booth and are demonstrating the general awesomeness of Gizmos.

Hopefully, they'll send some photos that I can post here on the blog.

If you're attending NECC, do stop in and give a shout out to Dave and Michael.

Internet Transforms Life

CNN has an interesting article about how the internet has changed daily life. When I saw the picture of the Mosaic startup image it brought back a lot of memories. I was first introduced to the web as a physics graduate student in 1994. It enabled easy "browsing" to a wealth of educational resources for physicists. One year later I made my first Gizmo.

It is truly amazing how the web has changed the educational experience over the years, and it is hard to think back to the days before the web.

I am still amazed by the web every day I'm browsing. Simply amazing.

Additional links:
Wikipedia: History of the Internet
Computer History Museum

Fly me to the Moon...

OK, so the Cosmos-1 won't fly me to the Moon today, but in the future the technology it uses could be the propulsion that could take me to the furthest reaches of our solar system, and maybe beyond.

A solar sail spacecraft is set for launch later today which will perform a very limited test of this new (and straight from science fiction) technology.

Good Luck!

BBC News Story
The Planetary Society
CNN followup story on failure of Cosmos 1

Demo Movie: Fan Cart Part 2

Our inimitable Dan Moriarty has posted a new Teaching with Gizmos demonstration movie for you: Force and Motion with Fan Cart, Part 2.

If you haven't yet checked out our other demo movies, you really should, especially if you're new to ExploreLearning or not really sure what the big fuss is about concerning Gizmos, you know all the awards and all the talk about how Gizmos are such a hit with both teachers and students in the classroom.

But even if you're an ExploreLearning Gizmo pro, it's worth taking a look at the Teaching with Gizmos series, as you may get some new teaching ideas or uncover a previously unknown feature of the Gizmo.

ExploreLearning Wins AEP Distinguished Achievement Award

We are pleased to announce that ExploreLearning was awarded the Association of Educational Publishers' Distinguished Achievement Award in the "Educational Science" category.

For 37 years, the Distinguished Achievement Awards have honored the diversity and quality of supplemental publishing products made for the home and school. In 2004, the AEP expanded the categories to reflect the growth of electronic publishing and the expanding educational publishing industry. Additional information can be found at the AEP Awards website.

A special thanks to the AEP, who made the awards banquet a fabulous event, and gave us the chance to meet with many people devoted to education.

Known Issue: Browse Drop Down Menu

You may have noticed that if you attempt to browse for a Gizmo by way of the drop down (AKA pull down) menus on either the main ExploreLearning page or on the Browse pages, rather than getting a list of Gizmos that match your Grade Level and Topic you'll get a message saying "There are no Gizmos currently available for this group."

This problem is the result of some changes we recently made to the functionality of the Browse feature. We are currently at work to fix the error.

In the meantime, please Browse for Gizmos by an alternative method such as search or by the links (not in the drop down menu) on the Browse page. (For additional information on Browsing for Gizmos, please consult this help document: Browsing the Gizmo Library.)

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Update: This issue is now resolved. The drop down menus work as expected.

Now Showing: Gizmo Demo Movies!

ExploreLearning has gone Hollywood! (sort of...) We've added five demonstration movies to our site:

• An Introduction to ExploreLearning.com
• Teaching with Gizmos - Fraction Sense
• Teaching with Gizmos - Exploring Quadratics
• Teaching with Gizmos - Genetics and Mouse Breeding
• Teaching with Gizmos - Force and Motion with Fan Cart, Part 1

The introduction movie is perfect for first-time visitors to ExploreLearning.com. It answers the question, "What is a Gizmo?" and also shows how Gizmos can help improve teaching and learning. (All that in under 8 minutes -- not bad, huh?)

The four Teaching with Gizmos movies show how you might teach a specific lesson using Gizmos. Each of these movies focuses on one Gizmo and highlights what that Gizmo helps you do to enhance student learning. (These movies are about 4-to-6 minutes each.)

We hope these movies are helpful to you. Maybe they can even help you take your teaching with Gizmos to another level. Let us know what you think!

Links to the movies are on the front page of ExploreLearning.com, and also in our new-and-improved Help Center (click on the small gray '?' at the top right corner of the screen).

By the way, these movies are large files (anywhere from 2 MB to 6 MB). They take some time to download -- depending on the speed of your internet connection, of course -- so be patient. They're well worth the wait!

U of Cal Offers Incentives to Increase Math and Science Teacher Graduates

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

California's public universities plan to more than double the number of science and math teachers they graduate to overcome a shortage of trained and credential instructors in those fields, it was announced Tuesday.

Both the University of California and the California State University systems, which together now graduate about 1,000 math and science teachers, will use a combination of incentives to reach their goal of 2,500 teachers in four years.

Among the carrots will be waiving the repayment of $19,000 in loans for some students.

Cool.

A "Wow, now I know what that's all about" experience for kids!

Another Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching winner just wrote in about his experience using Gizmos with his students for the past year!

Here's what John Emerson, who teaches up in New Hampshire at Jaffrey-Rindge Middle School, had to say about Gizmos:

Dear Explore Learning:

I was given the chance to use the "Gizmos" from Explore Learning after receiving the Presidential Award for Excellence in 2003. At that time I was solely a math teacher who had been drafted into teaching science in a school district in need of science instructors.  Being a hands-on teacher who is always in search of ways to help learning become easier and meaningful for students, I found that the Gizmos provided visual presentations of concepts that too often become just boring textbook reading and memorizing for kids.  For example when we were studying earthquakes, the Gizmo on Reporting Centers brought to life the P-waves and S-waves and how they are used to locate epicenters. Even teaching the Doppler Effect became a "Wow, now I know what that's all about" experience for kids as they could see sound waves in action [Ed note: the Doppler Effect Gizmo comes in several versions -- version 1, version 2, version 3].

Next year, I have been asked to teach science only and I am excited about the opportunity to use the Gizmos even more.  We will be integrating a lot of math and once again Gizmos are right on target demonstrating many graphing activities with live action and immediate visual graphing presentations. If you need to make science or math come alive in your classroom, I cannot recommend enough the use of these activities and demonstrations. All it takes is one computer, an internet connection, and a projection device and you're in business.

So thanks again for giving me the opportunity to use these innovative teaching strategies. I'm now hooked and will be using them from now on.

Sincerely,
John Emerson

Thank you for your kind words, John! We're glad to hear you and your students benefited from Gizmos. We're going to be launching many new science Gizmos this year, so there will be even more to use in the 2005-2006 school year!

P.S.: Calling all science teachers (and students)! If you have ideas for new science Gizmos, this is the time to send your wishlists in! You might end up seeing your Gizmo on the site when you come back to school after the summer!