Sunburst Technology > New Online Resource

- Today leading educational publishers Sunburst Technology and QuickMind announced QuickMind.net, a new Internet-based resource that connects teachers, parents and students at both school and home. The result of a publishing joint venture, QuickMind.net facilitates communication between educators, parents and students for lesson-planning, homework and progress report purposes. It provides 24-hour access to a wealth of standards-based curriculum, interactive homework assignments, project templates, tools, lesson plans, reference materials and online professional development via a password-protected Web site.

Original content was developed for the site by the publishers' team of education doctorates. Existing content was also drawn from educational materials developed by Forest Technologies and QuickMind. After three years in development and extensive beta testing by 10,000 teachers and students, QuickMind.net is available to schools now on a low-cost, annual-subscription basis.

QuickMind.net makes lesson planning, homework and assessment possible for teachers and students to do from anywhere that they have Internet access. The site helps teachers target their school's standards and instruction goals while providing students with practice in skills from core academic subjects - language arts, math, science and social studies.

"QuickMind.net brings the classroom home for students, enables parents to see what their children are doing at school and where they need help, and gives teachers the flexibility to assign lessons, grade projects and create reports on student progress, all online, from wherever they want," said Forest Barbieri, chief executive officer at QuickMind. "It connects busy people in the classroom and the home in a way that benefits everybody. It's something schools and parents have been asking for, but the time, the price or the technology wasn't right until now."

"This is a very exciting project for Sunburst," said John Crowley, chief executive officer at Sunburst Technology. "We have been experts in educational content development for software, video, print supplements and film strips for about 30 years, but QuickMind.net is our first Web-based product. This is an efficient, value-oriented way for us to provide teachers with all the resources we have to help them teach. Now that almost every school is connected to the Internet and home Internet use has grown so much, the online arena is definitely a place where we want to grow our business."

Product Overview:

Within QuickMind.net, teachers enter an online management system where they create their classes. Here they can select from, customize, create, assign to students and assess thousands of quizzes, tests, activities, puzzles, web projects, lab reports and presentations in any of the core subjects for grades K-12. Whether they are new to technology or experienced veterans, QuickMind.net inspires teachers at all skill levels by making it easy for them to be creative in their classroom lessons and keep learning fun and interesting for their students.

QuickMind.net provides teachers with interactive, online lessons for math and language arts for grades Pre-K-3, and science for grades 3-12. Available in both English and Spanish, these activities use interactive animation to reinforce fundamental skills and concepts and encourage critical thinking. The curriculum is aligned to national and state standards. "RealTime" technology enables teachers to monitor multiple students' computer work in progress from their own computer, and send instant messages directly to the student's computer.

Teachers can also use QuickMind.net's "Project Generators" to customize, create and save their own interactive, cross-curricular activities for grades K-12 in math, language arts, social studies and science. There are hundreds of teacher-created activities to choose from, including interactive science labs and math activities that cover time and money to trigonometry. Teachers can also create activities by adding their own content. Using other Project Generators, teachers can assign educational puzzles by selecting from a database of cross-curricular wordsearch and crossword puzzles, or they can create their own in three easy steps. They can also create and assign tests and quizzes to students by selecting from a database of questions, arranged by skill, or by writing their own questions and answers. Teachers can use a Web project generator to challenge students and help them build their Internet skills. By following a few simple steps, teachers can create interactive Web projects such as cross-curricular scavenger hunts and virtual field trips.

As students complete assignments at school or home, their scores and time on task are tracked and recorded in the system. Teachers are then able to generate a variety of assessment reports to share with students, parents or administrators based on that student data. QuickMind.net's "Tool Box" provides teachers with an online word-processor with templates for writing reports and worksheets. There are also thousands of curriculum-related clip arts, fonts, and templates for forms and letters, which are all downloadable and printable. An online multimedia presentation generator enables teachers and students to create and save all of their classroom projects.

In the "Web Studio," teachers can access thousands of Web lessons, activities, cross-curricular activity sheets, scavenger hunts, virtual field trips and state projects, which are drawn from 120 print products from QuickMind. This includes a special State Projects series, which contains state resources and standards for every state to help teachers comply with national and state standards. A search engine helps teachers quickly find exactly what they need.

Through QuickMind.net's "Professional Development," teachers and students are able to build their technology skills and meet technology education requirements through online training guides. Topics include using the Internet and more than a dozen of the most popular classroom software programs, such as Microsoft Office, AppleWorks and HyperStudio®.

The site also contains a "Complete Reference Center," which saves teachers time by prescreening and organizing educational Web sites for them to find information from or integrate into their lessons. The resources here include Yellow Pages, News Room, Maps & Globes, and Encyclopedias and Dictionaries. The sites are all teacher approved, and an innovative search engine with "web grabber" technology makes it easy to access, capture and instantly use information and images.

Pricing and Availability

QuickMind.net is available now as an annual subscription through Sunburst Technology, QuickMind or Educational Resources¨. The subscription allows teachers and students to access QuickMind.net on both school and home computers as much as they want. Pricing for QuickMind.net is customized for schools as either a Classroom, Lab, School Site, or District License.

QuickMind.net includes toll-free technical support, from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern Time, every business day. For sales and ordering information, customers can call Sunburst at 800-321-7511, Educational Resources at 800-624-2926, or QuickMind at 888-287-7403. Information about these titles is also available on www.sunburst.com, www.edresources.com and www.QuickMind.net.

Company Background

Sunburst Technology publishes award-winning instructional software and videos for the K-12 school market, as well as original multimedia products. Proprietary series in the Sunburst lineup include HyperStudio®, Tenth Planet, HMI, and Little Planet. Top selling titles include Type to Learn, Hot Dog Stand: The Works, Easy Book Deluxe, A to Zap!, Anger! You Can Handle It, and Gossiping, Taunting, Bullying- It's All Harassment. The publisher, a company of Thayer Capital Partners, is headquartered in Elgin, IL, with its development center in Pleasantville, NY.

Founded by Forest Barbieri, who also founded Educational Resources and was one of the three original Davidson & Associates owners, QuickMind, Inc., is based in Chicago, IL. Barbieri, who serves as chief executive officer, established the company after many years of working with and listening to educational leaders in the technology field. A true pioneer in the education industry, Barbieri has dedicated QuickMind to providing resources for the educational community through a comprehensive, yet easy-to-use online learning environment. QuickMind employees are education experts located in both the United States and Russia. Its programmers are leaders in the field and have developed innovative, integrated, and comprehensive products that support American educational standards and objectives. Published educational authors work together with the QuickMind staff in developing standards-based content for QuickMind.net, over 100 print products and CD-ROMs.