Catapult X founded the awards program in collaboration with NSTA to empower STEM educators to recognize products and services that are extraordinary. Pivot Interactives was the ONLY STEM software to be honored by STEM educators in 3 separate categories. Learn about our awards for this year and what we have our eyes set on for 2022.
From The STEM Awards: This award-winner aims to ensure that every student has access to high-quality science education and works to improve student learning outcomes across the globe. “Wow! This is a gold mine of phenomena-based interactive labs for physics, biology, and chemistry where students actively engage with variables and data exploration. It’s a whole new level of hands-on.”
As a product made by science teachers and for science teachers, we pride ourselves on the fact that we know what teachers want. We all have worked closely with the Next Generation Science Standards. Not only are our activities in line with NGSS, but many of them are also designed SPECIFICALLY for NGSS. Our content developers build activities using the evidence statements and progression matrices from the Framework. This isn’t just a “badge” for us: it’s the way we think learning works best.
From The STEM Awards: This Best of STEM award winner provides invaluable hands-on learning experiences, making it easier than ever for students to explore, observe, and make connections in science. “This resource has transformed my teaching by providing REAL experiments demonstrating science phenomena for students to analyze and interpret data. I think my students learn more because they spend less time fiddling with setups and more time analyzing and interpreting data.”
Have you met our data table and graph? How about our video measurement tools? They’re awesome. Not only do we have the ability to gather passive data, like sensor readings, from a video, but students can measure their own data using rulers, stopwatches, protractors, pH scales, graduated cylinders, and more. And: it’s REAL data! These aren’t simulated: they’re real experiments from a real lab. Plus, our data table and graph tool is super easy to use: why spend a full day teaching students how to use a spreadsheet application when our tools are simple and intuitive.
From The STEM Awards: This innovative award winner helps educators break out of the constraints of the classroom, transforming the way that students learn STEM. “This company gives teachers and students a way to teach phenomena that are difficult to experience. It uses high-resolution video and interactive measurement tools across a broad choice of topics.”
Our video instances are bar-none some of my favorite things to use with the students. Sure, there are some that I could do in person: but, it’s just different. Using the video instances, Pivot because the lab partner you always dreamed of: everything is set up for you and all you have to do is watch. What’s even better: you get GOOD data. Now when you ask students for sources of error, they can’t just say “I hAvE hUmAn ErRoR.” -____- No. There are other error sources. Let’s get deeper. You can focus less on technique and more on the actual analysis and explanation. Things that are transferable to every walk of life.
Just like how we expanded from physics to chemistry and then biology, we find ourselves continuing to grow the library. This time, we have decided to step out of the lab and head into the wilderness, to observe the trees and hike the forest and swim in the river. We are growing our Earth and Space, Environmental, and Astronomy libraries to be bigger and stronger than ever! You will still see new activities in biology, chemistry, and physics, but you will see more new video content in our new categories. Even since this summer, we have *doubled* the Earth Science and Environmental catalogs. And, we’re only just getting started.
If you haven’t met the Customer Support and Success Team, you should. John Burk and Trevor Register are awesome and amazing people. There’s also Linda Detwiler (the crazy Customer Success lady who is also the one writing this blog post, so HI READER!). Our chat services are staffed by not only Pivot experts, but science experts and teaching experts. Everyone on our team has a degree in a scientific discipline. Together, we have over 50 years of teaching experience. We are always looking to make our Customer Support experience the best you have ever had. From our chat to the help center; from the blog you're reading now and to the emails that come to you; from the YouTube videos to our new and growing Pivot Interactives Academy, we want to meet YOUR needs. Let us know how you would like to see us grow even more.
