Today’s article was written by guest blogger Jason Schmidt. Jason is an instructional technologist for Bennington Public Schools in Bennington, Nebraska, as well as a Mimio Quick Learn moderator.

For years, PowerPoint has been the de facto standard across the country for creating presentations. While PowerPoint can be an excellent tool for enhancing your speaking skills, it lacks much of the collaboration and annotation abilities that are the strengths of MimioStudio™ classroom software. For as long as I can remember, PowerPoint presentations could be imported into MimioStudio Notebook. This has been a great way to reuse content that you have already created by adding shapes, reveals, and annotations, but any ability to interact with the objects and animations in those files was lost in the process. With the next update to MimioStudio software (available in September), you will gain the ability to import not only the entire static slideshow, but also the objects, graphics, animations, links, and media.

Big news: we have some upgrades coming to our MimioMobile™ application and MimioStudio™ classroom software.  These upgrades are focused on collaboration and assessment, key components of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Here are the new features, in a nutshell:

• Support for iPhone 4 and up, iPod touch, and (drumroll, please) Android devices!
• Create assessments with short-answer, short-essay, and numeric student responses, which will help prepare students for upcoming Common Core assessments that will use open-response test items.
• Automatically record multiple-choice, numeric, and short-answer responses in MimioStudio Gradebook, eliminating the need for teachers to hand-grade tests.
• Enhanced PowerPoint importing and object-level editing; audio and video remain active in INK files.

The new upgrades will be available in September. If you purchase before then, don’t worry – upgrades are free while your license is active.

To see MimioMobile in action, watch our Mimio Goes Mobile webinar.

“Learning should be centered on the student, not the teacher. And isn’t that really what flipped learning is all about? It’s about compelling teachers like me to reflect on our practice and rethink how we reach our students. It’s about encouraging students to set the pace so that truly individualized instruction takes place. It’s about stirring teachers and students alike to change the way they’ve always done things.”

Make practicing phonics engaging with these easy grab and go phonics lessons activities.  Have fun with letter sounds in the lower grades, beginning and ending blends in the middle grades and jump right into prefixes and suffixes for the upper elementary grades. Can’t find exactly what you need? Then take images from the phonics gallery and one of the many templates in this pack and create just exactly what you need quick and easy! 

Last week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Chris Cacioppo, our fearless leader of R&D, to talk about the MimioMobile™ iPad app. We’ve already told you about the app’s features and benefits on our product page and in our marketing activities, but I was interested in hearing about the process of creating the MimioMobile app, why we decided it was the right thing to do, and how this app will help the educators we serve. If you have questions about the MimioMobile app, go ahead and leave them in the comments section below, and I will get Chris to answer them for you.

Join us on Friday May 3^rd at 4:30 EST for our next free webinar. Paul Gigliotti will talk about creating engaging, blended learning environments using collaborative, project-based learning tools and content from Mimio. With over 14 years in the classroom, Paul lives and breathes social studies and educational technology. His enthusiasm is contagious so this is sure to be a fun hour! 

Teaching is changing. Fast. Old-school techniques and tools are no longer up to the task. Today’s students have grown up immersed in a world of technology. This digital generation responds to student-centered, interactive learning environments. Ask them about chalkboards or filmstrips, and they’ll likely be asleep before they can answer. But have them describe how they want to be taught today, and you will hear words like “fun,” “engaging,” and “interactive.” This generation is not stationary – it’s mobile. Tablet devices, interactive whiteboards, and captivating software programs are what today’s students want and need in order to learn.

We’ve been talking with you, our educator community, about some of the challenges you face and how we can help you solve them. What we have found is that you are looking for technology that’s both easy to use and affordable. You want professional development that’s available both in-person and online, to accommodate schedules and budgets. You need curriculum that’s aligned to the Common Core State Standards – curriculum that teachers don’t have to modify unless they want to, and that includes embedded formative assessment. Above all, you want technology that works to increase student achievement.

Our Solution

Over the past year, we have extended our classroom technology offerings with an array of innovative hardware, software, and curriculum products that we hope will solve your problems. We launched a new interactive display called the MimioProjector™ interactive projector, which joins our other display systems: the portable MimioTeach™ interactive whiteboard and the MimioBoard™ fixed board solution. No matter what your current technology, we have a solution that can help you leverage what you’ve already purchased.

We also recently improved our award-winning MimioStudio™ software. MimioStudio software continues to be the best software solution for interactive teaching tools. Working with our newly upgraded MimioPad™ wireless pen tablet, MimioStudio software now provides educators with the tools needed to create a truly collaborative learning environment. MimioStudio software works with iPads and with all other software programs, including PowerPoint.

Mimio Goes Mobile

In January, we launched our new MimioMobile™ application to help teachers incorporate iPads into their classrooms. Along with MimioPad tablets and other Mimio devices and content, teachers have at their fingertips the ability to create true collaborative and engaging learning environments for their students.

Creating Content Aligned to the Common Core

Mimio also provides Pre-K−8 adaptive reading instruction and lessons with the MimioReading™ comprehension suite, now also available for use on iPads. In March we launched MimioScience™ interactive lessons. The MimioScience curriculum aligns to the recently released science standards (Next Generation Science Standards), and includes an extensive series of over 225 high-quality lessons for students in grades 3-8.

We’re not done. Expanding our product portfolio with more software platforms, cloud-based offerings, and enhanced technologies is on the horizon.

Our Professional Development Team Is Also Hard At Work

We have always been committed to helping teachers, offering no-cost online training opportunities, as well as in-person in-depth classes geared towards educators who would like to master using interactive technology in the classroom. Many graduates of these programs return to their districts and become a great resource to their colleagues.

We hope that the work we are doing aligns with your needs. Leave us a comment below and let us know how we’re doing.

We also invite you to take a look at a case study of the Hempfield, PA school district. Their problem was that their classroom technology sat on a shelf unused. Read the case study or watch the video to see how our solution solved their problem.