The 26th annual National Educational Computing Conference (NECC), presented by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), will be held in Philadelphia, Pa., from June 27-30, 2005. Watch for details on MarcoPolo's NECC 2005 plans in upcoming issues of the Trainer MarcoGram and on MarcoPolo's ISTE Web page.

...the Pan Balance tools?
In the summer 2004 issue of the Trainer MarcoGram, we introduced several Pan Balance applets – the Shape Pan Balance, the Number Pan Balance and the Expression Pan Balance. These student interactive tools from Illuminations, presented by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in partnership with the MCI Foundation, help students explore the concept of equivalence.

Please tell us how you introduced this resource during your training sessions, and how teachers reacted. How did teachers introduce the Pan Balance tools to their students?

Thank you in advance for sharing. Your feedback helps us keep MarcoPolo responsive to educator and student needs!

Trainers in lab settings are encouraged to remind session attendees to de-select the “remember me” option when signing in to MarcoPolo at the beginning of the training session. If attendees leave the “remember me” button checked during the MarcoPolo roster/registration process, the next time anyone accesses MarcoPolo from that computer, the previous attendee will still be signed in.

Agenda Creator

Audience Inventory Worksheet

Browseable Content Index

Featured Resources and Lessons

Global Considerations

Glossary of Internet Terms

Glossary of MarcoPolo Terms

ISTE Alignment

MarcoPolo Content Calendar

MarcoPolo Search Engine

New Partner Lessons

Partner Site Overviews

Partner Site Talking Points

Plug-Ins and Utilities

Standards Alignment

Trainer FAQ

Trainer Resource Center

Training Logistics Forms

WebEx Awareness Sessions

MarcoPolo News is a quarterly e-newsletter that brings "big picture" program updates to members of the MarcoPolo Education Community. It's a great tool for trainers who often are asked general questions about the program and those who integrate program news into their training sessions. Trainers and trainees are encouraged to subscribe. All issues are archived online.

The MarcoGram is written especially for K-12 classroom teachers, principals and trainers. Distributed by e-mail each month, this edition features themed activities to use in the classroom, along with links to lesson plans and other resources available through the MarcoPolo Partnership.

The MarcoGram is a great training tool, whether you copy and distribute it to trainees at your sessions or point them to the online archived editions. Remember to encourage your attendees to subscribe to this popular newsletter!

Recent topics include:

September 2004
Cycles of Change

August 2004
Exploring Ancient Greece

July 2004
Touring the National Parks

The Trainer MarcoGram is a quarterly newsletter that provides MarcoPolo Trainers with tips, activities, news and links to online resources. Permission is granted to reprint and distribute the Trainer MarcoGram for use in a training session or classroom, or on Web sites devoted to the field of education or professional development. All Web addresses and links must be maintained in their original form as they appear in the published version.

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Before trainees can roster themselves into training sessions (see related story above), individual MarcoPolo Trainers or their Training Administrators need to set the sessions up and register them in Rusticello, MarcoPolo's professional development management system. Following are some quick reminders for trainers about the guidelines that have been set for these processes.

Register the Correct Training Session Type

MarcoPolo training sessions are divided into two groups – those conducted only by Field Trainers and those conducted only by MarcoPolo Staff Trainers, MarcoPolo Certified Trainers and Certified Trainer Candidates.

Field Trainers may conduct the following sessions:

• Awareness Session (for all audiences)
• Field Training of End Users/Teachers
• Field Training of Trainers

Field Trainers may register the sessions they plan to lead themselves or their Rollout Organizations' MarcoPolo Training Administrators may register the sessions for the trainers.

MarcoPolo Staff Trainers, Certified Trainers and Certified Trainer Candidates may deliver the following sessions once they have completed the required advanced training:

• MarcoPolo Awareness Session (for all audiences)
• MarcoPolo TCH-1: Content and Resources for Teachers
• MarcoPolo TCH-2: Internet Content for the Classroom Activity Development for Teachers
• MarcoPolo TRN-1: Content and Resources for Trainers
• MarcoPolo TRN-2: Internet Content for the Classroom Activity Development for Trainers

MarcoPolo Staff Trainers, Certified Trainers and Certified Trainer Candidates should work with their respective Training Administrators and managers to register their sessions in the MarcoPolo database.

Different Surveys Earmarked for Different Trainings

At the conclusion of every training session, all trainers are requested to ask attendees to complete a training survey to provide MarcoPolo with feedback on the session. Because there are different attendee surveys associated with the various types of training sessions, it is important for trainers and Training Administrators to register the correct training session "type" in the system. This ensures that attendees receive and respond to a survey that asks relevant questions about their particular session and that the resulting survey report, provided to the trainer and MarcoPolo, is a useful tool for evaluating the session.

For more information on registering specific training sessions, MarcoPolo Field Trainers, Certified Trainers and Certified Trainer Candidates who are affiliated with an organization should contact their Training Administrators. Independent Field Trainers should contact the MCI MarcoPolo Program directly.

The MarcoPolo Web site was recently updated to reflect the ongoing development of MarcoPolo resources and the program's ever-broadening rollout to educators and students. Be sure to mention these updates as you review the MarcoPolo Web site during training sessions.

New Index for Lessons, Student Interactives

The Browseable Content Index is a great new tool for trainers and educators. Accessible from the Teacher Resources section of the MarcoPolo Web site, this Content Index is similar to the lesson indexes on the individual Content Partner pages. The major difference is that the new Content Index allows the user to see all MarcoPolo lesson plans and student interactive resources together in one place. Users can filter their searches by subject, Content Partner, grade band or resource type.

All MarcoPolo Content Partners are hard at work creating student interactive resources for many of their existing and upcoming lesson plans. Embedding student materials within a majority of MarcoPolo lessons is a key program goal.

"State Network" Becomes "Rollout Network"

The Rollout Network section occupies the spot on the MarcoPolo Web site that was formerly identified as the State Network. This update reflects the expansion of MarcoPolo's Rollout Partnerships to include organizations at the local, district, regional, state, national and international levels as well as multiple Rollout Partners in a given state or region. It also supports the redesign of the Rollout Partnership model, under which Rollout Organizations identify one or more key MarcoPolo program components – training, Web presence, content and alignment projects – to develop and manage for their service areas.

From this section, visitors can access information on MarcoPolo training and Rollout Progress in their own states, get a list of all Rollout Partner Organizations sorted by state, and also find a list of and links to various MarcoPolo Content and Web Projects, including state standards alignment projects created and maintained by Rollout Partner Organizations.

This section of the Trainer MarcoGram offers step-by-step instructions for introducing MarcoPolo Content Partner Web sites to your training session attendees. In this issue, we focus on the recently re-launched Illuminations Web site, presented by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics in partnership with the MCI Foundation.

Before Your Training Session

During Your Training Session

After Your Training Session

MarcoPolo Content Partners are working hard to offer cutting-edge resources that are tied to current events. These include primary source materials and tools to facilitate experiences that cement the learning process. Introducing these timely resources during training sessions helps trainers show the relevance of the MCI MarcoPolo Program by presenting attendees with curriculum materials they can take back to their classrooms and use right away.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
covers all of these bases with the "Messenger Mission to Mercury," a featured project on Science NetLinks. This package brings the excitement of the mission – which launched August 3, 2004, and is scheduled to continue through the spring of 2012 – home to all.

We asked Clinton Turner, project manager for Science NetLinks, to discuss the Messenger project and offer tips for integrating these exciting tools and resources into training sessions.

Q. What is the Messenger Project?

A. Messenger is a NASA scientific investigation by spacecraft of the planet Mercury. The name comes from “MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry and Ranging” and highlights the project’s broad range of scientific goals.

The Messenger Mission will orbit Mercury after making three flybys of the planet, using data collected as an initial guide to perform a more focused scientific investigation of this mysterious world. Using a set of miniaturized space instruments, Messenger will investigate six key scientific questions about Mercury’s characteristics and environment. The spacecraft will travel five years before entering Mercury's orbit in March 2011. Then, it will carry out comprehensive measurements for one full Earth year. See FAQs on the mission for more specifics.

Q. Why Mercury?

A. Mercury is the least explored terrestrial planet. Understanding Mercury and how it was formed is essential to understanding the other terrestrial planets and their evolution. Only one other spacecraft, Mariner 10, visited Mercury and that was back in the mid-1970s. We know little more than its average density (the second greatest of all the planets), the composition of its atmosphere (thinnest of the terrestrial planets), the fact that it possesses a global magnetic field and its extreme variations in temperature. Messenger will serve to lift some of the uncertainty about this innermost planet of our solar system.

Q. What is the role of AAAS in the mission?

A. AAAS is a partner working on the Education and Public Outreach (EPO) Team for the mission and provides leadership for the overall design of educational products, as well as quality control and assessment. AAAS is developing a "plain language" book on the exploration of the solar system and a series of multimedia explorations that are based on the actual goals of the mission. Check the Science NetLinks Web site frequently for updates.

Q. How do the Messenger project resources tie into the curriculum?

A. These resources tie into current events, space exploration, history of the solar system, the use of new technologies, comparative planetology and global competition in space science exploration.

Q. How can trainers most effectively prepare to introduce this resource during training sessions?

A. Trainers should become familiar with the story of Messenger by reviewing NASA's Messenger Web site. Trainers also should spend at least 20 minutes playing the Science NetLinks-developed multimedia games before presenting them to an audience, and become familiar with the “how is this like the mission …how is it different” sections of each game.

The Science NetLinks team welcomes your feedback on the Messenger resources.

Development of communication skills often is integrated across a standards-based curriculum through the use of student oral presentations. But, not all teachers are comfortable with their own preparation to teach this skill to their students. Here's a collection of MarcoPolo resources for those teachers who have not received specific training in public speaking as well as for the "pros" who are looking for resources to supplement those they've already collected.

A great place to start is with the ReadWriteThink lesson Inventing and Presenting - Unit 3: Persuasive Speaking and Invention Promotion. While this lesson plan is targeted at middle school science and language arts, it identifies the essential ingredients of effective speech making and delivery. It also provides a model that teachers in other content areas can use to adapt to their own specific needs. (Remember, teachers may adopt MarcoPolo resources as is or adapt them to their classroom needs.) Further resources are available in Invention/Investigation Speech Delivery Checklist and Elements of Effective Speeches, which provide questions that should be answered when reviewing a speech. These lessons may also provide students the opportunity to identify characteristics of effective speeches by reading and reviewing some historical speeches.

Orangutan U, a ScienceNetLinks Weekly Science Update, features an interview with Rob Shumaker, an animal behaviorist at the National Zoo. Shumaker is teaching orangutans to form simple sentences using a computer touch-screen. Subvocal Speech illustrates that spoken words are controlled by electrical nerve signals from the brain that tell lips, throat and tongue exactly how to form the words.

The MarcoPolo Search Engine yields a wealth of Partner-reviewed resources to help teachers support student development of oral-presentation skills. The following provide a representative sampling of these resources:

This is also a great time to invite your participants to use the Advanced Search feature of the MarcoPolo Search Engine. Have them type in “speeches” and under "Limit Format," select "Audio and Video." You might also invite them to take advantage of the Boolean Phrase Help feature and search for “speeches and science.”

Let us know how you integrated these resources into your training sessions – and how teachers in your sessions responded.