Guest speakers, field trips, hands-on investigations? While great in theory, these nice-to-haves simply can’t happen in the busyness of day-to-day teaching. But with ExploreLearning Gizmos STEM Cases, interactive math and science simulations that put students in the roles of STEM professionals, students can investigate real-life problems while learning standards-aligned content…all from their laptop or tablet.
New “practices” view on STEM Case heatmaps
As students progress through STEM Case activities to collect, analyze, and interpret data, teachers monitor understanding using real-time data insights and heatmaps based on built-in assessment questions.
Teachers can sort and view STEM Case heatmaps by specific skills. Now, newly released STEM Cases, like Smelling in the Rain: Designing Solutions to Improve Air Quality, include an expanded feature that allows educators to view and sort the heatmap by practices in addition to skills.
These practices include Asking Questions, Defining Problems, Using Models, Planning Investigations, Analyzing & Interpreting, Mathematical Thinking, Constructing Explanations, Designing Solutions, Arguing Evidence, Communicating Information, and Core Ideas. These practices are aligned to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) science and engineering practices and reflect the standards-based practices in many other states’ science education standards.
Teachers can swap between skills and practices on STEM Case heatmaps to better interpret student thinking and identify where extra support is needed.
This feature is only available to educators using Gizmos on the common platform (not available on Legacy platform).
Teachers can now monitor and sort the STEM Case heatmap by practice.
Teachers can toggle between Skills View and Practices View on the heatmap.