I never really do a demo. Why would I when it is so easy for
kids to do their own work?

I do so many, polariation of light is really good as well as
all
of our motion studies in Physics. I juat really began to
use the microphone a lot this year. In fact, after almost 20
years, I recently got a classroom set of them. Kids love
sound labs.

I haven't measure it at my current school. We don't have
that kind of quantitative data. But students do very well
on SAT II and perform at the top level routinely at WPI
(Worcester Polytechnic Institute, which we do track) in
their college physics courses.

Get good instruction, like the Vernier books. They give
you a good way to begin; they tell you which buttons to
push. Try to use the probes in some of your
favorite labs. Have a goal of using probes in one lab per
unit, it will soon be easy to increase it.

Use the labs in the Middle School Science book. They are a
great beginning. YOu can easily raise or lower the level of
difficulty.
Try to get an extra set of hands in your room to
help, maybe a math teacher, for the first activity.

There are lots of little grants. Maybe a school foundation,
parents group or local stores. I was awarded a BestBuy grant
recently. Start small, request the probe you will use the most,
that will do things other devices don't do as easily or as
well, and one that can be used in many areas. In Physics that
is the motion detector. It is used all of first semsester.
The more you use probes the easier it is to get funds. If
the math department has use for certain probes, maybe you
can co-
author grants and strengthen the proposal.

They love the hands on work and student independence that
it fosters.

Using the Vernier lab manuals really makes sense for the
first couple
of activities. After that you and the students can design a
lab
so easily that it becomes second nature, at least to the
students who learn a lot faster then we teachers do.