http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/ A search of MERLOT materials Copyright 1997-2013 MERLOT. All rights reserved. Fri, 24 May 2013 14:36:26 PDT Fri, 24 May 2013 14:36:26 PDT http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/images/merlot.gif http://www.merlot.org:80/merlot/ 44 34 http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=78423 The Authentic Assessment Toolbox site is a tutorial for learning all about authentic assessment. It is presented with hypertext and features creating authentic tasks, rubrics and standards for measuring and improving student learning. What is authentic assessment? Why do we need it? How do you do it? Answers to these questions as well as information on Standards, Rubrics, Portfolios, and Examples can be found here. Educators at all levels will find this site useful. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=80688 An online tutorial that suggests ways faculty can use PowerPoint as a medium to support active learning. The tutorial includes sections on active lecturing, active learning strategies and their delivery via PowerPoint, creating and using effective handouts, using PowerPoint to play in-class games, and using PowerPoint for formative assessment. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=81127 Windows Recommended. Animated Tutorials for generating Lewis Structures and applyiing VSEPR theory. Visualization of Valence Bonds in Lewis structures. Animations of Phase Diagram, Heating/Cooling Curves, Hybridization and Water. Animation of Diatomic Molecular Orbitals Construction http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=437177 The main goal of this project is to improve student understanding of the geometric nature of multivariable calculus concepts, i.e., to help them develop accurate geometric intuition about multivariable calculus concepts and the various relationships among them.To accomplish this goal, the project includes four parts:· Creating a Multivariable Calculus Visualization applet using Java and publishing it on a website: web.monroecc.edu/calcNSF· Creating a series of focused applets that demonstrate and explore particular 3D calculus concepts in a more dedicated way.· Developing a series of guided exploration/assessments to be used by students to explore calculus concepts visually on their own.· Dissemination of these materials through presentations and poster sessions at math conferences and through other publications.Intellectual Merit: This project provides dynamic visualization tools that enhance the teaching and learning of multivariable calculus. The visualization applets can be used in a number of ways:- Instructors can use them to visually demonstrate concepts and verify results during lectures.- Students can use them to explore the concepts visually outside of class, either using a guided activity or on their own.- Instructors can use the main applet (CalcPlot3D) to create colorful graphs for visual aids (color overheads), worksheets, notes/handouts, or tests. 3D graphs or 2D contour plots can be copied from the applet and pasted into a word processor like Microsoft Word.- Instructors will be able to use CalcPlot3D to create lecture demonstrations containing particular functions they specify and/or guided explorations for their own students using a scripting feature that is being integrated with this applet.The guided activities created for this project will provide a means for instructors to get their students to use these applets to actively explore and “play” with the calculus concepts.Paul Seeburger, the Principal Investigator (PI) for this grant project, has a lot of experience developing applets to bring calculus concepts to life. He has created 100+ Java applets supporting 5 major calculus textbooks (Anton, Thomas, Varberg, Salas, Hughes-Hallett). These applets essentially make textbook figures come to life. See examples of these applets at www.monroecc.edu/wusers/pseeburger/.Broader Impacts: This project will provide reliable visualization tools for educators to use to enhance their teaching in calculus and also in various Physics/Engineering classes. It is designed to promote student exploration and discovery, providing a way to truly “see” how the concepts work in motion and living color. The applets and support materials will be published and widely disseminated through the web and conference presentations. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=87515 ״The Flash mathlets are divided into two sections.The For Students and Instructors section contains Flash applets which may be useful to instructors for classroom demonstrations, as well as to students for independent work and exploration. The For Developers section presents applets together with varied templates and the complete, object-oriented, easily-customizable source code that can be used by instructors for creating their own customized versions of the applets.״ http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=82625 This learning object discusses and provides animations of the basic processes and components in a thermal power plant. Cycle descriptions and animations include the Carnot cycle, the basic Rankine cycle, and advanced Rankine cycles with reheating and feedwater heating. In addition, a Rankine cycle calculator allows the user to vary several operating parameters and observe the effect on power output and cycle efficiency. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=80710 To address the critical teacher shortage in math and science, the Teaching and Learning Interchange grant produced three products: two series of online video case studies of accomplished teaching and a resource guide explaining the techniques, ideas for engaging students, assessing learning progress, creating and maintaining a classroom conducive to learning, along with strategies for working with English Learners and Special needs students. Originally conceived for use with pre-service and intern teachers, the cases and resources have been recommended by field reviewers for use at all stages of the teacher professional continuum.The Pedagogy in Practice: Science video case studies document lessons from general science, biology and chemistry; the Pedagogy in Practice: Math video cases cover 8th grade algebra, high school algebra and geometry. Each case is supported by relevant artifacts that develop real contexts for the learning and includes teaching cues and transcripts of classroom dialog. National Board certified and Exploratorium Master teachers deconstruct their own teaching practices and share how they break subject matter standards into mind-sized learning units, then demonstrate those same learning units in action. Teacher reflections on assessment, along with links to resouces found in the Strategies in Practice Resource Guide, provide support for classroom management, lesson planning and essential strategies that describe how to adapt the instructional pedagogy modeled in the videos. All lessons are aligned simultaneously to the California standards for teaching and science subject matter content. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=91408 Calibrated Peer Review (CPR) is a program, for networked computers, that enables frequent writing assignments without any increase in instructor work. In fact, CPR can reduce the time an instructor now spends reading and assessing student writing. CPR offers instructors the choice of creating their own writing assignments or using the rapidly expanding assignment library. If you believe in constructivist learning, writing is the most important tool that you have. But if you have a class of 300 students, grading essays challenges even the true believer. Calibrated Peer Review (CPR)can be used in classes of any size. CPR is based on the model of peer review in science. The student reads a document, either on-line or hard copy, then writes about it. When the student has demonstrated competence as a reviewer, the program delivers three peer documents on for review. The student answers content and style questions and assigns scores. Finally, the student does a self-review. The student grade comes from writing and reviewing. Even though the program is only in its third year, approximately 100,000 students have used it. Although CPR was designed for use in large chemistry classes, experience has shown that it can serve in many other disciplines, as well. Currently, business, chemistry, economics, English, and life science instructors are using CPR in college, graduate and professional, high schools and middle schools. CPR was developed in the Chemistry Department at U.C.L.A. with funding provided by the National Science Foundation and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=88609 The IHMC Concept Mapping Software empowers users to construct, navigate, share, and criticize knowledge models represented as Concept Maps. The recently released Version 3 of CmapTools takes concept mapping to a new level, providing a powerful means for collaboratively creating, organizing, evaluating, and sharing knowledge models distributed on a growing collection of servers throughout the world, or on your private server.Among a large set of new features, a redesigned, simple user interface enables users to share their knowledge and link their concept maps to those of others with simple drag-and-drop operations. The synchronous collaboration tool allows geographically dispersed participants to concurrently work on the same Cmap, and see the others' changes in real time.The act of storing a Cmap on a CmapTools server actually stores a copy as a Web page, making it fast and automatic to share your Cmap(s) in an easily viewable, read-only form to the world at large. Styles make it easy to give a common look to a set of concept maps, including background images. In addition to English, this new version brings a user interface in Italian and Portuguese (other languages are in the works).The ability to search throughout all concept maps in servers across the world and resources (images, web pages, etc.) on the Web provides the power to change how users retrieve information: the tool leverages the topology and semantics of the concept map to retrieve from the Web and concept map index servers only resources that are relevant to the content of the user?s map.IHMCs CmapTools is being used by thousands of users from corporations, government entities, universities and schools since the early 1990s. Users include NASA, the US Navy, the Electric Power Research Institute, the Department of Defense, and thousands of teachers and students from universities and schools from over 150 countries. It has been shown to be an effective mechanism to capture and share the tacit knowledge of experts, as well as a powerful assessment and collaboration tool in schools. The CmapTools software continues to be free for non-for-profit, educational use. http://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=83837 The site guides a student through an introduction to conceptual frameworks, help in forming a research question, the process, steps and examples of creating and refining an appropriate conceptual research framework for a study. The text and related resources provide an overview, but the site is brought to life by the videoclips of a student describing, in detail, her struggles and success at creating a conceptual framework for her education thesis.