Scientific Reasoning Research Institute - SERG

For TinkerPlots Software and Materials

Jang Kreetong — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 15:36:40 +0000

go to www.tinkerplots.com

Click here for downloads, support, activities.

TinkerPlots has a new publisher.

TinkerPlots was developed at the University of Massachusetts as part of the NSF-funded TinkerPlots project.

Announcing TinkerPlots Version 2.2

cmiller — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 16:21:59 +0000

June 30, 2014

Today we are releasing Version 2.2 of TinkerPlots. This is a special, free version, which will expire in a year — August 31, 2015.

To start the downloading process

Go to the TinkerPlots home page and click on the Download TinkerPlots link in the right hand panel. You'll fill out a form. Shortly after submitting it, you'll get an email with a link for downloading.

Help others find the TinkerPlots Download page

If you have a website, blog, or use a social media site, please help us get the word out so others can find the new TinkerPlots Download page. You could mention that you are using TinkerPlots 2.2 and link to www.srri.umass.edu/tinkerplots.

Why is this an expiring version?

As we explained in this correspondence, until January of 2014, TinkerPlots was published and sold by Key Curriculum, a division of McGraw Hill Education. Their decision to cease publication caught us off guard, and we have yet to come up with an alternative publishing plan. We created this special expiring version to meet the needs of users until we can get a new publishing plan in place.

What will happen after version 2.2 expires?

By August 2015, we will either have a new publisher lined up, or we will create another free version. What is holding us up right now is our negotiations with the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who currently owns TinkerPlots. Once they have decided about their future involvement with TinkerPlots, we can complete our discussions with various publishing partners.

If I have versions 2.0 or 2.1 should I delete them?

No, you should keep them. You already paid for these, and they are not substantively different from version 2.2. If and when a new version of TinkerPlots is ready for sale, you may not want to pay for it. So keep your early version that you've already paid for.

Cliff Konold and Craig Miller
The TinkerPlots Development Team
Scientific Reasoning Research Institute
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, Massachusetts
Email: konold@srri.umass.edu
Web: www.umass.edu/srri/serg/
TinkerPlots Software Page

Kreetong Presents Data Games at UMass

Jang Kreetong — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 20:34:47 +0000

Kreetong presented "Play and Learn with Data Games" at the 2014 Symposium for Research and Innovation in Education held at the UMass Hotel and Conference Center on April 18, 2014.

An Open Letter to the TinkerPlots Community

Jang Kreetong — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 13:47:44 +0000

March 21, 2014

As you may have discovered by now, you can no longer purchase TinkerPlots. Many of you who have been using TinkerPlots in courses and workshops have found your way to us asking if and when it will be available for purchase again. We expect soon, by this June. But to allow you to make informed decisions about future instructional uses of TinkerPlots, we need to provide a little background. On December 10, 2013, we received a letter from McGraw-Hill Education giving us notice that in 90 days they would be terminating their agreement with us to publish TinkerPlots. For those of you who remember Key Curriculum as our publisher, McGraw-Hill Education acquired Key in August 2012, and as part of that acquisition became the new publisher of The Geometer's Sketchpad, Fathom, and TinkerPlots.

Though McGraw-Hill Education had informally told us of their plans to terminate sales of both TinkerPlots and Fathom as of December 31, 2013, we were nevertheless surprised when they actually did this. We were assuming this wouldn't happen until mid March (i.e., 90 days). In any case, since January 1 of this year, no new licenses for TinkerPlots have been sold.

Fortunately, TinkerPlots is actually owned by our University, so we are now free to find another publisher. We are in ongoing discussions with four different organizations who have expressed interest in publishing TinkerPlots. But there are many components of TinkerPlots in addition to the application (data sets, activities, help manual, instructional movies, tutorials, on-line course materials, artwork, the license server/installer, the list of existing users), which McGraw-Hill Education does own that would be hard to do without; to replace them would require a significant undertaking. Fortunately, McGraw-Hill Education has indicated their willingness to transfer most all of these assets to us, and we are very grateful for this because they are not legally bound to do so. However, we have not yet received any of these resources or written permission that we can use them. Until we do, we cannot realistically build and release another version of the application. We are in regular communication with people at McGraw-Hill Education who have assured us that they will begin very shortly to deliver to us these materials and official permissions for their use.

We have been telling folks that a new version of TinkerPlots will be available by June 2014, and we still think this a reasonable timeframe. We'd give it about an 85% probability. By August, 98.2%.

In the meantime, if you have unused licenses for TinkerPlots, you will still be able to register new computers on that license number. To see how many licenses you have, go to License Information... under the Help menu. If you have one license, our memory is that you can actually register 3 computers on it — they built in a little leeway. From that same dialog box you can also deregister a computer and in this way free up a currently used license. (We just checked, and when the deregister dialog comes up, it now has the name of Sketchpad where TinkerPlots should be. But ignore that. It's just an indication of the publisher slowly phasing the name TinkerPlots out of its system.)

Also, the resource links under the TinkerPlots Help menu still take you to resources such as movies on the publisher's site. They have told us, however, that after March 2015, they will discontinue hosting these materials on their web site. But by that time, all these should be available on the site of the new publisher.

We are so sorry for the inconvenience this interruption and the lack of communication has caused many of you. McGraw-Hill Education has not notified its existing users, and we don't know who most of you are. We have heard of several instances where teachers planning to start a course or workshop in a few days have suddenly learned that their students will not be able to purchase TinkerPlots, and they have had to quickly redesign their course. We understand that because of this ordeal, some of you will decide to jump ship on TinkerPlots. But we certainly hope that most of you will stick with us through this bumpy transition. We have put nearly 15 years of ourselves into the creation of TinkerPlots and the development of its community, and we are committed to keeping both going.

TinkerPlots Dropped by McGraw Hill Education

Jang Kreetong — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 17:00:24 +0000

As of December 31, 2013, McGraw Hill Education (MHE) stopped publishing TinkerPlots (and Fathom). While you cannot currently purchase it, you can still get access to TinkerPlots resources on MHE's website. We are working on locating a new publisher or distribution mechanism and expect that TinkerPlots will again be available for sale sometime late this spring. We are really sorry for this disruption and the inconvenience it has caused many of you. The decision by MHE caught us off guard.

Kreetong Presents at ICOTS 9

Jang Kreetong — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 16:03:37 +0000

Kosoom Kreetong will be presenting research on students' statistical reasoning at the 9th International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS 9) , which will take place on July 13-18, 2014 in Flagstaff, Arizona.

NCTM Research Conference 2014

Jang Kreetong — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 15:43:14 +0000

We will be presenting results from our research on data organization in the symposium "Connecting data and chance through modeling" at the NCTM Research Conference in New Orleans, April 7-9.

Konold Participates in Stat-Ed Research Workshop at Kibbutz Dalia, Israel

Jang Kreetong — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 15:37:52 +0000

Cliff Konold presented research related to TinkerPlots and the Data Games Project at a small workshop held on February 12-14, 2014 at Kibbutz Dalia, Israel.

Ship Odyssey at ARHS

Jang Kreetong — Thu, 05 Dec 2013 05:00:00 +0000

The Data Games project team headed to Amherst Regional High School on December 5, 2013 and January 14, 2013 to observe the Ship Odyssey game being implemented in Stats1 and Stats 2 classes.

Konold Presented Data Games at SRI International

Jang Kreetong — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 18:46:05 +0000

Cliff Konold presented results of the Data Games project at SRI International in Menlo Park, CA on November 13, 2013.

New Versions of Games

Jang Kreetong — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 18:42:29 +0000

New versions of the games Chainsaw and Ship Odyssey (v.2013.10.28) are now available at http://play-srri.kcptech.com/.

Ship Odyssey at Greylock Elementary

Jang Kreetong — Thu, 24 Oct 2013 18:08:54 +0000

The Data Games project team headed to Greylock Elementary school, North Adams on October 22-23, 2013 to observe seventh graders playing our game Ship Odyssey.

Data Games Follow-up Meeting 2013

Jang Kreetong — Fri, 13 Sep 2013 18:58:34 +0000

The Data Games follow-up meeting was held on Saturday, September 14, 2013 at Middlesex House, Room 224 from 9am to 3pm.

New Versions of Games

Jang Kreetong — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 15:43:38 +0000

New versions of the games "Chainsaw" and "Ship Odyssey" are now available at http://play-srri.kcptech.com

SRTL-8

Jang Kreetong — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 15:34:44 +0000

Cliff Konold presented research at the Eight International Research Forum on Statistical Reasoning, Thinking and Literacy (SRTL-8), which was held August 18-24, 2013 at Superior Shores Resort & Conference Center, Two Harbors, MN. The theme of the conference is "Reasoning about Uncertainty in the Context of Making Informal Statistical Inferences".

Data Games in Phoenix

Jang Kreetong — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Cliff Konold presented Data Games in teacher workshop in Phoenix on June 5-6, 2013.

SERG Moved from LGRT to Middlesex

Jang Kreetong — Thu, 30 May 2013 16:33:25 +0000

The SRRI Statistic Education Research Group has moved from Lederle Graduate Research Tower Fourth Floor to Middlesex House Second floor. Cognitive Learning in Science Group remains in Lederle Graduate Research Tower Fourth Floor where their members have resided in the past ten years.

New Game Programmers Joined Data Games

Jang Kreetong — Tue, 28 May 2013 19:44:13 +0000

Two energetic game programmers, Russell Phelan and Michael Salyh have joined the Data Game Project team. They are new additions to our small team of programmers to further develop and refine several educational games. These games will be tested in classrooms later this year.

Data Games at Greylock Elementary

Jang Kreetong — Wed, 15 May 2013 21:17:11 +0000

The Data Games Project team headed to Greylock Elementary School, North Adams on May 13-14, 2013 to observe sixth and seventh graders playing our game Chainsaw and then developing and critiquing game score formulas.

Game Programmer Wanted

cmiller — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 20:22:39 +0000

We are looking for a Javascript/Actionscript Game Programmer (Departmental Assistant) to join our development team for short term, on-site work in our game lab at the Scientific Reasoning Research Institute (SRRI), UMass Amherst. The programmer will work with our small team to refine our 4 small games written with Flashbuilder, creating several new games (probably in Javascript) to our design, and integrating them into the DataGames web application. We are developing these games as part of a grant from the National Science Foundation, and will be testing them this year in local schools.

Must be able to demonstration proficiency with either (1) FlashBuilder and Actionscript programming for event driven programs that include animation, sound effects, data exchange with external applications, and game logic, and/or, (2) Javascript/CSS/HTML/JQuery/Rafael programming for event driven programs that include animation, sound effects, data exchange with external applications, and game logic. Must be able to work with software designers, researchers, student programmers, understand the needs of educational software development. Requires BA Computer Science or equivalent experience.

Salary: $20-30/hour commensurate with qualifications and experience.

To apply, please visit the Employment Office at 167 Whitmore Administration Building to fill out an application or call (413) 545-1396 to have an application mailed to you and reference R30468 by March 15, 2013

The University of Massachusetts is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Women and members of minority groups are encouraged to apply.

Student Game Programmers Wanted

cmiller — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Student Game Programmers Wanted: We are putting together a small team of Javascript/Flash/Actionscript student programmers to further develop and polish several educational games for Mac/Windows/iPad. These games are being developed as part of a grant from the National Science Foundation, and will be testing them this year in local schools. The position is for 10-20hrs/week at a starting pay rate of $10/hr, for Spring, Summer and Fall 2013, work-study or non-work study. You must be able to demonstrate a simple working program written in HTML/JavaScript/JQuery or Flash/ActionScript3 that you have designed, programmed, or extended, which has some game-like characteristic (e.g. animation/event driven). No references are required. Apply by email to Craig Miller cmiller@srri.umass.edu. More information about the project at www.srri.umass.edu/datagames.

TinkerPlots 2.1 Released

Jang Kreetong — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 16:43:36 +0000

The new version of TinkerPlots (TinkerPlots 2.1) has been released.

Most importantly, we've made TinkerPlots 2.1 a lot more stable. We've fixed a large number of bugs, both major and minor. As a result, the probability of a crash is much lower. Heavy users of TinkerPlots were very helpful to us, submitting descriptions of problems they'd encountered along with requests for some changes.

One of these requests was, "What happened to the frequency axis for stacked dot plots?" We had removed it from version 1.0 for what we thought were good reasons. Our reasons be damned. We heard enough complaints that we've added them back in. Sorry.

Another common complaint was that it was often difficult or impossible to set a reference line exactly where you wanted it. So we've added to both reference lines and dividers a snapping capability for when you're dragging and also the ability to just type in the value you want. Yet another issue was that the percent and N values on a graph could be obscured by the data. We've fixed that. We've added to the Ruler Tool the ability to collect some additional statistics that some of you requested.

We've also taken the opportunity to update many of the data sets, like Olympics.tp, with the most recent information and added map backgrounds to plots of data like Earthquakes.tp.

Even though there is nothing earth shattering in version 2.1, we think it will make your TinkerPlots experience just a little better. That seemed worth the effort.

For more information about downloading and updating TinkerPlots 2.1 see here

Presentation at University of Minnesota to Statistics Education Group

Jang Kreetong — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 16:45:37 +0000

Cliff Konold visited Joan Garfield's Statistics Education group at the University of Minnesota. See their blog post. on November 29-30, 2012.

Presentation of Data Games at MIT

Jang Kreetong — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 16:39:46 +0000

Cliff Konold gave a presentation about the Data Game project at MIT to the RELATE group (Researching in Learning, Assessing, and Tutoring Effectively) on November 7, 2012.

Data Games Summer Workshop 2012

Jang Kreetong — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:11:34 +0000

Data Games Summer Workshop was held at SRRI on August 6 - 10, 2012. This weeklong teacher workshop was conducted to prepare a cohort of teachers for classroom field-test this year. During the workshop we explored some fundamental ideas in mathematics and statistics using DG : a Data Games web application that embed games in a data analysis environment - data generated from game play remains accessible for analysis.

We are planning to do our first classroom field-test in the Fall 2012.

Review of TinkerPlots on learn2Inquire.com

Jang Kreetong — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 16:14:18 +0000

TinkerPlots is "particularly well suited to inquiry learning" and "the flexibility and ease of use of the program lend themselves to students exploring and developing questions of their own about data sets." For more on one person's perspective of the power of TinkerPlots 2.1 in supporting student learning, see the review at learn2inquire.com or download the attached PDF below.

Attachment	Size
review_of_tinkerplots_learn2inqure.com-2012.pdf	151.29 KB

Presentation at Joint Statistical Meeting 2012

Jang Kreetong — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 20:47:07 +0000

Cliff Konold, invited panelist in the session "Models and Modeling in Introductory Statistics Classes" at the Joint Statistical Meeting, San Diego, CA in July.

2012 DR K-12 PI Meeting

Jang Kreetong — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:59:45 +0000

The Discovery Research K-12 PI meeting was held from June 13-15, 2012 in Arlington, VA. At this NSF-hosted conference, Cliff Konold presented "Data Games: Can Data Modeling Improve Strategies and Mathematical Understanding?" with Bill Finzer and Rick Gaston.

They also presented two posters: "Data games: Tools and Materials for Learning Data Modeling" and "Research on Student Understanding of Data Organization."

Click on the image for a larger view.

eCOTS: Electronic Conference on Teaching Statistics 2012

Jang Kreetong — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:23:00 +0000

The first ever eCOTS: Electronic Conference On Teaching Statistics was held May 14-18, 2012. Cliff Konold presented "Online Games for Teaching Statistics from the Data Games and Playing Games with a Purpose Projects" with Bill Finzer, KCP Technologies and Shonda Kuiper, Grinnell College. He also participated in the interactive panel, "Teaching Statistics for the Modern Student."

NCTM 2012 Annual Meeting

Jang Kreetong — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 14:14:49 +0000

NCTM 2012 Annual meeting and exposition was held April 25-28, 2012 in Philadelphia, PA. Cliff Konold delivered the invited, featured presentation: "Breathing Life into Data and Chance with TinkerPlots 2.0."

The photo shows Cliff (between the pillars of light) about 2 minutes before the start of the presentation. It was so popular, people had to be turned away, as you can see for yourself.