Teacher Resource Page

If you are a teacher, we are offering you a wide range of support not available to the general public -- including online teaching materials and customer service (via email and phone) -- all for free. We are also inviting you to join our current effort to pilot and assess our virtual science labs. Information follows below. First you need an account with us.

I. Getting Started -- Create an Account

  • If you DON'T have an account already, create an account now: CREATE AN ACCOUNT. If you have questions about creating an account, there is documentation about it HERE. Be sure to pick "Educator" as your status. Then, at the bottom of the first page choose the option to create a "Teacher Professional" account. You will be asked to give some information about your teaching situation, and then you will have "Teacher Professional" status.

  • If you ALREADY have an account, LOGIN TO YOUR ACCOUNT and go to your Mind Project "Homepage" and click "Edit My Account". The first category is "Basic Information" which includes a field labeled "Account Status".
    • If your status is "Teacher Professional" you are ready to go -- move to the next heading (below) "II. PIloting Mind Project Virtual Labs in your own Classroom".
    • If your status is "Educator" go to the bottom of the page and click the button that says "Become a Mind Project Teacher Professional". Answer a few questions about your teaching situation and click submit. You should then have "Teacher Professional" status.
    • If your status is "General Public" or "Student" and if you really ARE a teacher -- then change your status to "Educator" and then follow the previous instruction.

  • If you have any difficulties please request help by emailing us at Teacher Support

II. Piloting Mind Project Virtual Labs in your own Classroom ($100 payment per lab)

If you are planning on using any of our virtual labs with students, please consider officially piloting the lab in a K-12 classroom. We have exciting labs now available with more on the way, including:

Virtual Science Labs

Currently Available for Piloting

Virtual Neuroscience Lab #1: Cocaine Study

Virtual Stroke Lab

Virtual Robotics Lab

Coming Soon

Virtual Neuroscience Lab #2: Parkinson's Study
(email for information: mindsup@ilstu.edu)

Physical Iris.4 Robotics Kit:
Build a "real" version of the "virtual" robot used in our robotics lab.
(Apply for a free robotics kit for Spring of 2010 by emailing David Anderson)

If you pilot one of our virtual science labs you will qualify to become a Mind Project "Teacher Associate" and you will receive $100 for each lab where our assessment data is gethered in classroom use (this offer runs at least from Sept 2009 - June 2010).

Piloting a lab includes the following:

  1. Developing a Mind Project course, in which students are enrolled.
  2. Obtaining consent for student participation in a university study.
  3. Providing access for students to our online assessments. Pre-built Table of Contents (TOC) are provided for you to organize your online Mind Project course.
  4. Having students complete a virtual lab and the accompanying assessments.
  5. Taking online teacher surveys about your experiences with students as they complete a Mind Project Virtual Lab, as well as demographics about the class in general.
  6. When you're done, you become a "Teacher Associate," you get your own Profile Page on our website, and you become a candidate to be a co-author of teacher resources and a partner in the workshops we sponsor.

GO HERE FOR
COMPLETE DETAILS ON PILOTING A VIRTUAL LAB

III. Online Resources for the Classroom

The Mind Project has a wide range of teacher services to support your use of our curriculum in your classrooms. If you visited the link above on "Complete Details on Piloting a Virtual Lab," you will have already been introduced to some of those online services. But there are more. We thought it would be helpful to provide documentation about all our services in one place. So you will find below a list of the various systems on our website and a link to a large documentation page that explains how to use each of those services. We believe that the online services are pretty intuitive and that it is not likely that you will need to read the entire page of documentation. We recommend that you just skim through the page to see what is there. Then go to the website, create your own account and create an online course page for your students. As you add new features, the documentation page is there if you have questions or run into difficulties. Also, feel free to email us with any questions that you have at mindsup@ilstu.edu

DOCUMENTATION FOR ALL OUR ONLINE TEACHER SERVICES

NOTE TO TEACHERS: If you plan to use a Mind Project Virtual Lab in your classroom, we recommend that you register online as a "Teacher Professional" to give you full-access to all of our teacher support services. Because our funding requires that we demonstrate that these labs are being used, we would be very grateful if you would contact us before you start using the labs in your classroom. At that time we can also let you know about recent additions to the labs and possible collaborations with other teachers and students.
TEACHERS EMAIL US HERE