Technology has helped improve the educational experience for students in a variety of ways. One of the best ways for teachers to leverage the use of technology is to provide students with resources that allow them to access it anytime.

Some teachers use this to flip their classroom. I believe every teacher at every grade level could benefit from the knowledge of how to do this, even if they don’t intend to flip their classroom. This is because it frees up the teacher to provide snippets of instruction both when the teacher is in the classroom and when they are not. It can be efficient and engaging for the students.

Over the past five years, many school districts—including the one where I work—have transitioned from iPads to Chromebooks. There are some advantages to having done this, but there are also some drawbacks. Many of the decisions in making this change have hinged on money and the cost difference between a Chromebook and an iPad. When it comes to most decisions that involve cost, we get what we pay for. In moving away from the Apple iOS to Google, we found that we lost some options for teachers displaying from their screen.

As we inch closer to 2020, we can look back at the significant strides and innovations in educational technology and the ways EdTech has redefined traditional education in the first two decades of the 21st century. Technology has become an integral part of the everyday learning process, with students, teachers, parents, and administrators all using important devices and software each day to increase efficiency and improve learning outcomes.

Boxlight is excited to announce its 2019 fall webinar series, featuring insights from experienced leaders in EdTech. The new edition of the Transforming Learning in the Classroom webinar series will bring five free webinars about three unique topics, including using robotics to prepare students for college and careers, utilizing technology to promote critical thinking, and the fundamentals of project-based learning.

When a parent comes into school to discuss technology, they are typically not there to share positive feedback about all the recent wonderful integration lessons that have been going on in the classroom. It is usually just the opposite—concerns about how their student is accessing, using, overusing, or manipulating the technology in the classroom.

Although some of these concerns might be misplaced or lack knowledge about exactly what is going on, other concerns are very valid and need to be considered. So as a teacher or principal, it will be helpful to consider how to prepare for these concerns.

It’s June, which means the ISTE 2019 Conference & Expo is right around the corner. For 40 years, the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has created a strong EdTech community, giving teachers tools and best practices to advocate for technology in the classroom. This year, the ISTE Conference & Expo is being held in the City of Brotherly Love— Philadelphia, PA—and attendees can expect to find not only community and support from over 16,000 other educators, administrators, and EdTech leaders, but also a wide variety of new EdTech tools and trends.

Between the beautiful city of Philly and the countless opportunities for growth at the conference, here’s what you won’t want to miss at ISTE 2019:

When school districts invest in technology, the tools they buy must be user-friendly, integrated, and ready to use to support instruction—not something that creates an additional burden for teachers. That’s the foundation that Clayton County Public Schools (CCPS)—Georgia’s fifth-largest school district—used in 2018 when it was time to refresh digital classroom tools.

Years earlier, CCPS had spent millions of dollars putting digital technology into classrooms, ending up with a very disjointed solution that included projectors from one manufacturer, whiteboards from another, student response systems made by a third provider, and slates and cameras by yet another. “None of it worked well together,” says Chief of Technology Rod Smith, M.Ed. “From an instructional standpoint, teachers need something that's seamless so they can save instructional time and focus on teaching students.”

Every year, there are dozens of educational conferences and expos in the US that bring educators together to discuss best practices, test new tools, and make connections with fellow educators. One look at a calendar of all of the year’s upcoming conferences might just seem like a jumble of strange acronyms. With so many different conferences to choose from, it can be hard to decide which conferences you should attend.