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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Enrichment Modules

Rolling Cups Gear Ratios and Pendulum Clock

Class: 9,10 Class: 7,8,9,10

Cycloids - Properties and Related Curves

Class: 8,9,10

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Games

Seven Dwarfs(Data Analysis) Sorting Objects(Data Analysis)

Class: 2,3 Class: 1,2

Mean, median and Mode Pane Painter

Class: 7,8 Class: 3,4

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Remedials

Remedial on surface area of cuboid Understanding and application of

inverse proportions

Solve a quadratic equation using

discriminant method

Understanding conditions suitable

for applying the Exterior Angle

Property in a triangle

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Remedials

Solving a quadratic equation using

quadratic formula where

discriminant is a perfect square

Misconception - Perimeter of a

shape decreases if a smaller shape is

cut out from it

Solving quadratic equations

using quadratic formula

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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.

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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.