Welcome our Newest Blogger, Sarah Coughlin, a Math Teacher at Hingham High School – and so much more!

Mimio is pleased to welcome our new blogger, Sarah Coughlin, a math teacher from Hingham High School in Massachusetts. We’ll be hearing from her over the upcoming school year, as she sends us Notes from Hingham High.  Sarah is a Mimio expert, having spent some time as a Mimio trainer and manager of Mimio’s training department. She previously taught in Virginia, and now has returned to her first love – teaching.

Get ready to get organized!


The first day of school is just around the corner – are you prepared for the 2014-15 school year? To help you start the year off right, we’ve got a Content Pack filled with "housekeeping" classroom templates and resources for customizing activities. This free Content Pack, available from the MimioConnect® online teaching community, will help you and your students get ready to get down to business.

Finding effective teacher-created lessons and resources for your interactive classroom is a picnic with MimioConnect! 

Last week I attended a summer barbeque with a number of good friends, who also happen to be educators. As you know, when educators get together over the summer months, quite a few topics get discussed around the picnic table. Since this was a gathering of educators at the end of July, our conversation quickly turned to our back-to-school preparations. 

9 Great Ways to Get Ready for Back to School

Summer is the time to decompress and spend some leisurely days. But with August nearly upon us, it’s wise to start gearing up for the school days ahead. Without going too crazy, here are some steps you can take to focus your thoughts, brush up on your skills, and make sure your software and equipment are up to date. With your enthusiasm up and your goals in mind, you can breeze easily into the new school year.

Get Updated
Make sure you have the latest version of the MimioStudio™ software, so you can benefit from the various enhancements that are included in software updates.  You can find out which version of the software you have by clicking Help>About MimioStudio.  Software updates can be found at http://mimio.com/support/downloads.  Look for MimioStudio 12 software, coming this fall.  You can also directly attach your Mimio Xi™ or MimioTeach™ interactive device to your computer via the USB cable, to make sure you get the latest firmware upgrades automatically. This will ensure smooth operation of the technology that runs on the software.

Find out what our Mimio team learned from ISTE.

ISTE 2014 has come and gone, but it is not to be forgotten! Everyone from Mimio who attended came back excited and exhausted, which is always the sign of a great trade show. I asked those who attended to give me their top insights from ISTE 2014. Whether you made the trek to Atlanta or stayed behind, you can share in the insights, trends, and latest news from one of the largest educational technology conventions in North America.

Paget Hetherington, Mimio VP of Marketing, Talks About ISTE and Exciting New Products from Mimio

I’m so impressed with Mimio’s development team – a dedicated and passionate group of software and hardware engineers. What they have managed to pull off in terms of our next batch of releases is simply just amazing. If you’re going to be at the ISTE trade show in Atlanta this weekend, you have to stop by our booth #1028 to check out our new products. You’ll see how we continue to evolve and invent in this ever-changing world of educational technology.

Mimio helps you make your lessons more collaborative, more interactive, and more effective.

Take a lesson – any lesson – and make it better? That’s what you can do when you put Instructional Design components to work. Now you can see just how it’s done via a new bimonthly feature on mimioconnect.com. We take a teacher-created lesson and show how to apply one or more of these components to take a lesson to the next level – one that increases student engagement and leads to more positive learning outcomes.

Helping Students Reach Their Full Potential with the Growth Mindset

I believe that there are certain stigmas in education that prohibit students from achieving their full potential, no matter what discipline they study. For example, in my 20 years of studying and practicing engineering, I regularly heard people say that engineers can’t spell, write, or communicate well. I bought into this idea, and I really regret it.

When discussing education and how technology can impact our students, we talk about engagement as the key to increasing student performance on standardized exams such as PARCC and Smarter Balanced. Recently I was introduced to a piece of research that I believe is the missing link to achieving engagement and providing a deeper student understanding of the common core standard competencies:  the Academic Mindsets.  According to the Academic Mindsets approach, I just wasn’t trying hard enough to succeed in language arts. I was operating in a “Fixed Mindset,” and cutting myself short on a skill that is necessary in every profession, including mine.

Making the Most of MimioMobile

Summer is almost here. Once teachers close out the school year, some much needed time to relax and refresh will be in order. But summer also gives educators time to reflect on best practices, and to learn new strategies to implement in the classroom. Mimio has just the thing to help you do that: the MimioMobile™ app. 

The recently released version of MimioStudio™ software now includes the ability to connect up to three mobile devices running the MimioMobile collaboration and assessment app – at no cost! Teachers can try out the MimioMobile app for themselves and with students, before purchasing the full MimioMobile license. So I want to share with you three simple ways you can use this feature to incorporate mobile devices into your classroom: 

6 creative ways to use an ink capture system

Many teachers and students love using dry erase markers. They love the way the markers feel on the whiteboard, and they love the colors. With an ink capture system like the MimioCapture™ ink recorder, you don’t have to give up dry erase markers, and you have great additional benefits. Expo dry erase markers fit inside special pens, which allow you to save multicolor notes and drawings in a variety of file types – including PDF, JPEG, and HTML – and edit or print them later.