So which tool do we use? It’s simple; we set up online quizzes mapped to a specific program, product, or service.  In order for the consumer to become a lead, they must first take, and more importantly, pass a quiz.  So why is this consumer of higher quality?  A couple reasons:  1) Clearly, the more time a consumer spends filling out a lead form, the higher propensity the lead has to convert as the consumer has shown a higher interest rate.  2) By spending time on the quiz, the consumer has also now ‘bought in’.  They have committed time to engaging in your brand and are therefore more likely to convert.  3) Over the long term, the consumer will remember your product, service, or process.  While they may not convert TODAY, the consumer has a much higher likelihood of coming back to YOU versus a random banner ad they’ve seen.  While you are only PAYING for leads you receive today, you have actively engaged in a branding campaign at no cost.

Take one of our lead gen quizzes; interested in your thoughts

A series of monthly updates specifically designed to connect you with the most highly rated learning resources on FunnelBrain. So whether you dream of a new career, a new degree or passing your AP Biology Exam, our quizzes, flashcards and study teams will help you to succeed.

Further Your Career and Secure Your Future
Considering a career change or college degree? This month’s top degree quizzes allow you to quickly determine whether you are ready to take the next step.

Criminal Justice Degree
Business Degree
Education Degree
Computer Science Degree
Project Management Degree
Graphic Design Degree

The College Board developed and administered the first SAT in 1901, the same year that brought us the first Nobel Peace Prize*. Back then, only 1,000 students were tested. Today, over 1,500,000 students take the standardized test each year, which is required for admission by many colleges and universities in the United States.

The current SAT is made up of three sections: Critical Reading, Mathematics and Writing each of which can earn a maximum score 800.  The actual test is 3 hours and 45 minutes, throw in a few breaks, and students spend a good four and half hours taking their SAT!

For SAT review materials, FunnelBrain offers free and premium flashcard and quizzes help students prepare. Click here for Free SAT Practice Exams or click here for Premium SAT Flashcards.

Some Fun Facts about the SAT…

Top ranked universities for the highest SAT scores:***

Here’s how the SAT Breaks Down…

Critical Reading:

The Critical Reading section is compromised of two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section. There are a total of 67 questions including questions on sentence completions and questions about reading passages.  The question sets towards the beginning of the section are easier than those toward the end of the section.

Mathematics:

The Mathematics section consists of two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section comprised of 54 questions testing basic arithmetic, algebra I & II, and geometry.  Yes, calculators are allowed.  We let you decide if your pass the calculator information on to your favorite test taker.

Make sure to hones your skills on Sets, Absolute Value, Radical Equations, Exponents, and Functions.

Writing:

The writing section is 60 minutes and includes the writing of one 25-minute easy and 49 multiple-choice questions testing grammar, usage and word choice.

As a member of FunnelBrain, you are part of a learning community with resources at your fingertips. We encourage you to work together and create review materials for yourself, your students and for learners worldwide.

Keep on Learning!

*nobelprize.org

*Businessmajors.about.com

**The Olympian

***StateUniversity.com

FunnelBrain LLC announced the launch of a new series of quick, self-assessment quizzes for students preparing for standardized tests such as the GMAT*, GRE* or SAT*. The new quizzes are designed to allow students to quickly determine whether they have the core knowledge and skills necessary to score well on the exams. The quizzes will be available free of charge on FunnelBrain beginning with a quiz of basic math tested on the GMAT.

Practice exams typically mimic actual exams to help students get comfortable with the unique styles and formats used by testing companies such as The College Board or The Graduate Management Admission Council. FunnelBrain’s new self-assessment quizzes take a different approach. The quizzes present, in straight forward, simplified form, the basic knowledge tested by the exams.

“These are not practice exams,” explained Joe DeTuno, CEO of FunnelBrain. “These are self-assessment tools to let students quickly and easily find out if they have the basic knowledge of math, grammar and vocabulary that the testing companies assume in constructing their tests. For example, the GMAT assumes you know certain geometric formulas, such as the formula for the volume of a cylinder. Rather than burying that in a complex word problem, our GMAT math quiz pulls that out and tests it directly.”

A student who struggles with a practice exam may not immediately know whether the difficulty stems from the unusual style of the exam or a lack of knowledge. “With our self-assessment quizzes, the student knows immediately whether to break out the geometry book or take another practice test,” explained DeTuno.

About FunnelBrain LLC

FunnelBrain is an academic question and answer site that is created, edited, and organized by the students, teachers and life learners who use it. FunnelBrain is a trademark of FunnelBrain LLC.

*GMAT, GRE and SAT are the registered trademarks of the Graduate Management Admission Council, Educational Testing Service, and the College Board, respectively, none of which are affiliated with or endorse FunnelBrain, or FunnelBrain’s self-assessment quizzes.

I don’t think there is anyone out there that thinks using video supported tools like FunnelBrain or traditional video sites like YouTube in the classroom is a bad idea, but it’s not something we are taught or really encouraged to do. What makes this problem even worse is that many school districts block all websites that have any user generated content. The goal initially, I am sure was to stop students from visiting sites like MySpace or Facebook, but it is also preventing students and teachers from getting to some high quality sites like Wikipedia that while not a scholarly peer reviewed source is still a great spot to start research because it typically links out to many fantastic resources that are. Even more troubling for teachers is that some sites are a mixed bag where the obvious time suck exists but also some very high quality user generated content that is ideal for classroom use.

I really like video… I think it is a great way to start conversations and grab peoples attention. When I teach, I love to start off each session with a short video. Sometimes it is providing background information, is could be used to spark a conversation by illustrating a point, or it can be a call to action. Personally I like to start my lesson plan with the video and build outward from there to ensure there is an obvious connection between the video and my planned lecture. But what to do if YouTube or Vimeo are banned at your school? The good news is you still have options!

You could use TeacherTube a niche YouTube like site for educators. If this is banned at your school you should be able to get your IT department to open up access to it with a simple request. While TeacherTube is a great option it is hard to walk away from the tens of millions of videos on YouTube, so I am going to point you to two great resources that will let you download a video from YouTube to your computer so you can upload it into a powerpoint or put it on a flashdrive and bring to school without the need for internet access. The first is KissYouTube and the other is Vixy. Both are great tools that are very easy to use and will allow you to skirt arround your IT departments ban without breaking any rules.

Now that you know how to get the videos I thought it was worth sharing a few resources with you to get you thinking about how to work more video into your class.

100 Best YouTube Videos for Teachers

The Top Ten Videos Inspiring Us To Rethink The Way we Learn

104 inspiring YouTube videos to use in the classroom

These are just a few of the thousands of fantastic resources avaliable. If you are new to the EdTech arean I highly recomend you check out the blog Free Technology For Teachers where you will find a plethora of information on how to add quality technology resources to your classroom to help engage students and stimulate learnng.

For conversation:

Teachers: What are some creative ways you have used technology in the classroom? How has it benifited you?

Students: Have you had a teacher that used technology in the classroom? How did it benifit you? If you have not, how do you think it would help?

Parents: How would you like to see technology used in the classroom? How do you think it would benifit your kids?

We wrote a post about some new features at FunnelBrain.com. Today I want to take a few minutes and share some thoughts/ start a conversation about gaming in education. It’s interesting to me that people tend to be very polarized on one side or the other on this issue, because to me education is about engaging students and getting them to want to learn. Again, this is just my opinion and I would encourage you to leave comments if you disagree with me but I think education can and should be fun. I’m not suggesting we should all be playing Halo 3 in the classroom, but if we are creative we could and in my opinion should be using games like Halo 3 to help students learn important concepts like Physics, problem solving, teamwork, and strategy. I’m always happy to see teachers trying to teach kids in a way that will engage students. A few days ago I posted over on our Facebook Fan Page a link to a project called Wow in School that is using tools like Moodle and World of Warcraft to teach a 7th grade language arts course. Is this the way we all learned in school? No… Does it make it bad? I do not believe it does.

As responsible educators, we need to put a focus on making quality research based decisions, and the fact is there is a great deal of evidence that education based games like those on FunnelBrain, Starfall, and KidsSpell are valuable tools that can increase engagement and help to foster students who are life long learners.

For conversation:

Teachers do you currently use games in the classroom? Why or why not? Are there ways you could be using technology to improve engagement?

Students, would you like to see teachers using games or other interactive technologies in the classroom?

I have recently come across a group of orphans who are destined to perish without your help.  As horrible as it sounds, these orphans have been scheduled for euthanasia because no one wants them.  Okay, you are guessing already that these orphans are not humans.  You are correct.  However, they are not stray dogs and cats either.  They are words.  Words that will be lost to the English language unless we take action.

I know English is a dynamic language.  Happily for dictionary publishers, the mother tongue evolves over time.  We are accustomed to the annual ritual of adding new words to the dictionary.  In 2009 alone, Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary added nearly 100 new gems such as “acai,” “flash mob,” and “staycation.”  All well enough, but we tend to forget the ugly flip side of this linguistic survival of the fittest: perfectly good words fall into disuse and get deleted from the dictionary.  To make room for “frenemy” (someone who pretends to be your friend but is really your enemy), “fubsy” (short and stout) has to go.

Well, not if I can help it.  Collins Language, publisher of the Collins English Dictionary, has published a list of splendid words like fubsy that need saving. I have personally determined to do all I can for them, but I need your help.  Why should you care?  Well, I won’t embrangle you and leave you stumbling in caliginosity.  It’s just that these particular words are too wonderful to give up.  Once you see the list, I think you will agree it would be an olid, niddering act to exuviate these words from our lexicon.

These words have been slated for deletion from the Collins English Dictionary because Collins Language believes they have become extinct, meaning no one uses them anymore.  However, Collins will spare the words if they receive sufficient “proof of life” for them.  They are inviting people to “tweet” to @localwords outlining where and when they last heard these words, and whether they know that the words are still in usage. You can read more about Collins Language’s Twitter Survey of British Dialect Words here:

Collins Twitter Survey

So, how can you help?  First, take the Endangered Word Quiz and see how many of these words you know.  Find the quiz here:

Endangered Word Quiz

If you already know some of these words, by all means tweet Collins and let them know.

Second, use the Endangered Words Flashcard Deck to learn these words, then start using them!  You can find the deck here:

Endangered Words Deck

Of course, some folks may think you’re a wambly wassuck when you start blarring out words like hippletyclinch as you parzle down the drangway, but I think it will be a kickshaw for you.

Now, I’m feeling a bit hungry.  I think I’ll go make myself an ommuck.

In my last two posts, I talked about the benefits of study teams and some of the mechanics of setting them up.  Now I want to talk about how to maximize the success of your study teams by using FunnelBrain.  As you’ll see, study team projects on FunnelBrain can really kindle your students’ enthusiasm.  They’ll be learning and having fun doing it.

High school students spend a lot of time socializing electronically.  They keep up with their friends on Facebook or MySpace.  They post photos and videos.  They text and instant message.  Maybe they “tweet” on Twitter.  They are perpetually connected electronically to their friends, and they love seeing themselves and their work online.  FunnelBrain takes advantage of these trends to create an online learning experience that’s a natural extension of your students’ online, connected lives.

The Study Team Assignment

Every successful collaboration starts with one essential element: a clear purpose understood by all the contributors.  This will be true of your study teams as well.  A study team that is assigned a clear project to complete, a clear work product to produce, will be more focused, purposeful and productive than a study team that is merely assigned to study together.

FunnelBrain makes this step easy.  It was designed for group collaboration and it provides an obvious structure for a study team project: multi-media questions, answers and explanations presented as online “flashcards.”

Here’s an assignment you might give your study teams:  create a set of review questions, answers and explanations on FunnelBrain that cover everything they’ll need to know for your class’ final exam.  If you’re teaching an AP class, you might change that to everything they’ll need to know to score a 5 on the AP Exam.  Of course, you can readily create different versions of this assignment as appropriate for your own class.  I’ll discuss some of those variations below.  This particular assignment works well for a study team that will work together for an entire semester or academic year.

There are a few stipulations you’ll want to make with this assignment.  Students should put questions, answers and explanations in their own words, not copy them from the textbook.  The materials should be illustrated with photos where appropriate.  Encourage students to record video explanations for key concepts.  Encourage students to use FunnelBrain’s comments feature to add discussion threads to important questions.

If assigning each team to create a comprehensive set of review questions is too large a project for your class, it’s easy to create smaller versions of this assignment.  For example, the assignment might be to create review questions and answers for a particular unit you are covering.  Another good variation is to assign a different unit to each team, so that when all the teams’ work is combined, you have a comprehensive set of review materials for the class.

How to Create the Questions

There are two basic approaches to creating the questions for your study teams:  either the teacher provides the questions and the students create the answers and explanations, or the students create the questions as well.  The first approach provides more structure and guidance for those classes that need it.  On the other hand, unless you already have the questions prepared, the first approach can be a bit labor intensive the first time you employ it. I prefer the second approach.  I believe the students learn better if they have to extract the key questions from the material themselves.

The Mechanics

Now let me cover the basic steps of launching your study teams on FunnelBrain.  Most of these steps will be self-evident once you jump in and get familiar with the site.

Step 1. Register

You can browse through much of the FunnelBrain site without registering, but before you can create groups or flashcards you’ll need to register.  To register. go to the home page and click “Sign Up” on the top right side of the page.

Step 2. Complete Your Profile

To register, you merely provide your email address and choose a password.  However, you’ll want to complete your profile so that your student’s can find you.  After you register, click “Profile” on the right side of the menu bar at the top of the page.  This will take you to your nearly blank profile page.  Click “edit profile” under the default image.  Now, upload a photo of yourself, fill in your real name in the “Display Name” field.  Last, add the name of your school and your class.

Step 3.  Form a Group

Next you’ll want to form a group for you class.  From the home page, click “Create Flashcards” and then “Create a Group” or just click here:

CREATE A GROUP

Select your school name from the list or click “Add New” to the right if your school is not on the list yet.  Name the group after your class.  Near the bottom of this page, select “Private.”  This will let you control who can access your group so you can restrict it to your students and others you choose to invite (such as parents).

Step 4.  Invite Your Students

If you have your students’ email addresses you can invite them electronically.  Or you can simply tell your students in class to go to www.funnelbrain.com and enter your name in the search box to find your group.  Assuming you made your group private, when your students go to your group page and click “Join This Group,” you will receive an email alert telling you someone wants to join your group.  Follow the link in the email to approve each student.

Step 5.  Let Each Study Team Form its Own Group

For convenience, each study team will want to have its own private group on FunnelBrain.  Set these up yourself if you want to be an administrator for each group, or just instruct your students to set up your own.  Just be sure to join each of the groups so that you can check in on the teams’ progress from time to time.

Step 6.  Turn Them Loose

Now your study teams are ready to start creating online flashcard decks.  Tell them to be sure to add their decks to their groups as they create them.

We look forward to seeing you and your students on FunnelBrain!

We know that students learn best when they take an active role in the learning process.  This is not only common sense, it is a fundamental principle of teaching supported by ample research (see, for example, Tools for Teaching, by Barbara Gross Davis.  In this post I’m going to discuss one of the best techniques for getting students actively involved: study teams.

Study teams are a form of “collaborative learning.”  Teachers include collaborative learning or group learning in their teaching strategies because students working in small groups learn the material more deeply, retain more of what they learn, and generally have more fun learning.

A study team is a small group of students that work together to master the subject matter over a relatively long term, such as over an entire semester or even an entire school year.  Study teams are one of three basic types of group learning that Davis describes.  The other two types are:

informal learning groups, which are ad hoc groups formed in class to work on a brief task, such as solving a problem; and

formal learning groups, which are teams created to complete a specific group assignment such as group research paper or lab experiment.

All three types have their place, and you will probably use all three at different times.  However, a study team has some unique benefits that I want to highlight.

The unique benefits of study teams stem from their long-term stability.  These include:

Motivation – on a good team, members become dependent on each other, so the desire not to let teammates down becomes a big motivator;

Support System – the team becomes a support system for its members, as members turn to each other for help and encouragement;

Shared Learning Styles – members will bring different learning styles to the team, thus students benefit from exposure to new styles;

Peer teaching – on a good team, every member becomes a teacher to the other members, and students learn best by teaching other students;

Getting more done – by sharing the effort, study team members can cover more ground and have an easier time keeping pace with the class.

In upcoming posts, I’ll talk about how to form study teams and how to maximize their effectiveness by using FunnelBrain.