NEWS HEADLINES First Annual Florida Science Day FCAT Explorer: 11th Grade Science FCAT Explorer and FOCUS Newsletter Teacher Training Available Updated User Manuals New Sunshine State Standards FCAT Explorer and Adobe Flash Best Practice Guidelines Offer Tips for Effective Use Currently Enrolled Districts & School Administrators INFORMATION FCAT Explorer Acknowledgements

First Annual Florida Science Day

The Florida Department of Education's Office of Mathematics and Science invites you to participate in the first annual Florida Science Day on May 16, 2008. The theme for 2008 is wind energy.

On Florida Science Day, every school in the state will be invited to teach a specific lesson on wind energy. The Office of Mathematics and Science also invites teachers and other science educators to submit lesson plans for Florida Science Day. Lessons selected for use on Florida Science Day will be available on the new Florida Standards Database. Teachers submitting the selected lesson plans will be declared Florida Science Educators of the Day and invited to model their lessons in their classrooms.

If you would like more information, visit http://www.fldoestem.org/page299.aspx.

FCAT Explorer and FOCUS Newsletter

The FCAT Explorer/FOCUS Support newsletter is delivered to all public school teachers in Florida via e-mail. The newsletter is designed to provide teachers and administrators with the latest information about these two free resources from the Department of Education. If you would like to receive the newsletter and have not yet, please send an e-mail to newsletter@fcatexplorer.com and type Subscribe in the subject line of the e-mail.

To see previous issues of the newsletter, click on one of the links below:
ISSUE 1, FALL 2006
ISSUE 2, WINTER 2007
ISSUE 3, SPRING 2007
ISSUE 4, SUMMER 2007

ISSUE 5, FALL 2007
ISSUE 6, WINTER 2008
ISSUE 7, SPRING 2008

Updated User Manuals

Revised user manuals for FCAT Explorer are now available. The newly revised manuals reflect all new and upcoming development and include updated screenshots of FCAT Explorer programs.

You can access the user manuals by clicking here, or from the home page, click on Educator Resources; in the User Manuals section, you will find an updated School Administrator's Desk Manual and Classroom Teacher's Desk Manual. Both of these manuals are available as PDFs and as Word documents.

New Sunshine State Standards

The Florida Department of Education (DOE) plans to provide direction to districts and schools in January about the deployment of the new Sunshine State Standards.

In the current timeline for revision of state assessments, DOE will field test new reading and mathematics test items in 2010 and baseline these new assessments in 2011. Draft Test Item Specifications for these content areas should be available on DOE's web site, fcat.fldoe.org, in late summer 2008. The revision of Florida?s science assessments will occur at least a year later than reading and mathematics. The revision of the state writing assessments will likely follow science by one year and baseline no earlier than 2013.

FCAT Explorer and Adobe Flash

Are you up to date?

Currently, most FCAT Explorer programs will run under Adobe Flash 6.0. However, it is a good idea to update the Flash program on your computer, especially if you want to take advantage of the new features planned for FCAT Explorer.

In June, we launched Science Station: 5th Grade Benchmarks. Science Station and other programs launched in the new school year will run under Adobe Flash 7.0.

Please note: The current Flash version is 9.0, so if you've updated since September 2004, your Flash player will support all FCAT Explorer programs.

You can download Adobe Flash at no cost from the Adobe site: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash&%3BP5_Language=German%253E.

If you have problems installing the new Flash, you can find help from Adobe at this site: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/.

Best Practice Guidelines Offer Tips for Effective Use

FCAT Explorer Support Services team members have developed a set of Best Practice Guidelines to help you use FCAT Explorer practice programs as effectively as possible. The guidelines offer tips and suggestions in the following areas:

Starting a New School Year Getting Your Students Started Signing On Exploring Your Teacher?s Desk Monitoring Student Progress

Getting Familiar with the Student Site Helping Students Succeed Exploring in the Classroom Encouraging After-School Use Getting Technical Assistance

To access the guidelines, click the link at the end of this article. On subsequent visits, you can click Educator Resources on the home page—you?ll find the FCAT Explorer Best Practice Guidelines link under the School Resources column.

Support Services team members developed the FCAT Explorer Best Practice Guidelines based on discussions and interactions with public school teachers throughout Florida. If you have additional ideas or suggestions to offer, click CONTACT US from the FCAT Explorer home page or your FCAT Explorer Teacher?s Desk. You can also give your ideas to a Support Services team member by calling 888.750.3228 toll-free.

The FCAT Explorer Best Practice Guidelines will be updated as Support Services team members collect new ideas and insights from you and other teachers, so check it out from time to time!

FCAT Explorer Acknowledgements

The FCAT Explorer is created with the help of teachers, instructional designers, and reading specialists from across Florida. To see a list of those who have helped in the development of FCAT Explorer, click here.