January Tips and Training for Teachers

A new year is upon us, which means many of you will be making or renewing resolutions for self-improvement in 2018. Resolutions may include taking your health goals more seriously by eating better and exercising more, taking charge of your life by being direct in accomplishing certain goals, improving money management, or making a bigger impact on others around you.

A new year also means a fresh start for educators after a well-deserved holiday break. This break likely included some much-needed time for relaxation and rejuvenation before the second half of the school year begins. But class will be back in session before you know it!

Kick off 2018 with these teaching tips and content packs for engaging lessons all year long:

January 2018 Calendar and Morning Meetings: Happy New Year! This themed gallery pack will take you through the month of January with calendars, an attendance chart, graphing and math activities, and more. Plus, students can share their New Year’s resolutions throughout the month!

100th Day of School Activities: If you celebrate the 100th day, your students will love this set of engaging and interactive activities, including math and counting games, a link to an online game, and a .pdf file with plenty of other ideas for your students to enjoy and learn at the same time.

The Life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Celebrate Dr. King this month with this newly renovated lesson, featuring an introduction video along with fact/opinion and ordering events skills.

Great Games Pack: Prepare students for quizzes, tests, and more with this great pack. Simply add your own questions and start playing!

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!

Achieve Your Classroom Resolutions
A new year brings new opportunities for teachers and students alike in the classroom. Let this time of the school year give you new motivation to expand the use of Mimio interactive technology in your class. The MimioStudio™ classroom software can help you achieve any number of classroom instruction resolutions, making for a more dynamic learning experience. You can start small with some of the most basic, yet powerful, tools found in the software:

• Selection: One of the most widely used tools, allowing for direct interactivity of a lesson. Students and teachers can use this tool to select or manipulate any number of items in many different ways.
  
  
• Zoom In/Out: A favorite tool of many teachers, allowing you to zoom in or out on any portion of a lesson, webpage, or anything else on your screen. This tool lets you focus in on the most important parts of a lesson simply by clicking and dragging your mouse or MimioTeach™ stylus.
  
  
• Writing Tools: The pen, highlighter, and eraser are some of the most widely used tools, allowing for the immediate use of interactive technology. By digitizing and erasing writing using any number of colors—along with the ability to highlight any lesson components—you can instantly draw to make an immediate impact.
  
  
• Shape Tool: Create a variety of dynamic objects including lines, rectangles, triangles, stars, circles, and ellipses. The possibilities for using shapes to create interactive lessons is as endless as your imagination—especially when you combine it with other tools found within the software.
  
  
• Gallery: The MimioStudio Gallery is a treasure trove in itself, with pre-loaded graphics, multimedia, and templates that can be used to enhance any lesson. A powerful feature of the Gallery is that it is fully customizable, allowing you to create your own folders of content that can be easily accessed any time you are in MimioStudio. If you find yourself doing repeated procedures as you create a lesson in MimioStudio, turn it into a lesson template. You can drag full pages of a lesson into any area of the Gallery that you choose to create a lesson template page that can be used at any time. The Gallery also serves as a great warehouse of multimedia including sound clips, Flash objects, and movie clips, along with graphics that you can add yourself to access whenever they are needed.

These are just a few tools that can jumpstart your year and refresh the goals you have for your classroom. Just like any resolution you might have, you need to stick with it to see the long-term impact some of these basic tools can have. Having the support of others in accomplishing your goals is also a way to ensure you stay true to yourself. Join our expert teachers who lead our Quick Learn sessions and support you through the journey—they’ll show you practical tips for how to use these tools and more!

Register for our upcoming Quick Learn sessions in January covering these useful tools:

• “A Tour of Mimio Studio” offered on January 3 at 7:00pm ET and January 18 at 8:30pm ET
• “Using the MimioStudio Gallery” offered on January 4 and January 22 at 7:00pm ET

This is just the beginning of the incredible set of tools available to you from Mimio. Interested in checking out more of the Quick Learn sessions offered this month? Click here to view our complete list!