ExploreLearning News : Quick Tips

Gizmo demo movies are live!

Who says that all the blockbuster summertime movie action is only taking place on the big screen?

We're happy to announce that all 80 Gizmos with the "purple bar on the left side" appearance have a demo movie!

These Gizmo demo movies are quick (~3 minute) how-to movies that show you what each Gizmo can do, and how you can interact with it.  The movies don't teach the lesson (see the Lesson Materials or Exploration Guide for that), but they should help get you comfortable with that Gizmo.

Demo movies come with voice-over narration, so be sure you have your sound turned on.  (We recommend using headphones if in a lab setting.)

Movies are appropriate for teachers or students.

To access the demo movie, click on the "Demo" button in the purple bar, at the lower left corner of the Gizmo.

Gizmo demo movies - elementary science - done!

It's been a long time coming, but at long last, every elementary science Gizmo has a demo movie!  (That's 40 of them, if you're keeping score at home.)

The "movies" are short (about 2 minutes each) and have a simple "how-to" approach. They show how to use the basic features in the Gizmo. If students are brand-new to a Gizmo, the demo movie would be a nice brief introduction to it.

The movies feature a voice-over, so be sure audio is turned on before watching.  (In a lab setting, you probably either want to project it for the whole class to watch and listen to, or have students use headphones.)

To see a demo movie, click on the "demo" icon at the bottom left corner of the Gizmo, in the purple bar, as shown below.

(Note: Demo movies will only appear in elementary-level Gizmos - the ones with the purple bar on the left side.)

Tip: To find the 40 elementary science Gizmos, either click "Browse Gizmos" and browse through the grade 3-5 science offerings, or just type "elementary science" (without the quotes) in the search field.

Enjoy!  We hope these are useful for both teachers and students.

By the way, the elementary math Gizmo demo movies will now slowly start appearing also!  We hope to have all 40 of them complete by the end of 2009.

How do I get the most out of Gizmos?

ExploreLearning Gizmos are great learning tools, but how you get the most out of them? How do you make time spent with a Gizmo effective learning time for your students? These are questions we've heard a lot from teachers, and they are crucial questions.  No tool automatically causes students to learn.What approaches seem to work for a lesson using Gizmos?

We've put together three documents that we hope will help answer those questions.

• Part 1, The Purpose of Gizmos
• Part 2, Using the Exploration Guide and Assessment Questions
• Part 3, Using Gizmos in Different Settings

Using the Gizmo Screen-Capture Feature

Did you know that all the ExploreLearning Gizmos have a nifty screen-capture feature, built in? With only a couple clicks, you can place a custom, professional-looking image, taken from a Gizmo, into your worksheets, quizzes, and tests!

Here are some sample quizzes we created, with help from the Gizmo snapshot feature:

• Sample Quiz: Slope Intercept Form of a Line, download file: .pdf | .doc | shorter version (.doc)
• Sample Quiz: Introductory Physics, Freefall Laboratory, download file: .pdf

Here's how to do it:

Step 1 – Set the Gizmo up however you want.

Any snapshot you take of a Gizmo will capture the current state of the Gizmo. So, anything you can set up in a Gizmo can also become a snapshot!

Step 2 – Take the "snapshot"

fig. 1

To take a snapshot of the entire Gizmo, click the "Copy Screen" [fig. 1] button at the bottom of the Gizmo.

fig. 2

Many Gizmos also give you the option of taking a snapshot of just a portion of the Gizmo, like a graph, bar chart, etc. To copy the snapshot area, click on the camera icon (fig. 2).

fig. 3

(Note: In our older Gizmos, click the icon shown in Figure 3 to take a snapshot of the entire Gizmo, or click the clipboard icon [Figure 4] to capture the snapshot area of the Gizmo.)

Now the snapshot is stored on your computer's clipboard.

fig. 4

Step 3 – Paste the snapshot

Open a word processing document, such as a Microsoft Word file, place your cursor where you'd like the snapshot to go, and paste it.

Step 4 (optional) – Edit the snapshot

As with any other image, you can use the graphics tools in your word processor to resize, position, crop, etc. the Gizmo snapshot.

fig. 5

Resizing tip: To resize the image, first click on the image once to select it. You will see some "handles" along the edges of the snapshot. Clicking and dragging those handles resizes the image. If you drag a handle on a corner of the image (the cursor will become a double-headed arror, e.g., fig 5), it will retain its correct proportions. If you drag a handle on the middle of one of the sides of the image, it will become distorted.

 

The best thing about the screen capture feature is how easy it makes it to merge the virtual manipulative world of Gizmos with the traditional, paper-based world of handouts, worksheets, and quizzes that are part of every teacher's repertoire. Students, too, can make use of the screen-capture feature as part of homework or reports that they turn in.