Sparkie Tales

April 2013

Dear Educator, Greetings from Mindspark team!

Here's the second issue of the year.

This issue covers new features like Spot an Error, do Mindspark as a student, Wildcard Question, New Student Comment System etc.

We are also happy to share that Mindspark is now on Facebook(www.facebook.com/Mindspark.Ei) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/mindspark_ei).

You can post your comments and queries NOW on the Facebook page also.

Do send your feedback at sparkietales@ei-india.com.

Enjoy!

Team Mindspark

About Mindspark Mindspark is an adaptive learning program that helps:  Students learn Maths and language by employing a constructivist theory of learning by answering questions that are appropriate to their current understanding  Remediates misconceptions identified through 10 years of ASSET tests with more than 2 million data points  Supports teachers in schools to teach to where the need is as opposed to a regular rehearsal based on his/her own intuition on what kids don’t know

For more information visit www.mindspark.in or write to us at mindspark@ei-india.com

www.mindspark.in

Enrichment Modules Enrichment modules are specifically designed for those children in the class who complete their part of Mindspark quickly. They are the brighter ones in the class who are craving for more. So these modules are generally something that could be outside the core curriculum for that class, but something that would be adding value to the child. These would help the child learn something new and interesting or pose an interesting challenge to grapple with.

These modules appear only after the child has completed their allocated topics, so that only the ones who really have time would do these.

Games Educational games in Mindspark serve two purposes.

1. Help a student understand and internalize a concept 2. Enables a student to have fun while doing this.

The reason we have introduced Games in Mindspark is because children tend to do something if they are having fun doing it. When making these games, in addition to creating fun, we make sure that the child learns something or overcomes a misconception or gets a lot of practice. These games would be related to a specific topic that they are doing or would be available to do as an activity even after completing this topic.

Remedials Remedials on the other hand are meant for children who are struggling with a particular concept or have a known misconception. Mindspark identifies such children based on their performance and offers these interactive remedials to help the child. These remedials provide basic scaffolding for children to make sure they learn in a non-threatening environment. The remedial would typically respond to every minor error the child makes and provides conceptual reasoning and help at every step.

www.mindspark.in

New Features 1. Error Reporting

Description: A system to report errors for parents and teachers has been developed. Under this system, parents can report error from the login page itself and they do not have to login. They have to provide their email ids. The teachers can report error from the home page. The errors can be reported at a question level by searching on the child’s name.

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2. Doing Mindspark as a student option for teachers

Description: Now teachers can have the experience of a student doing Mindspark. This option is available under Activate Topics option by clicking on ‘See/customize’ option. The teachers can start from any customized point and start doing MS.

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3. Wild card question

Description: Under this feature, students will get one question or one timed test in a day. The question will have a tag of 'Wild card question' to distinguish it from the regular questions and challenge questions. Students will get 1 sparkie for the question if they get it right and 3 sparkies for the timed test if they answer 75% of the questions correctly.

A wild card timed test may contain questions that are not related to the topic that is being currently done. These questions are asked to test alertness and ability to answer questions from other topics. However, wild card questions will not affect performance in the regular topics.

Classes: All

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4. New structure of Games, Remedials and Enrichments

Description: Some games will be having levels(referred to as break points).

These levels will ensure that the child starts from the point where he last left the game and he need not play the entire game in case of a power cut/auto logout.

Also, the remedials will now be occurring more frequently to the kids so as to remediate the misconception then and there.

www.mindspark.in

5. New Student Comment System

Description:. As a step towards making the student comment system more useful and effective, some new features have been added. The students will have an option to mark if their query was resolved or not and reply back once to MS if they have further queries and are not satisfied with our response. However, this will be limited to one to-and-fro between the child and Mindspark. Kids will now choose from more variety of categories and can see the question as well as the previous question during commenting. They will have to choose whether they want to comment on the question, the previous question or not related to the question. If they choose to comment on the previous question, the previous question will pop out and they can comment on the previous question.

www.mindspark.in

Enrichment Modules

Rolling Cups Class: 9,10

Gear Ratios and Pendulum Clock Class: 7,8,9,10

Cycloids - Properties and Related Curves Class: 8,9,10

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Games

Seven Dwarfs(Data Analysis) Class: 2,3

Sorting Objects(Data Analysis) Class: 1,2

Mean, median and Mode Class: 7,8

Pane Painter Class: 3,4

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Remedials

Remedial on surface area of cuboid

Understanding conditions suitable for applying the Exterior Angle Property in a triangle

Understanding and application of inverse proportions

Solve a quadratic equation using discriminant method

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Remedials

Solving a quadratic equation using quadratic formula where discriminant is a perfect square

Solving quadratic equations using quadratic formula

Misconception - Perimeter of a shape decreases if a smaller shape is cut out from it

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Introductions

A curious case of the exponents and bases

Application of congruence in calculating area of circle

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Upcoming features 1. Exam Corner

Description: A section specifically made for exams and for the higher class kids which will help them do a focussed practice for exams along with some stress busting exam tips.

www.mindspark.in

2. Knowledge Map

Description: A complete picture to show the map of the topics in Mindspark.

This will help the students to navigate through the topics smoothly.

www.mindspark.in