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We’re pleased to announce that mozaBook has been selected as a winner as Cool Tool in the Presentation Solution category of the 2016 EdTech Awards. mozaBook was also chosen as a finalist for two other categories of the competition: e-Learning, Blended Learning or Flipped Solution and Content Provider Solution.
The EdTech Awards are put on annually by edtech digest, an online publication with a U.S.-based team who has been writing stories and publishing information about the latest in education technology since 2010. Their mission is to “tell the story of 21st-century education transformation.” Among their work, they share interesting edtech products, interviews with influencers in education, compile special reports and resources all in the name of working to “reshape the education culture and to create a new and better future for students.”
The EdTech Awards highlights interesting edtech products, leaders in education technology, as well as products and companies setting trends in the industry.
Victor Rivero, Editor-in-Chief of EdTech Digest and the man who oversees the EdTech Awards, has the following to say about this year’s competition: "This year's program had some very stiff competition, hard decisions were made in selecting winners. The honorees here are among the best and brightest in the edtech space. Finalists and winners both represent an achievement. We're proud to honor these cool tools, leaders and trendsetters in education technology.”
To follow those kind words we’d just like to say that, here at Mozaik Education, we’re proud to be a part of the movement to help improve what edtech can do for learning, changing both how edtech is being used in schools and helping students learn more effectively...and of course while having some fun with technology at the same time!
Mozaik 3D scenes have been proven to be very effective in visualizing objects, phenomena, processes, and rules which are hard to illustrate with static images and hard to capture on videos, let alone imagine them. (For example, Cosmic or microbiological occurrences, or long destroyed historical landmarks. My personal favorite: the Van der Waals interaction on a gecko’s foot).
But to give support in other, not so 3D-friendly fields, our developers went a step further. For unusual topics such as probability, logic, or advanced spatial geometry, they have invented the 4th dimension by creating puzzles and exercises to be solved within our 3Ds.
One good example of all the innovations claimed above would be our Constructing shapes 3D (above), in which the user is challenged to reconstruct a spatial object when we already know the front, side and top views.
In another model, Light and shadow (below), the user can experiment by placing a light source near different spatial shapes in a room which is actually a 3D coordinate system. Depending on the type of light source, its placement and its distance from the shape, the shadow cast will differ dramatically. There are 8 different objects and two types of light to choose from in the coordinate system and the ability to rotate the 3D model and view the objects and shadows from different perspectives provides a great demonstration for students of art and physics alike.
For statistics and probability (besides the best tool in the world (probably!)), our Dice 3D model (below) offers great support. Here the user can roll with different numbers and colors of dice and, as they roll they receive a statistical chart summing up the results, showing us the essence of the rules of chance.
With our inbuilt exercises, our developers are doing their best to make sure that teachers receive sufficient help in explaining all topics for students with interactive digital tools. Register on mozaWeb to try out our 3D models for free, including the human skeleton!
It is almost universally accepted that History is one of the core subjects taught at school. Studying and knowing history is often seen as a stepping point for getting into a more specialised Humanities courses at a university level. In many countries History is a compulsory exam for those who want to go into studying Law, Economics, Politics, International Relations, Sociology, Psychology, History of Art etc.
However, according to different studies only 7% of American school students age 13-17 and 12% of American high school students reported that History and Social Studies were their favourite subjects. This makes History approximately three times less popular among American students than Maths. In the UK, where school education is much more specialised than in the US, moderate love for History is illustrated by the percentage of sixth form students who choose to study this subject. Around 11% of British students took History A-levels in 2009-10, which made History the 6th most popular subject overall and the 3rd most popular humanities subject among British high school students.
Although I do find this lack of interest in History striking, I realise that it is not lack of interest from students, but rather the way we teach History at school, that presents a real challenge. History can be extremely interesting, but it can also be extremely dull, especially when it is turned into the endless memorization of dates, that are often taken out of the wider historical context.
Here at Mozaik we are passionate about History and really want this wonderful subject to flourish in classrooms all over the world. One of the ways we are hoping our software can inspire students to learn history is our absolutely unique educational tool called “Time Machine”. Time Machine is designed to help students make connections between historical personalities according to their nationality, profession, date of birth and (in)famousness.
Time machine includes a huge database of historical personalities that is not only regularly updated but is also customised for the local curriculum of your country. It also includes direct links to Wikipedia articles about every historical personality that is included into the database. As most of our educational tools, Time Machine has an inbuilt test function, that lets users test their knowledge of historical personalities. Users can choose from six different test modes that include a huge database of preset questions about chosen sets of historical personalities.
The idea behind the Time Machine educational tool is simple. We wanted to create an interactive educational resource that would show that historical connections are built on much more than just dates. Studying history is one of the best ways to develop logical thinking and learn to build complex connections between separate blocks of information. Time Machine is one of the ways to illustrate this power of History.
Register on mozaWeb to try Time Machine for yourself, or access the tool in mozaBook. If you'd like to know more about Mozaik's tools for history, read our post about “Hall of Fame,” another great tool in the mozaWeb and mozaBook library.
Elementary Technology is a distributor of mozaBook and mozaWeb in the UK. Based in Telford, Elementary sells educational products directly to schools, including interactive whiteboards, projectors and visualizers. When we met the folks at Elementary, we knew the combination of their hardware offering with the mozaBook software and interactive content would make a great solution for teachers!
The staff at Elementary are very active in their sales strategy, traveling all around the country, making presentations in primary and secondary schools, as well as attending workshops, conferences and exhibitions, such as the Bett Show. They also organize their own exhibition, inviting many schools and showing off a range of digital education products alongside their commercial partners.
Last year several Elementary employees came to our headquarters in Szeged to participate in one of our partner training sessions. During that time, they learned about the mozaLearn solutions and the ins and outs of using mozaBook. As enthusiastic participants, they even began planning and creating presentations that they could use on their sales tours while they were still here at training.
If you’d like to find out where Elementary Technology is going next, check out their social media pages. They regularly share information and photos from their presentations and workshops on their Twitter, YouTube channel and blog.
We’re proud to introduce one of our latest projects: Mozaik Education has teamed up with Microsoft and Lemberger Bildung to bring students in Austria the eduTab, a functional tablet including mozaBook and mozaWeb access. The idea behind eduTab is that students should be able to buy one product which already contains just what they need, without searching for the hardware, apps, learning content, insurance and accessories separately.
That’s why eduTab was designed as an all-in-one solution, ideal for students to use in the classroom and for homework and independent learning at home. EduTab was officially announced at Microsoft’s Education Summit Austria in Vienna in November 2015. If you would like to read more about the event and eduTab, please have a look at the Microsoft Austria website (in German).
EduTab includes the mozaBook software and interactive digital content pre-installed, and also comes with a protective cover and insurance to provide an well-rounded learning experience that is both innovative and practical. For more details about the eduTab, including specifications and the option to purchase are all available on Lemberger Bildung’s website. We hope the eduTab enriched with mozaBook and mozaWeb will give Austrian students a great learning experience!
One of our partners, Prosveta Publishing House in Bulgaria, has been filming and publishing webinars about their digital books on mozaBook and mozaWeb. The webinars show how the digital books can be accessed and used in classroom and how teachers can incorporate the interactive content into their lessons. After the live broadcasts, the webinars can be found on their YouTube channel.
To date Prosveta has recorded webinars for their digital textbooks in subjects such as art, geography, natural sciences, music, mathematics, economics and others. In addition to covering features and functions of the digital textbooks, many of the webinars also show how teachers can create additional content for the books in mozaBook.
Our Bulgarian partners Keisiem and Prosveta have translated Mozaik’s digital content into the Bulgarian language and, with the help of our mozaBook Editor platform for publishers, Prosveta has already uploaded over 100 interactive textbooks for teachers in Bulgaria to use in their digital clasrooms and have plans to add more.
Prosveta introduced mozaWeb back in September, where students can use the digital books online and now they are introducing mozaBook for teachers to make the digital textbooks a part of their class presentations.
Webinars are a great way to show off the features and uses of mozaBook for a wide range of subjects and grade levels. We wish Prosveta much success with the webinar series and hope many teachers and students will benefit from using mozaBook and mozaWeb in Bulgarian schools and classrooms this year.