From a Science Teacher Department Head.

Guest blogger:  Mr. Edwards - Science Department Head.

Positives:

• The kids seemed to really excited about working with the gizmos.  This helped increase the enjoyment of discovery learning, and/or the re-enforcement of what was already taught.  (ie the students were truly engaged).
• The level of difficulty of the different gizmos was in some cases challenging, but students were still able to work through the activities with some guidence.  Thus this tool is as effective as long as the teacher is prepared and has done the work in advance as well.
• The instant feedback of the five follow up questions both for the teacher and the students was nice to have, provided the students did it themselves and not copy what their partner had as their responses.
• The student worksheets provided had insightful questions, and followed a logical order in investigating the activity.
• The gizmos are versatile for either review, or discovery learning.

Drawbacks:

• Some students could not complete the online assessment at home if they did not finish in the time provided.
• Some students simply saw what the other students answered in correctly, and thus had an advantage, making the formal and informal assessment questionable to whether they understand it.
• We could not get the gizmos to work on our iPads, due to unavailable software, thus we were limited to the laptops, which were not always available.
• There are no gizmos written specifically for the Earth Science 11 curriculum here in BC. 
• Some gizmos are more useful than others, and are too simple.  They would ber better as a demo, than as an activity.

Suggestions to the district coordinator:

• Different versions of the questions to help minimize copying.
• Try and get the software for iPads, or make them compatible with the existing software.
• Try and get gizmos for both Science and Tech 11 and Earth Science 11, as these courses could really use an engaging means of learning. 

There will be contunued use of the gizmos for next year, provided we get accounts by the district.