Stop flooding in Northeast India. Decrease air pollution and asthma cases alongside a respiratory physiologist. Restore the ecosystem of a national park. It’s all possible with ExploreLearning Gizmos STEM Cases, interactive simulations that put students in the roles of STEM professionals tasked with solving real-world problems.
Students learn through guided-inquiry activities as they collect, analyze, and interpret data to form hypotheses and share findings with others. And thanks to data insights and formative assessments, teachers can monitor student progress in real-time.
New Heatmap “Practices” View
As students answer built-in STEM Case assessment questions, teachers get an in-the-moment view of understanding thanks to a reporting heatmap. All STEM Cases have “skills” tagged in the STEM Case heatmap. The latest STEM Cases, like Smelling in the Rain: Designing Solutions to Improve Air Quality, include a new feature allowing 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. The new practice categories are aligned to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) science and engineering practices and also mirror the standards-based practices in many other states’ science education standards.
Teachers can toggle between skills and practices on the heatmap to sort and organize student answers, helping them identify where students need help, practice, or clarification in greater detail.
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.