ziizoo blog

Well, this week I am deviating from my normal review of exceptional educational websites to bring you something a little different from some friends of mine. I don’t need to tell you Luxor 3, Little Farm and Elf Bowling fans that MumboJumbo has some awesome games……..that’s why they are called Premium Casual games, folks. My brother Rob has kicked off the MumboJumbo move to port their games to the social networks, and part of that is the new blog he started. Take a look at their games and hopefully you’ll be hooked by the beautiful graphics and ease of play. Expect lots of new things for the latest platforms from MumboJumbo.

Grademate is a FREE online tool for any student or teacher keeping track of his or her grades, assignments, classes, or anything else. I love the fact that GradeMate calculates the values of all your weighted assignments and tests, and keeps a running tally. You will never NOT know what your grade is in any particular class. Know your GPA on the fly……..Simply genius, if you ask me. Thoughtful, friendly design and ease of use is apparent in the GradeMate’s visual interface. Newly redesigned by the GradeMate team, the latest build (released today) includes the following:

* Hide old assignments from your Upcoming Assignments list on your Dashboard
* Rewrote and remodeled the Help Topics
* Drag and reorder the courses in the File Manager
* Each course now has its own settings page where you can customize new aspects of your courses
* Assignment types are fully configurable - change names, weights, and even colors!
* Added a feature request page for all of your ideas
* Changed the visuals and added nicer graphics

Summer has been peaceful and uneventful so far. It is a nice break after the hectic pace during the April/May exam period. In the meanwhile I have been working with our lead investor, MumboJumbo, on their online game strategy. You can see my post on beautiful casual games at the mumbojumbo blog.

Possibly the coolest thing I saw in 8th grade science class was the air pumped from a bell jar and the marshmallow inside reacting to the oxygen free environment by crushing itself. I was mesmerized instantly by the imploding marshmallow. As I searched the internet for this week’s selection, I struck paydirt when I came across the Bell Jar website. Entitled “Vacuum Technique and Related Topics For the Amateur Investigator“, this site gives us the history of the bell jar, general information about them, and current suppliers of vacuum apparatus. I could play with one of these things for hours. SO if you have a natural scientific curiosity about Physical Sciences or you teach them, this is the site for you! Too cool………..

“A clear voice for science….” says the Earth & Sky website. This site covers everything from robot hands to animal news, to the wint-o-green lifesaver effect. Learn from scientists around the world. All you could want to know science facts for curious minds interested in science and our world is available at earthsky.org. Pick content for teachers, kids, Spanish language content, etc., and all of it available as podcasts daily. I am impressed with the depth of the information available and the clearly thought out delivery.

All it took was a swift kick. Thank you for your patience!

Our Google Mini Search Appliance is temporarily out of service. What does that mean for you? It means that search is down for the entire site. None of the search boxes or tag clouds will return search results.

Apart from search, everything else on the site, including the session tool, should work fine.

We are working on restoring service and will keep you updated. Thank you for your patience.

Nrich is a University of Cambridge site addressing ALL levels of Mathematics skills K-12, presented in a fun, interactive, and visually rich environment. Choose any stage 1-5, and there are puzzles and games dealing with maths concepts within them. I like the UK terminology as it differs somewhat from our US english. Each problem offers a hint, notes, and solutions submitted by readers. You can submit an answer and if it is correct you may be featured. Pretty cool!

In short, the kids will stay interested in the animated graphics, sounds, pictures and problems. Check out nrich.org!

Some Firefox and Internet Explorer users may have seen warnings saying a certificate had expired and that our site was not secure. The warning would have appeared when entering secure parts of ziizoo.com.

Rest assured that we take security very seriously and ziizoo’s security certificate is 100% up-to-date. However, our partner that provides the mash-up for our “need help with this page?” links, Demofuse, let their security certificate lapse. As a result, any page with a “help” link was deemed insecure by Firefox and Internet Explorer, hence the warning.

We have removed all links to Demofuse and the warnings have gone away. If users run into any problems please contact us at help@ziizoo.com.

Here’s a cool UK based site I stumbled across explaining the chemistry behind many useful and entertaining molecules. Pretty helpful for someone looking to understand the molecules in everyday things like cleaning agents and de-greasers for example. The site is legible, clearly arranged and uncluttered. My eyes thank the webmaster for larger fonts! Another great thing is when concentrating on complex molecules you won’t have to ignore Ads running up and down the borders of the page, etc.