Twitter can be a great professional learning tool for teachers, but some teachers might be hesitant to get started. The root of this hesitancy can come from a variety of sources. Social media may not have a positive image in some teachers’ minds. The technology part can be intimidating, as well as the lack of knowledge about the tools themselves.  

In hopes of encouraging teachers to get started—and possibly ease some of those fears—I have created a set of steps to get started with Twitter that are specific to the field of education.

In all the conversations that surround student engagement and learning, the focus almost always leans toward student activities and away from teacher-led instruction. These activities are very important to learning. As I often tell my teachers, “Whoever is doing the most work is doing the most learning.” Most of the time, we want the students doing the work. But as leaders and teachers, we can’t focus solely on what the students are doing—we have to also consider what the teacher is doing.

Top Books for Educators

This is the perfect time of year to curl up with a good book! For educators, it’s especially important to read up on teaching trends, classroom innovations, and both the history and future of education. After all, the more we know about these important topics, the more beneficial it will be for our students.

Here are our picks for the top 20 books educators won’t want to miss:

I started my career teaching high school English. If you’d asked me back then about promoting  Read Across America (RAA) Day, I would have thought you were crazy. Why would we celebrate Dr. Seuss’s birthday at the high school level when we could be focusing on Shakespeare, Thoreau, or Steinbeck? I’ve learned a lot over the years, and I know this to be true: Dr. Seuss never goes out of style. These books are fun, clever, and nostalgic—they turn children into readers and teach life lessons. They honor reading and show us how to be good citizens and friends. As an educator, parent, and lover of books, I urge teachers at all levels to plan a Read Across America celebration. Here are some reasons why: 

Spring is right around the corner, and with it we leave behind the winter blahs as blue skies are ahead. As an educator, it’s easy to get into a rut this time of year with everything that is going on—spring activities kicking into full gear, local and state assessments, curriculum changes for next year, and so on.

Just as nature around us begins to show renewed growth, we too feel the new energy that we can carry into our classrooms. Although it may be easy to pull out lessons from previous years to use, it can be exciting to try out new ways of teaching lessons or exploring new ideas to motivate our students. Designing new lessons can take some time to ensure it meets your needs, but the end result is well worth the investment. Here is our collection of themed content to get you ready with new lessons for March:

As a high school social studies teacher for the past 20 years, I have seen many instructional trends, gadgets, and fads fall in and out of style within the ever-evolving world of education. However, for the past dozen years, I have always been able to turn to my technology products to make a meaningful impact in my classroom. No matter which grade level or course I teach, technology makes my classroom a dynamic and interactive learning environment. I work hard to make my lessons more engaging for my students, and my teaching tools—such as the ProColor display, MimioMobile™ collaboration and assessment app, and MimioStudio™ classroom software—transform my lessons into meaningful, modern, and interactive activities for my 21^st century learners.

Collaborating with other educators is an effective method of professional development. When teachers have time to talk, connect, and collaborate, they can expand their experience and expertise.

In many schools, finding this time can be a huge challenge. Even if teachers can find the time to meet and talk, sometimes the group is not cohesive or collaborative enough to be very productive. And other times, they might not have a person in the school who teaches the same content or grade level. Teachers who want to plan and collaborate may have few, if any, options.

Many educators would agree that there has been an increase with students displaying anti-social tendencies and a struggle with social skills over the past 10 years. There are different theories about the root cause of this, but one that I have heard recently seems very logical on the surface. It goes something like this: Adults and students are spending more time than ever interacting over devices (screens) and not face to face. This reality hurts students’ development because they are unable to interpret social cues, facial expressions, and voice inflection. This has resulted in students who struggle more with social skills like cooperation and conflict resolution than in previous generations when screen time was less frequent.

The Boxlight team has settled back in after a busy month visiting the 2019 FETC and TCEA conferences in Florida and Texas, and we’re back with all the biggest trends we discovered at the events this year! 

The conferences were a whirlwind of innovative ideas and impressive new products, plus creative professional development programming and extensive networking opportunities. If you missed either of these industry conferences this year, here’s a rundown of what our team thought were the best and most exciting trends on the trade show floor:

At the end of a section of learning, it’s time for the teacher to create an assessment. This could be the end of a unit or chapter, but for what we are discussing today, a summative assessment needs to be created. Instruction is over, and we need to see what the student knows and has retained.

Where should a teacher start? The first question that should always be asked is, “Do I even need an assessment?” This may seem like a crazy question. “If I don’t give a test, what will I put in the gradebook?” But if we stop to think about it, not all learning is created equally. In the mind of a student, if something is tested, it matters because it is for a grade. So as teachers, if we test everything equally, we are sending the message that everything matters to the same degree.