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PlaneMath was presented to two groups of fifth grade students at Madera Elementary School in El Cerrito, CA. The classes all seemed quite pleased to explore PlaneMath during their lab time.
We are still awarding prizes to our registered teachers. We awarded two, so far, in December and are anxious to give away more!
PlaneMath was displayed once again at the San Francisco based Children's Interactive Expo. The Expo features educational software companies from the Bay Area and attracts a wide range of schools, parents, teachers and students.
PlaneMath has been invited to make a presentation at Madera Elementary School in El Cerrito, California. A parent and member of the PTA, who became familiar with PlaneMath at the Children's Interactive Expo, has requested an on-site PlaneMath demonstration.
PlaneMath was asked to participate in CyberSurfari '98, and internet based activity that helps computer users become familiar with a national pool of websites.
PlaneMath continues to pursue the relationship with Kinko's and Sprint. Both companies donated videoconferencing facilities and services for the first three years of the project. Their donation allowed PlaneMath to offer free teacher training to participating teachers across the nation.
PlaneMath awarded software prizes to three registered PlaneMath teachers. PlaneMath is able to award these prizes due to generous donations from various software companies.
Presented PlaneMath to a group of 40 teachers during a training at the Center for Accessible Technology, on August 5th and 19th.
Presented PlaneMath at the annual A HREF="http://www.intellitools.com">Intellitools Technology conference, attended by over 300 teachers. Intellitools is the publisher of MathPad, accessible math software developed at InfoUse. Through teacher feedback, we found that teachers often use MathPad and PlaneMath together to support the needs, in particular, of their physically disabled students. We also conducted "hands-on" training with participating teachers.
The PlaneMath video and activities were presented at the Leaders of Learning Conference in Charleston, WV., a conference which over 3,000 educators attended.
PlaneMath has been invited again to participate in the Children's Inter-Active Expo, a four day conference at Fort Mason, in San Francisco. The expo is attended by hundreds of families and educators.
Theta Discoveries, Inc., a curriculum developer for elementary level wants to include Planemath as a part of their program. Using on-line activities, they produce a package including activities and lesson plans, on a CD-ROM for classrooms without internet access.
The InfoUse produced paper, "Teaching Mathematics to Students with Physical Disabilities Using the World Wide Web: The PlaneMath Program," has been selected for the Educational Resource Information Center (ERIC) database and abstract journal.
We now have a 12 minute video that documents the progress and accomplishments of the project and includes footage of children and teachers using the site in class. The video features members of the PlaneMath project team, the director of the Center for Accessible Technology in Berkeley , school administrators, NASA scientists and members of the Learning Technologies Projects administrative team.
As part of a teacher training at the Center for Accessible Technology, we gave a short demonstration of PlaneMath. The teachers seemed to really appreciate the curricular matrix (in the Parents and Teachers section) and the range of activities that the site includes. We even had a few teachers register with us later that day.
We introduced Yolanda Lylegreen who is a registered PlaneMath teacher, the members of the Learning Technologies project (the NASA collective to which PlaneMath belongs) inorder to get feedback about PlaneMath. It turned out to be a very fruitful conversation. Among other things, Ms. Lylegreen commented about how much she had enjoyed PlaneMath, and that she's looking forward to using it with her incoming class.
Learning in Motion, which publishes a monthly Top 10 List on their web site for educators and students who are interested in integrating the Internet with their schoolwork, has featured PlaneMath in their June/July issue of the "Top 10 Educational Sites on the World Wide Web."
Have you ever wanted to design a jet from scratch? Build the seats, design the wings, pick an engine and then run it all through a wind tunnel and a test flight? Well, now you can design a corporate jet as the culmination of your training for PlaneMath Enterprises! This activity, which runs in Shockwave, allows students to apply their knowledge about aspect ratio, fuselage length, and engine power towards a real design project. The wind tunnel and flight test results feature calculations from the NASA Ames Research Center, and the experience is thoroughly realistic. Try your skills at this project, and encourange your students to finish their training so that they can design a corporate jet as well!
PlaneMath Enterprises, a virtual airplane design firm, contains 8 activities focusing on math from the 6th and 7th grade curriculae. It puts students in the role of a "trainee", or new employee, who must complete training sessions in 8 different departments at PlaneMath Enterprises. The culminating project, in which the student designs a plane from scratch for a customer, will be on-line by the end of the month. In the meantime, try out our training activities and let us know what you think!
The 5th grade activities known collectively as "Pioneer Plane" have been completed and are ready for your students to try them out! Pioneer Plane makes use of Shockwave plug-ins to bring a more interactive feel to PlaneMath. Learn about Amelia Earhart's last flight, or Jimmy Doolittle's invention of the altimeter. If you enjoy these lessons, you should definitely keep your eyes open for our 6th and 7th grade activities, where your students will learn to design a plane and test it, just like engineers do! The 6th and 7th grade activities will be out sometime this spring.
On Wednesday, January 21, we met up with Patty Coffin from Children's Hospital in Oakland, CA. In addition to helping Patty customize and use PlaneMath with her students, we previewed our new Pioneer Plane activities and helped locate other Internet resources for their unique instructional situation. There will be three other teacher training videoconferences this year, which are available at no cost to any teacher who registers with PlaneMath! E-mail us at planemath@infouse.com if you have already registered or have any other questions regarding teacher trainings.
To all those who came by our booth at MacWorld in San Francisco last week, thanks for your enthusiastic response! We previewed versions of our new activities, known as "Pioneer Plane," which include an exciting mixture of math and aviation history in a more interactive multimedia format, via Shockwave. To those unfamiliar with Shockwave, you might want to click here to check out our help pages for information on how to install Shockwave for your browser.
Our final teacher training videoconference had James Dean of Riviera Beach, Florida, meeting with us and Dr. Barbara Bromley from CSU Pomona. We had an exciting time, discussing the new activities coming up and helping James pitch the idea of Internet-based learning to his fellow faculty members. If you are interested in participating in our free PlaneMath teacher training videoconferences in 1998, we will be hosting them again in January, February, March and April. If you are registered with PlaneMath, we can send you information as the conferences come up. Click here to register with PlaneMath. Those teachers who are already registered and want additional information and contact us via e-mail. Click here to e-mail us at planemath@infouse.com.
Thanks to a donation from MacWorld, PlaneMath and the Center for Accessible Technology will have a booth for the 1998 MacWorld Expo in San Francisco.Click here to visit the MacWorld Expo website. Come visit us at the Moscone Center (North Hall) in San Francisco on Jan. 6-9!
Our second teacher training videoconference drew in educators from all over the country. Among our participants were:
In addition to orienting these educators to our PlaneMath site and its accessibility features, we also discussed how to incorporate PlaneMath into multiple grade levels and ways to bring learning disabled students to our activities. It was a very successful talk, and we hope to continue these discussions in our last fall teacher training videoconference in December.
The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, which provides valuable resources for educators in N. Carolina through their website, has identified our site as an exemplary resource and included it on their website, Teachers Connect.
The George Lucas Educational Foundation, located in Marin County, California, has also recognized our website and put us on their page.
We have begun another round of teacher training videoconferences, with the help of Kinko's and Sprint. Last Wednesday, we hooked up with Michelle Cullomm of the Starbase program in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which works with 4-6th graders in aeronautics.
Our next two teacher training sessions will be in November and December, but they are currently full. We will be releasing the dates for spring semester teacher trainings in December. Keep your eyes posted!
The following organizations have acknowledged PlaneMath in recent weeks. We very much appreciate their acknowledgements, and provide their names and links below:
Bayle Emlein, a special education teacher in the Oakland School District, is the winner of the second valuable PlaneMath prize, awarded each time we celebrate the registration of another ten teachers. Bayle received a Supra Express 28.8 V.34 modem. The names of all other registrants have been returned yet again to the box, to be tossed anew when ten more teachers have registered.
Within the few months since the full set of PlaneMath lessons has been posted on the Internet, the site has received accolades from major national organizations. We are very grateful for their acknowledgement. Each of them also provides additional useful links and information:
Pat Barlow, a teacher at Tampa Palms Elementary School, is the winner of the first valuable PlaneMath prize, awarded each time we celebrate the registration of another ten teachers. PlaneMath Project Director Lewis Kraus selected Pat's name by the most scientific method available to InfoUse: he placed the name of all registrants into a box, then tossed the box's contents over our official InfoUse Office Stairwell. Although all slips of paper were initially endowed with identical aerodynamic capabilities, weather conditions inside the InfoUse office enabled Pat's slip to ride an air current in such a way that it travelled farthest, thereby best meeting all judges' criteria for winning the toss.
Pat received the CD-ROM "Let's Explore the Airport with Buzzy the Knowledge Bug." The names of all other registrants have been returned to the box, to be tossed anew when ten more teachers have registered.
Thanks to a generous donation from Kinko's and Sprint, InfoUse will be able to conduct free quarterly PlaneMath teacher training seminars at Kinko's videoconference sites throughout the United States. By using videoconference technology, participants will be able to interact with our trainer, Dr. Barbara Bromley, and with each other while viewing and learning tips for using PlaneMath. All registered PlaneMath teachers will be notified when a training will occur in their geographic area.
Progressive Networks has kindly donated a copy of their RealAudio Server to PlaneMath. We will use this to investigate appropriate ways to add sound effects to PlaneMath in the future.
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