The following observations are made by a teacher who does not know the "inner workings" of PINNACLE.
1. Pearson's training and "access to trainers" exceeds the availability that I had while a teacher using "Pinnacle." Perhaps this is because any contact with the Pinnacle trainers would incur charges to my school, so they wanted only "administrators" to be in contact with the trainiers. At my new schook, I'm the Grad Point admnistrator so I get some PRIMO attention.
2. The COLORS of the pages are excellent.
3. so far, there are not "tricky" problems.
Here is an example. In Algebra, we math teachers want to see if a kid can get the concept that we can SOMETIMES find common numbers inside one of the lower numbers in a fraction. For example, when we add
2 1
--- + --- = we can see that the 8 has 4 x 2 in it
4 8
we can multiply the top and bottom of 2/4 to get 4/8
2x2 1
--- + --- = so we get 4/8 + 1/8 = 5/8
4x2 8
But sometimes some mean professor wants to go to the next step where there is NOTHING in common with the bottom numbers.
2 1
--- + --- = this requires us to do work on BOTH fractions
4 7
2x7 1x4
--- + --- = 14/28 + 4/28 = 18/28
4x7 7x4
I'm fine with that. But then the next problem is
2 1
--- + --- = that is mean
19 13
I have written to Pinnacle and asked them to change that problem, but they won't and some of the kids I teach have to go through a quiz five times, hitting that cumbersome problem.
A second hassle with PINNACLE happens in Geometry when areas of circles and circumferences are calculated. In the SAT a typical problem give five choices and each has the symbol for pi.
Apparently it is hard to get a keyboard to use the pi symbol, so the mean people at Pinnacle ask students to calculate the circumference ... ROUNDED to the nearest hundredth. Many of my students miss the point of rounding. I'll give an example
radius is 2, what is the circumference? Use pi = 3.14 and round to the nearest tenth.
2 pi r = 2 x 3.14 x 2 = 12.56 so the student enters 12.56
WRONG... it should be 12.6 (round to nearest tenth)
In the SAT the answers would be 4 pi, 3 pi, 12 pi, 24 pi and 2 pi
(the answer here is 4 pi).
I get the pedagogical reason for entering an answer, not simply guessing "A" or "C" to get through the quiz. But asking kids to deliver a specific level of rounding misses the issue. The issue being tested is "how to calcuate a circumferece" not how to round. Again, no replies from Pinnacle when I submitted suggestions for changing the curriculum.
I look forward to the close interaction with the "curriculum writers" that Tom Sealock mentioned in my special training session with him.
4. In general, the wording in PINNACLE and GRADPOINT have the same vocabulary issues ... students generally don't know what is being talked bout because a higher vocab is used. It would be nice to have "simple words" equivalents available on each screen that the student could touch.
5. Overall, my first impression of the Gradpoint system is positive and I don't want to go back to PINNACLE. The colors and the use of shorter line-lengths in reading passages are important.
