September Update

September brought a number of new, exciting changes to Perspective along with significant increases in usage of the site. September’s highlights include:

New web-based tools launched

New four-function, scientific and graphing calculators have been added to the Learning Resources area. Click the Tools link to access them or visit them directly here:
http://perspective.pearsonaccess.com/perspective/appmanager/mn/educator/?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=edu_tools_page

Students may access the calculators here:
http://perspective.pearsonaccess.com/perspective/appmanager/mn/family/?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=par_tools_page

More science resources are available

Significant additions to the Science Library have been introduced including new videos, interactivities, and websites.

Use of Learning Locator numbers is increasing

3,990 Learning Locators were entered in the month of August, an average of 129 a day.
Over 100,000 site visitors since launch

This month Perspective broke the 100,000 visitors mark with 53,349 visitors to the educator site and 47,963 visitors to the family site.

39% of the visitors to the family site spent at least 5 minutes on the site; over 60% of those spent at least 20 minutes on the site.

54% of the visitors to the educator site spent at least 5 minutes on the site; over 80% of those spent at least 20 minutes on the site.

In October, we will be introducing more excellent excerpts from Allyn & Bacon / Merrill to the Professional Development library as well as some exciting, new interactive resources for math, reading and science. For the most up-to-date information on Perspective, visit the blog APerspective at: http://www.pearsonperspective.com/blog/index.htm

Remember:
Encourage parents to visit http://www.perspectiveforfamilies.com/mn to access free supplemental materials for their children.

Educators can take advantage of our robust library of teacher supporting materials by visiting http://www.perspectiveforeducators.com/mn and clicking on the Teaching Resources tab.

August Update

August has been a busy month for the Perspective team. We had the opportunity to present Perspective at the Minnesota Assessment Conference on August 7th and enjoyed meeting many of you. We have been busy adding new resources and gearing up for some exciting new functionality. Some of this month’s highlights:

More Science resources:
We’ve added even more science resources with additional resources in the queue. More exciting videos and interactivities will be added on September 11th.

More High School level Reading and Mathematics resources:
In addition to Science resources our Resource Library has grown with more high school level Reading and Math resources.

Perspective usage is growing, in the last 30 days we have had:
5,794 new visitors to the Educator site with an average of 187 first time visitors a day
1,613 new visitors to the Family site with an average of 52 first time visitors a day

Perspective is now an award winning Web site!
Perspective was honored with a Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of American Publishers in the category of Specialized Instruction, Grades 9-12, Websites.
A full list of winners can be found here: http://www.aepweb.org/awards/curricwin.htm

Our Perspective team is putting the finishing touches more exciting new features that we are expecting to release in September. For example, a new document “Maximizing your use of Perspective” that we presented at the conference will be available on the educator home page. For the most up-to-date information on Perspective, visit here!

Remember:
Encourage parents to visit Perspective to access free supplemental materials for their children.

Educators can take advantage of our robust library of teacher supporting materials by visiting Perspective and clicking on the Teaching Resources tab.

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions; post a comment here.

March Update

A host of new additions and resources were added to Perspective in March. To take advantage of these new resources, point your browser to:

http://PerspectiveForEducators.com

o New Reading resources; over 150 new grade 5 and 6 Reading resources have been added from Scott Foresman.

o New High School Literature Teacher’s Guides added from Penguin USA and Signet Classics. Through and agreement with Penguin USA, Perspective is now able to provide over 70 Teacher’s guides to Shakespeare and other classic titles.

o More math videos from the videomathtutor.com have been added for grade 8. Additional video will follow throughout the spring.

o User guides now available. New Educator and Family user guides are available. The user guides provide step-by-step direction on how to use the areas of the site.


o White Paper now available; the paper covers development methodology, Learning Locator computation, and provides an in-depth look into the science behind the Learning Locator and Perspective services. To view the white paper Perspective Integrated Assessment and Instructional Resources System visit:

http://www.pearsonedmeasurement.com/downloads/white/Perspective_wp0801.pdf

Look for more exciting changes in April as we extend our Professional Development resources through a new agreement with Allyn & Bacon / Merrill one of the leading publishers of professional development titles.

Some Interesting Site Stats

I went into the stat counter software today and pulled the following:

30.5% of the users in the last 30 days spent from 20min to over an hour on the site. 19.4% of those users spent over an hour on the site.

In the last 30 days we have had 5,215 first time visitors to the Educator site and 4,330 first time visitors to the Family site.

Our busiest day in the last 30 days was Wed. February 20th with 1,432 page loads from 1,353 unique visitors.

Between the two sites we have averaged about 154 new visitors a day for the last 30 days.

So it seems that the word is getting out there and people are starting to use the site. I'll be sure to include more stats in the next e-mail update.