The new version 2.2.1 adds a new activity, among other improvements:
Science Notebook
With this new multimedia activity, intended for grades 4 and up, students can:
- Add driving questions and plan their investigations of scientific phenomena.
- Record observations by jotting down notes, uploading images, and making audio recordings.
- Perform analysis by entering data tables, adding models, and making predictions.
- Draft claims and conclusions with the help of writing scaffolds that improve scientific communication skills.
- Generate and submit a nicely formatted report for teacher review.
Shown below: An example of the interface for adding multimedia observations —
Teachers may provide feedback and ask for revisions. As with Explain Your Work and Math Puzzle Maker, all Science Notebook submissions display in the teacher Inbox for convenient review and is stored in the student portfolio.
Feature Enhancements and Bug Fixes
For students:
- Fixed an audio recording bug with My Voice.
- Added a warning for unsaved activities where students may lose progress if they exit prematurely.
- Removed the leveling step from Scrambled Words and also removed the spacing between syllables.
For teachers:
- Improved tracking of student usage and scoring data, including adding time spent for Word Gallery and activities in the mobile app. This paves the way for a new class-level report that will be released during the back-to-school timeframe.
Mobile App Upgrade
- Fixed an audio recording bug with My Voice.
- Added Math Puzzle Maker and certain Diagram It! activities to the mobile app. (For Diagram It!, the Review and Fill-in-the-Blank modes are on mobile, while Labeling mode will come next release.)
- Sped up load times.
- Made it clearer to students which activities are accessible in the mobile app.
- Added tracking of activity scores and time spent for teacher reporting.
Coming Soon
- Class-level reports and a new dashboard for secondary students are coming to the web app during the back-to-school timeframe.
Written by Katie Cunningham
Katie is CTO and Co-Founder of Speak Agent, Inc. A leading expert in the Python programming language, Katie designed the Speak Agent architecture and wrote the very first line of code for the current platform. She is an accomplished technical author and keynote speaker worldwide, as well as a leader of the Washington DC chapter of PyLadies, an organization dedicated to training women in Python.
