Thinking Strings Demo
ACHIEVEMENT PROFILE SECTIONS of the module. Single-click on a module title and it will lock the sections in place. Rollover each of the sections in the second column and you will see a third column, which lists the CONCEPTS that are explored in that section. What module have you clicked? Okay, so in the second column, which section should we click? Great. Now if you've single-clicked a section title, the concepts are locked in place.
ACHIEVEMENT PROFILE Let's look at how each SECTION is organized: (side b) 1. Then the student learns about a bunch of topics. 2. The next-to-the-last item is the Summary, which summarizes the main points about what the student just learned. 3. The first item is a Goals page so students know what will be addressed in the section. 4. Then come the "Try Its." These are interactive activities that augment and reinforce the material the student learned in the section.
ACHIEVEMENT PROFILE The Achievement Profile has three functions: It's the Table of Contents It's the navigational hub - how you get from place to place within Revealing X It's where student track their own progress as they work with Revealing X
ACHIEVEMENT PROFILE, side b MODULES - CONCEPTS - SECTIONS MODULES of Revealing X; these are analogous to chapters in a textbook. As far as the content of Revealing X goes, you'll be able to peruse that on your own, but for now let's say that it covers what you expect to find in any introductory X textbook.
Instructor Materials Your set up and access to the Interactive Grade Book is provided at no charge. Instructor Materials are a pdf that is hundreds of pages long and gives you all of the content of Revealing X. This includes the Achievement Profile (table of contents), page text, glossary, review, Try Its, background captions, Read button content, etc. We can provide you all of the multiple choice questions that are contained in the Review of the Assistance Palette in whatever format you need them to make either paper or online quizzes. Because different people need them in different formats, we don't just send them to you. You need to let us know the specs of the files you want.
How Do Students Purchase Courseware? You assigning Revealing X just like you would a textbook. The most efficient way for students to purchase the courseware is through our web store. Within a minute or two of purchase, the student receives an email with a Revealing X serial number and a link to the application download, as well as instructions for Getting Started and a link to the Revealing X User Guide. You can also use your campus bookstore, which I know is sometimes a necessity for financial aid students. In that case, students purchase a serial number (a.k.a. access code) in a cardboard sleeve from the bookstore. The package contains instructions for going to the Thinking Strings website to download the Interactive Explorations app. FYI to Donna, in case they ask, bookstore receive a discount from retail, but we have no control of the amount for which they sell the access codes. Some charge retail, others charge more.
LOOKING AT A SECTION Let's take a look at a section. Which do you want to check out?... Pick a module...Pick a section... [Have them double-click on the Section title so you know they will be on the Goals page.]
LOOKING AT A SECTION
LOOKING AT A SECTION Is the customer's audio on/off?: • Oh... I hear the narrator. Let's turn that off so we can hear each other speak. • Do you hear the narrator speaking? .... If not, work to turn on the computer audio (only briefly; don't get bogged down in this; time of tolerance is extremely limited and if there are issues, they will be remembered. If you cannot get audio on, recall this and point out what users would be hearing now and then throughout the demo) so that the customer will be able to hear various audio speakers. Then, instruct to turn off narrator. .... If yes, then same line,... let's turn that off so we can hear each other.
LOOKING AT A SECTION Is the customer's audio on/off?: (side b) A bit about the narrator... Students generally aren't impartial to her, so they leave her on or off. Students who are auditory learners, or ESL, find the narration particularly useful. And some students just like it. It's also helpful for vocabulary and pronunciation
LOOKING AT A SECTION - Goals, Definitions Okay. So the first page of every section presents the Goals... in this section, you'll learn about this, that, and this... Whenever there is text on the screen, you can get definitions of terms. Move your cursor over the text ... put it on the word X in the Y line... [that is, guide them to a term that you know is defined]... The cursor will change to a pointer... click the word. You get a definition. Even in the definition, you can click additional terms. ... [again, guide them to a term in the definition that you can click to get another definition; 9 times out of 10, this evokes some comment that they like it].
LOOKING AT A SECTION - Definitions, side B The reason the terms that are defined aren't colored or underlined is because the glossary contains so many words that the screen becomes a cacophony of color and the text is difficult to read. [At this point, some people ask if there is a "whole" glossary or a list of terms... You then immediately show them to open the Assistance Palette and click on Glossary. In other words, let them guide the flow of the conversation/presentation.]
LOOKING AT A SECTION - TRY ITs Revealing X is NOT a testing tool; it's a learning environment. Students quickly understand that it is good to click/drag things to be able to get more information. These sorts of interactions are known to be a good way to learn. Anyway, doing this stuff is just more "fun" then reading a textbook. Students become engaged with the material. Revealing X has no less content than a comparable textbook; it's just that all the material is coming at the student in a "gentler" way. Then click through the Try Its to showcase the different types. Choose the pages that are visually most appealing. Basically, whatever section you are in, click ahead while talking so that you know what is coming and can guide the customer to where you want him/her to be. HINT: NOT ALWAYS ONE ANSWER - a student will know they've found all of the correct answers when they hear the sound effect.
LOOKING AT A SECTION - ESSAY or OPEN RESPONSE questions "Essay" or "open response" questions are interspersed throughout Revealing X. Anything the student types in the essay space is reported to you in the Interactive Grade Book. We've learned over the past 15 years that if you don't say anything about these to your students, they'll type 2-3 sentences. It will be enough for you to know whether/not they are reading/understanding the material. However, maybe you want something more specific. If you have a writing-intensive course, you may want 1000-word responses to each question. It doesn't matter; whatever they write will be posted to you. (Even if the student does not click the Save button, the work is saved. As the student moves from one page to another, or back to the Achievement Profile, everything they have done is posted to the Interactive Grade Book.) Best for students to do the typing in the field so extra characters don't show up when they copy and paste it later.
LOOKING AT A SECTION - typical page Take a look at this page, which is what most of the text pages look like. At that top is a page title, so students immediately know what they are reading about. Then about a paragraph of text. And a background image.
LOOKING AT A SECTION - IMAGE/running sub-text, side b Let's see that picture in all it's glory...right-click (option-click) anywhere on the picture. Everything else is cleared away and you see the picture with its caption. So what we have is a running sub-text in images throughout Revealing X. Just click anywhere to bring back the rest of the stuff.
LOOKING AT A SECTION - Summary Anyway, let's just click forward through some pages so you get an idea of what things look like. Then, move the slider to go to page X (summary page). Each section has a Summary of the main points that the student just learned. Many students like to print the Summary to use as a "study guide" (they can print any page).
LOOKING AT A SECTION - TRY ITs Now move to the next page, where we see the first "Try It" or activity that augments and reinforces the material the student learned in this section. Tell the customer what to do on the page - super briefly - for example, say... let's see this page says to drag all the blah to the blah. ... Or this page says to click all the Blah-blahs. Please intentionally click/drag something incorrectly because I want to show you how the feedback works. Notice that when you get something right, you get more information about it. However, when you get it wrong, you also get more information to either teach you something or point you in the right direction. For example [this example is only for RWR], in the Buddhism module, students are asked to click on the name's of Buddhism's founder. Mahavira is in the list, which is obviously incorrect. However, clicking on Mahavira allows the student to learn who this is.
LOOKING AT A SECTION - moving through pages Please click the right arrow/next page button toward the center of the bottom bar to move to the next page (or you can use the right-arrow button on your keyboard).
LOOKING AT A SECTION - can't see bottom of page? NOTE: This is when the customer may point out that they cannot see the bottom bar. 1) is the issue that the Task Bar (Windows) or the Dock (Mac) is covering the bottom. If so, you the Task Bar / Dock by : Go into system preferences. Go to Dock, move to left or right side. 2) To change your display resolution: Open your Windows Control Panel. Go to "Appearances and Themes" and choose "Change the Screen Resolution." Drag the Screen Resolution Slider at the lower left of the Window to 1280 X 768, or select this from the pull-down menu. While you are there, check that your color quality is set to highest (32-bit).
LOOKING AT A SECTION - tracking progress The students' progress is being tracked and reported to you in the Interactive Grade Book. Students have to complete all of the reading and activities to receive credit for completion, but they can choose to go deeper into the material. A sort of motto we like to use is "The more you click and the more you drag, the more you have the opportunity to learn." We are encouraging "learning through exploration."
LOOKING AT A SECTION - tracking progress, side b If you move back to a page that you've already "read," and look at the star at lower left, it will be gold. This is how you know you've read the page. If you move to a page you haven't yet read, the star at lower left is white. This information also gets posted to the Achievement Profile (we'll look at that) and of course to the Interactive Grade Book (where both you and the student can view it). Credit for "reading" a page requires the student to be on the page for at least 4 seconds. This is long enough that students can't just click through the screens without even looking at them, but short enough that students don't get frustrated, even if they are fast readers.
EDUCATIONAL COURSEWARE FOR HIGHER ED Not an E-book, more interactive Computer based teaching tools Neurologically, the brain fires more when reading and listening simultaneously Helps to really engage in the learning process Not a course in a box, but an integral component of a course USEFUL FEATURES: Try its, Journal Entry, Interactive Gradebook
Learning through exploration - the more you click and drag, the more you have the opportunity to learn. Runs on a computer, so this levels the playing field, since many schools provide access to all students. Download the app, everything in the cloud. Not a testing environment. Students have the opportunity to learn more through making mistakes. It helps them to go deeper into the material.
THINGS TO MENTION AS YOU SEE THEM: Read Buttons (RWR) Contextually-placed excerpts from primary texts. Listen Buttons (RWR) Contextually placed presentation of audio excerpts from rituals, prayers, chants, etc. Journal (Applied Ethics, Philosophy) You have the option of whether these remain private to the student or whether they get reported to the IGB. They are interspersed throughout the text in order to encourage students to develop their own thoughts about different ideas/subjects that are being discussed. Banners (Applied Ethics)
THE ASSISTANCE PALETTE Tools for self-help Click the "I" (info) button at lower right to open the Assistance Palette. Row of tabs
THE ASSISTANCE PALETTE, 1 GLOSSARY Glossary: Click the Glossary to see a list of all the terms that are defined. You can scroll through the list or find a term. Start typing (SAY A TERM that you know is in the glossary)... You'll see that as you type the field is narrowed to matches. When you see the word you want (say the term again), click on it and you'll see the definition on the right. These are the same terms that are defined when you click on terms in the text that is displayed on the screen.
THE ASSISTANCE PALETTE, 2 RECENT PAGES/SEARCH Recent Pages: This is analogous to the "history" in a web browser. It lists all the pages you've visited in THIS session of use. Double-click on any page to go back to that page. Search: Type a term in the field and click Search to find all the pages where that word is mentioned. When you see the list of pages, double-click a page title to go to that page.
THE ASSISTANCE PALETTE, 3 BOOKMARKS Bookmarks: This is a list of all the pages on which you've placed a bookmark. Do you have anything in your list? If "yes": double-click any page title to go to that page. If "no": Let's go back to the main Revealing X window. What page are you on? Okay, click the Bookmark button at lower right. Go back to the Assistance Palette and now you have a page title in the Bookmark window.
THE ASSISTANCE PALETTE, 4 NOTES Notes: If you look at the top of the Notes window, you'll see the title of the page you are looking at right now. You can type notes about the page. Now, go back to the main window and move to another page. Look at the Notes window of the Assistance Palette. Notice that the header is now the page title of the current page. Write some notes about this page. Now, click the Show All Notes button at the upper right of the window. You see a list of all the pages for which you've taken notes. You can double-click a page title to go to that page. You can print the notes!
THE ASSISTANCE PALETTE, 5 REVIEW Review: The Review is the only thing for which the students' work is NOT reported to the Interactive Grade Book. Students use the Review to test their own knowledge or to learn by following the correct responses. These are multiple-choice questions that pertain to the section in which you are working. We both probably have different questions on the screen because they are displayed in random sequence. The answers are also displayed randomly, so the students can't memorize the responses by their location in the list.
THE ASSISTANCE PALETTE, 6 MORE REVIEW If the student clicks the correct response on the first attempt, the tally at the lower right of the Review window is incremented. So, maybe the student is studying for a mid-term and wants to be sure they get at least 20 out of 25 correct. If you click an incorrect response, notice that you are not locked out from learning. You can then click all the responses to learn the correct one. Note that the tally of correct responses is not incremented because you didn't get it right on the first try. We see here again that Revealing X is not a testing tool; it's for learning. We can provide you with these multiple choice questions in the form of test banks so you can make quizzes out of them, if you wish.
Thinking Strings Support We take full responsibility for assisting both you and your students with any issues that arise when running our courseware. While you are of course welcome to reach us by phone, students contact us either by completing a support request form on our website or by emailing [email protected]. We take this responsibility seriously. We are all educators. Our goal is for students to be learning, not wrestling with their computers. Our promise is that we will reply to emails within 24-hours on weekdays (although we are not available 24/7, we work long hours, including most weekends). During workdays, our real response time averages under an hour. We've been doing this since 2001, so we know what issues may arise and how to assist students.
We don't keep anything a mystery from you. The primary issues are firewalls or antivirus software set up on student computers that block communication with the internet; as well as slow or unstable internet connections. Sometimes students are a bit anxious about using the courseware and need handholding or instructions for navigation. We will provide whatever it is that you and your students need. We generally do not report every support request to you (unless you want that, but it's kind of boring). However, if a student is impeded from doing their assignment or seems considerable anxious/distraught about a situation, we will of course report that to you. Also, you should feel free to ask us for information about any student using the courseware, particularly if you hear something like, "I contacted Thinking Strings, but they never get back to me." I can say in advance that this is more than likely an inaccurate statement.