Get Gizmos Great Graphic Simulations for Math
Gordon Presley, Dougherty Comprehensive High School

Each year I await the GaETC conference like a child waiting for Christmas. I look through the workshops and sessions as if looking for the perfect gift to give my students, my colleagues and myself. I know that I have only so much time in the bank and so I try to be as frugal as possible.

I began this school year with a new tool in my room. A Promethean Board had been mounted where I had previously had 32 sq. ft. of white board. Being a math teacher I of course panicked. Writing real estate must be vast to develop proofs and graph equations. How could this little thing ever fill that need for space?  To make a long story a little shorter, It does and more.  Now began the search to enhance the many advantages gained by the interactive white board.

When I received the registration form for the conference, I decided that what I wanted this year was to find a workshop or session that would allow me to develop graphics to demonstrate geometric concepts as well a postulates and theorems.

I signed up for and went to several workshops.  One gave me so much more than I expected. Virtual Manipulatives was the surprise of the conference for me.

Developed by explorelearning.com, small self contained graphic simulations called “Gizmos” are just what the doctor ordered for math teachers with LCD projector classrooms. These little programs reside on the www.explorelearning.com web site and can be downloaded and used but not saved to the teacher’s computer.  If your internet connection is fast enough you can log on and be using one of the simulations in about 3 minutes.  There are hundreds available and a teacher can use each of them for 5 minutes per day without charge. 

Gizmos can be copied and pasted.  The full screen or just the graph can be copied or reproduced for noncommercial use.

Copyright © 2006 ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved.  Used by permission.

However explorelearning.com is in the business to sell subscriptions to the site for unlimited use to subscribing teachers, schools or school systems.  The best deal is to get the teacher and class enrollment. This agreement allows teachers to enroll each class and assign logins to all their students.  Each student can then log onto the class page and view and manipulate the simulations individually.

They have 30 day free trials available for teachers and their classes so don’t take my word for it, try it.  Be careful, you may not want to do without them after 30 days of use.  All I have to do now is convince my department to subscribe!

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