The Gizmo Gazette Special Edition for Ontario Educators January 2011

This newsletter is full of great information on Gizmos and the latest Ontario-related goings on at ExploreLearning:

Greetings from Stephen Lippa, OCT Contribute Materials and Win a Flip Camera! Ontario Educator Spotlight Contributed French Lesson Materials Get Started with Gizmos

Greetings from Stephen Lippa, OCT

Here is a special message from Stephen Lippa, your Ontario Project Manager.

Hello Ontario! Have you been incorporating Gizmos into your lessons? If so, please let me know how they have helped improve your teaching. If you have not started yet, I want to encourage you to try our award-winning, research-based simulations for math and science.

I recommend that teachers who are new to Gizmos start by using one Gizmo every other week. You can use the Gizmo with the whole class as a demonstrational tool for new concepts or for review at the end of a unit. You can also assign Gizmo activities to students for independent study.

Your first step should be the Lesson Materials; these will walk you through how to teach a lesson with Gizmos and provide you with some great questions to lead the lesson. Here are some suggested Gizmos to get started with:

	Elementary Science			Elementary Math
		Growing Plants			Graphing Skills
		Free Fall Tower			Cannonball Clowns
		Inheritance			Fido's Flower Bed
	Secondary Science			Secondary Math
		Density Laboratory			Order of Operations
		Hurricane Motion			Solving Two-Step Equations
		Fan Cart Physics			Quadratics in Polynomial Form

For those who are already well versed in Gizmos, note that I will be offering more advanced training sessions to take you to the next level. Courses can include topics such as “Teaching for Understanding in Mathematics,” “Teaching Scientific Inquiry with Gizmos,” and “Teaching with the 5E Model in Science.”

Most importantly, take the time to learn with your students and explore Gizmos together! Good luck and please contact me with any questions you have.

Contribute Lesson Materials and Win a Flip Camera!

In last month's company newsletter, we invited educators to share lesson materials with the community. We know Ontario teachers have been doing some great things with Gizmos, so we want to make a special appeal to you…

If you have a new angle on math or science concepts covered by Gizmos, we encourage you to share your Lesson Materials (lesson plans, worksheets, etc.) with the ExploreLearning community!

As added incentive, subscribers who submit new and original lesson materials between now and January 31, 2011, will be entered in a drawing to win a top-of-the-line Flip minoHD 8GB camera. It even has a unique Gizmos cover design!

See the full drawing details on the ExploreLearning News site.

We look forward seeing your lesson plans. We also encourage anyone with a video camera to contribute classroom video to the ExploreLearning Facebook or YouTube pages.

Ontario Educator Spotlight

Racquel Carlow has been teaching high school science for thirty-one years, the last twenty at St. Martin Secondary School in Mississauga. She is also the Vice-President of STAO/APSO.

Mrs. Carlow has been using Gizmos for the past three years, and has found them to be very helpful in clarifying complex concepts for her students.

She points to the Cell Division Gizmo as a recent example. Racquel first presented the subject of mitosis to her 10th Grade Science class with slides and used the Gizmo with the whole group to open a dialogue about cell phases. Then the students observed microscope slides of mitotic division occurring in whitefish and onion cells through a microscope and completed a colouring activity. Following this, she had the students experiment with the Cell Division Gizmo on their own and complete the Student Exploration Sheet. And finally, she had them construct a 3D model of mitotic division.

Taking these many approaches to the same topic helps students deeply grasp the entire concept, and Mrs. Carlow found the Gizmo to be a terrific help in solidifying their understanding.

She has other creative uses for Gizmos as well. For example, she had students prepare a sample of red cabbage juice indicator (a homemade pH test) and then determine the pH of several substances in their home. The students then used the pH Analysis Gizmo to verify some of their results.

Racquel continues to find more uses for Gizmos and more ways to integrate them into her classroom.

“…I find the Gizmo simulations extremely useful not only because the simulations are well-designed and user-friendly, but especially because the student worksheets can be adapted so easily to suit the needs of the students.”

Contributed French Lesson Materials

As our online community grows, we continue to receive more and more contributed Lesson Materials (lesson plans, worksheets, etc.).

Many of those include French-language translations of materials about several Gizmos. The current list includes:

Balancing Chemical Equations Cannonball Clowns Cell Division Distance-Time Graphs (Metric) Density Laboratory Fan Cart Physics Growing Plants

Hardy-Weinburg Equilibrium Mean Median Mode Mouse Genetics (One Trait) Mouse Genetics (Two Traits) Natural Selection Osmosis Pulley Lab Quadratics in Polynomial Form - Activity A

This is a great start toward helping bring the power of Gizmos to Francaphone learners. If you are fluent in French and want to provide your own translations, we encourage you to share them on the ExploreLearning site so that others can benefit from them.

And don't forget that Lesson Materials contributed by the end of January will enter you into a drawing for Flip video camera!

Get Started with Gizmos

Gizmos are available to all Ontario grade 7-12 Math and Science teachers. Teachers who have not yet accessed ExploreLearning Gizmos should contact their school board's Science, Math or Technology Coordinator for a username and password. You may also contact Ontario Project Manager Stephen Lippa for assistance with getting started.

If you haven't personalized your ExploreLearning.com account, you may be missing out on news and information about Gizmos. All you have to do is click on the Settings button at the top-right of your “Teacher Homepage” and enter your name and e-mail address. This will allow you to receive the regular monthly newsletter and other important updates. Plus, it will allow you to retrieve your account information if you forget your password. ExploreLearning does not share your e-mail address with advertisers.

For information about bringing Gizmos to grades 3-6 in Ontario, please contact Robert Burwell, your Canada Account Executive.

As always, if you have a question or comment about Gizmos, don't hesitate to contact our Customer Support team. We would love to hear from you. Also, take a look at ExploreLearning News on the front page of the website for breaking news any time.