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Educator of the Month: Stuart Merves Reflex Grantee: Students’ Self Esteem Is Improving New Reflex District Level Reports
Happy Holidays from ExploreLearning! Thank you for using Gizmos and Reflex all year ‘round. Holiday Card Challenge
Entries must be submitted by midnight on Thursday, December 20, 2012. We will randomly select one winner on Friday, December 21st. Please remember that to participate in the challenge, you need to be a teacher or administrator with an ExploreLearning Gizmos or Reflex account, or a current free trialer of either product. Sign up for a free trial of Gizmos or Reflex today to be eligible! Preview the card and challenge here.
Educator of the Month: Stuart Merves Mr. Merves loves how Gizmos enable him to maximize the limited time he gets with his students and still allows them to have interactive lab experiences. Gizmos are also great because they can be used at home, allowing students who are absent to stay caught up. Students gravitate to the Gizmos because they “feel like video games” and they love being able to manipulate the variables any way they like. Mr. Merves also appreciates the framework provided by the Student Exploration Sheets, and he often modifies them to more closely match his lesson objectives. In all of his classes, Mr. Merves starts the year with the Growing Plants Gizmo, which teaches experimental design. In addition to teaching students about the best conditions for plant growth, the Gizmo helps students understand how to successfully design experiments for optimal results. With four variables to manipulate (seed, light, water, soil), students can come up with hundreds of unique combinations as they try to grow the largest plant. “Students are always amazed that the plants never grow the exact same way, even in the same conditions. I tell them ‘Well yes, it’s just like real life!’” Mr. Merves reports. One of the highlights of the year in his Introduction to Physical Sciences class is a project in which students get to design their own roller coasters. After discussing the concepts of potential and kinetic energy in class, Mr. Merves lets his students loose on the Roller Coaster Gizmo. The Gizmo demonstrates how kinetic and potential energy are related to mass, height, and speed, and demonstrates the principle of conservation of energy as the roller coaster car moves over hills. Based on what they learn in the Gizmo, students then design their own roller coasters. Depending on their design, they have to calculate the potential energy, kinetic energy, and velocity of the car at several points along the track. Students then present their designs to each other in class. 
This "Rockin' Roller Coaster" is an original design drawn by a student of Mr. Merves
Reflex Grantee: Students’ Self Esteem Is Improving Jim Beaver is a teacher and grantee in Maustron School District in Wisconsin. He’s been using Reflex with his elementary school students since October. He has become a big fan. “It has been the best!” Kids are making great progress and find the games engaging. “Students request to use Reflex whenever time is available.” He also likes having the immediate feedback for both him and the students. “This program tracks and identifies the facts that they have difficulties with. That alone makes this an awesome program.” He’s going to “be sharing the reports with the parents” at parent teacher conferences and he’s sure they’ll be impressed!
He is seeing the influence of Reflex spill over to more than just the students’ math fact fluency. “I love the fact that the students enjoy it and feel better about themselves. There’s still time to apply for a Reflex Educator Grant for your school. Apply here before December 10th, or try a free 14-day trial at: reflexmath.com/trial.
New Email Reports for Reflex
Teachers will also get a special email when students reach 100% fluency so they can celebrate their students’ accomplishments. As always, to print milestone certificates and view in-depth reporting data, just login to your Reflex account. If you would rather not receive these emails, you can easily opt out. Just login, go to your profile and uncheck "Receive email reports."
New Reflex District Level Reports
Additionally, we have updated the district and building administrator dashboards with new views and made them exportable. The district level dashboard report now includes a new view by grade level in addition to the default school level view, while the building administrator dashboard report has a new teacher view to complement the grade level view. Both building and district administrators can now also export their dashboard data into a readable spreadsheet format.
Stay in Touch If you want to comment on any of the information in this newsletter, be sociable and post your insights on the Facebook pages for Gizmos and Reflex. And as always, if you have a question or comment about Gizmos or Reflex, don't hesitate to contact our Customer Support team using the support form for either Gizmos or Reflex. We would love to hear from you. For information on bringing Gizmos and Reflex to schools in your area, contact your ExploreLearning Account Representative:
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Stuart Merves teaches Biology and Introduction to Physical Sciences at Timber Creek Regional High School in Erial, NJ. A graduate of Clemson, Mr. Merves just started his fourth year of teaching. He has been an avid Gizmos user since 2010.
Starting this month, teachers with Reflex accounts will get an email every two weeks with key information about their students’ progress. The email will list recent unprinted class and individual student milestones, as well as fluency and usage information. 
In addition to reviewing individual, class, and school level Reflex reports, district level administrators can now review aggregated usage and fluency data across all their schools. As with school level data, they can view district-wide information by grade level or AYP reporting category. 
