They say “April showers bring May flowers,” but it also brings an array of new learning opportunities to share with your students! Here is our collection of engaging themed content for April:
April Calendar and Activities: Our April calendar is filled with activities to start each bright and sunny day all month long. Students can practice skills using the featured calendars, morning meeting activities, attendance chart, daily graphing activities, math activities, and more. It’s also the perfect opportunity to try the new wide format calendar with your students!
Fun with Homophones: The next lesson in our "Get More" homophones series is here with “Here and Hear.” Various MimioConnect members have shared lessons on homophones, so we created something fun that’s filled with opportunities to practice using the correct homophone. Watch for more lessons on other homophones coming soon!
If you enjoyed the above content, consider joining our MimioConnect interactive teaching community to access more of our valuable lesson content and resources. Click here to register today!
Going Mobile in the Classroom
The use of mobile devices in the classroom has become a common trend with the low cost of ownership and ease of use to make learning more engaging. Schools may adopt a common platform, whether it be iPads, Android-based tablets, or even Chromebooks. They may also be a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) school, allowing students to use whatever technology they have with them. The power of the mobile device isn’t necessarily the device itself, but how it is used in the educational space.
Too often, I have seen schools implement technology, such as mobile devices, with no clear support or resources to make it truly meaningful. With the use of MimioMobile, you can integrate virtually any device you have in a classroom and bring out the true learning potential of the device. It makes no difference what platform of mobile device, Chromebook, or even a computer you have already implemented into your classroom—MimioMobile brings a variety of options to life.
Using MimioMobile, you can deploy true collaborative lessons to each student device where all are able to work on an interactive lesson and collaborate with each other with the front-of-the-room display. Student devices are also able to be given one-to-one control by the teacher and have full control of the teacher computer in order to present a lesson or accomplish a task. A third powerful feature comes in the form of assessment: Who knew that the mobile devices you already own have built-in assessment capabilities that include multiple choice, true/false, as well as short answer and essay answer options? With MimioMobile, you can bring out the real power and easily integrate your devices through simple assessments, giving you real-time feedback from your students.
There are also a number of powerful teacher administrative controls at your fingertips, such as being able to freeze all device screens and on-screen indicators when students are not engaged in the application. If you are already a Mimio user, you have the ability to use up to three devices in your classroom with full access to MimioMobile for free. If you want every student in your classroom to have access, you’ll need to purchase an inexpensive yearly license that opens up so many learning opportunities you’ll wonder what you did before learning about MimioMobile. Mimio also offers a number of training resources to help you learn more about all the Mimio products and software, including MimioMobile. Our April Quick Learn schedule offers two opportunities to learn from a live Mimio expert teacher on how to get started with MimioMobile.
Get Creative in MimioStudio
The drawing and highlighting tools within MimioStudio make it so easy to get started in becoming interactive in your classroom. If you are new to using a Mimio interactive product—such as the MimioTeach, MimioPad, or even the MimioMobile app on your own teacher device—the pen, highlighter, and eraser tools provide the basics for adding more powerful tools to your teaching toolbox. Simply being able to digitally write on your interactive whiteboard class notes or sample algebra problems provides you with a variety of instructional options. You may draw diagrams to show complex topics in a science classroom such as orbital notation, or even digitally highlight passages of a text that a language arts class is reading. What’s more, you can easily click to save all your work, which is then digitally captured to continue working on the next class period, print out the file for students to take with them, or even post the digital notes on your classroom website.
MimioStudio has many great and powerful tools that you can learn to fully integrate into any lesson. However, sometimes we overlook the simplicity of using basic tools to have a very meaningful learning opportunity. I encourage you to explore the simple side of MimioStudio and discover these basic—but effective—tools. You’ll even have options from colors to stroke width, adding even more dimension.
This is just the beginning of the incredible set of tools available to you within MimioStudio. Interested in checking out more of the Quick Learn sessions offered this month? Click here to view our complete list!
