Classroom Connections: Trade Shows and Conferences Not to Be Missed

In our busy, social media crazy world, we often forget the importance of being in a live face-to-face setting with others from the education community. Being active in both your industry trade association of choice or other key conferences can bring with it many benefits. 

5 Resources to Make the Biggest Game of the Year a Learning Touchdown

With football’s biggest night coming up, how can you turn the event into a learning opportunity? Turns out, there’s plenty of science to be found in this popular game! From Newton’s laws and Deflategate to health and injuries, football offers plenty of opportunities help improve student engagement in the classroom.

FETC 2017 is just around the corner! This four-day event, held on January 24–27, is a fantastic opportunity to greet old colleagues, meet prospective collaborators, and learn from the pros—including hands-on explorations of the latest hardware, software, and successful strategies for integrating technology across the K-20 curriculum. As always, the conference will be held in The City Beautiful: Orlando, FL. From city attractions to workshops and the booths (don’t miss Boxlight at booth 114!), here’s a sneak peek at what you can expect:

Become a Makerspace Rock Star While Saving Time and Money

You are a progressive, cutting-edge classroom teacher who knows the benefits of project-based learning and how it incorporates both critical thinking skills and 21st century learning. You have been reading about a trending idea to meet the needs of today’s learners: a makerspace.

Do They Get It?

A few months ago, I shared an article on checking for understanding in a 1:1 classroom. Because there are many classrooms that do not have aa assessment device for every student, I wanted to share some other ideas for how to check whole groups of students to see if they are understanding the content and confident in their learning.

As educators, we know how easy it is for students to say they understand a concept and are ready to move on. However, this is not always the case, so consider using formative assessment to determine what should happen next in your classroom.

The purpose of formative assessment is to gather feedback from your students in order to determine what your students have learned and help you decide on the upcoming instructional measures. Good formative assessment can provide immediate feedback and will impact how and what is being taught. In planning for formative assessment, ask yourself some questions such as: What is essential for my students to know or be able to do after my lesson? How might I assess that? How will the data change my teaching? We live in a digital age, and technology is a great tool for formatively assessing students in a way that makes the process more interesting for them.

As we turn the calendar, we have a new year full of possibilities. Even with all these possibilities, we also know that old habits die hard—this is why listing our new year’s resolutions is a popular practice and can be very profound. The list either helps us to do something new that we have always wanted to try, or start doing something we have known for a while and need to pick up again. 

So for 2017, I have developed my top list of things I would like to do, improve at, or focus on for the year. These resolutions are aimed at improving my knowledge of educational technology (and more!) and are in no particular order—and a few are a little tongue in cheek!

Have you checked out our MimioTraining™ Quick Learn series yet? It’s a great place to find tips to enhance your lessons, learn how to integrate our products into your curriculum, and stay on top of the latest educational technology trends. We offer a variety of sessions every month taught by Mimio Expert teachers, as well as On-Demand recorded sessions, created to help educators achieve their classroom goals.

We thought it might be interesting to step back before we jump into a new year and see what numbers and statistics are indicating about various aspects of K-12 education. There’s no lack of resources in which to gather intelligence on the current state of everything K-12 from the National Assessment of Educational Progress—the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas to State Education Reform results.

But by no means do the numbers tell the entire story. Share your thoughts below on what these resources and reports mean to you!