In the years that have followed the No Child Left Behind era, schools, teachers, and administrators have learned that a hyperfocus on reading and math doesn’t produce the best outcomes for students. We all knew that our students were so much more than a test, and now that we don’t have our entire system centered around these scores, we can refocus on what truly matters.

Many schools are discovering that students with strong social-emotional skills, especially in early childhood, have better outcomes and healthier lives over peers who do not. This probably doesn’t surprise most of us. Being able to cooperate, compromise, empathize, and negotiate are skills that help all of us be successful—much more so than a score on a test.

Boxlight is excited to announce the fall webinar series, “Transforming Learning in the Classroom,” featuring six webinars to help you find ways to transform learning with the right technologies and best practices for your classroom. All of the presenters are working in schools every day and making an impact, offering you real insights from real leaders.

The series will begin on September 19, 2018 at 4:30 p.m. ET with “Atlanta Public Schools Secrets to Success: The Odd Couple.” The educators hosting each webinar in the series use and manage technology every day in their classrooms and districts to engage their students and encourage collaboration. The webinars were developed to help educators learn how to utilize classroom technology to promote students’ learning, and gain valuable insights and best practices from those who know what works best.

Since its creation in 2005, YouTube has grown to over 1 billion active users each month, with over 400 hours of video content uploaded each minute. This can make it almost impossible to filter through the massive library of videos to find the best educational content––whether you’re looking for your kids, your students, professional development, or pure curiosity.

To help you with your search, we sifted through YouTube’s countless channels and picked out our favorite creators of educational content. Here are the best educational YouTube channels for every kind of learner: 

In a recent conversation I had with teachers, we were asked to name one thing we had learned recently—these could be very basic tasks or skills, or even “life lessons” that were reflected upon. Once we all had something in mind, the next question was the critical one: How did we go about learning this? The answers ranged from experience to failure, YouTube to books, and colleagues in person to colleagues on Twitter. Of the eight of us in the room, we had eight different avenues for new learning.

This is the norm both in education and in life. We don’t wait around until the next training opportunity, just like we don’t wait around until 8:00 for Cheers to come on the television like we used to. Our world is more “on demand” than ever before, and learning is no exception. 

Welcome back to school! Now that class is back in session and you’re getting into the swing of things, it’s time to make sure your lessons are engaging your students. Here is our collection of fun themed content to spruce up those lessons for the first month back:

Change in education sometimes take time—months or even years. However, this is not true in the area of computer coding in the classroom. Coding has become an ever-evolving curriculum for students in K-12 education. New products, opportunities, and curriculum options seem to come online every day, making it hard to keep up with what is most current and popular in classrooms.

The urgency for STEM education has been fueled by a workforce imperative and the need to supply an increasing demand for STEM jobs in the United States. This coupled with the new NGSS brings into focus the need for educators to understand the benefits to this unique pairing. Think of integrated STEM instruction as a road map and the NGSS as the GPS or compass. Both direct you to the same destination, however while one gives a general route, the other provides a more guided approach to finding your way with the option of many alternate routes—whatever suits you as a teacher and, more importantly, the individual needs of your students. The overlap provides teachers with more room for experimentation with lesson plans and curriculum activities, not additional work.

As a K-12 educator, you may think that the term “MOOC” is made up at first—it sounds like a nonsense word from a first grade phonics test! But in higher education, MOOCs have become pervasive and have altered how education is delivered across the globe. 

The acronym MOOC stands for massive open online course. They come in a variety of shapes, sizes, topics, and disciplines. The concept is fairly simple: higher-level courses that are available for free to anyone who wants to take them. Most of the time some college credit is available, at a cost, if the student is in need of that. 

Decades ago, the Beach Boys sang “Be True to Your School.” The song encouraged students to stay loyal to their high school, more so even than “their girl or their guy.” Quite a statement! 

There is nostalgia to the song, but in the end, we hope that the students who pass through our halls will have the same loyalty the Beach Boys encouraged. The one word that encapsulates this is connectedness. We hope all of our kids are connected to their school, their teachers, and one another.

Wasn’t it just yesterday we were putting away all of our school supplies so the janitorial staff could get into our classrooms to clean? And wasn’t it just yesterday we made a big summer to-do list? It sure seems like it. We teachers are lucky because we get to start fresh every year—a new school year in many ways is like a new calendar year!