I see your eyes rolling right now as you look at this title. I know what you are thinking: Too many tests! I agree that there is too much testing in our schools, but assessments don’t have to always come in the form of paper and pencil.

As educators, we have a curriculum to teach and standards students need to master—assessments are a necessary part of the process. Depending on what grade level you teach and the district in which you work, standardized and common assessments might be a mandated part of your students’ experience. Just grin and bear it, people. It is part of the job!

Spring is finally in full swing! Depending on where you live, maybe it doesn't quite feel like spring yet—better yet, maybe it already feels like summer where you are. Regardless of the weather outside, spring is a great time for dusting off old lessons as well as creating new ones.

Need some inspiration? Here is our collection of themed content to help you spruce up your lessons for April:

Imagine you're a teacher and brand new to the profession. Although you might be very excited for the start of your career, you are probably also very nervous. With all of the new things to figure out, even the best prepared new teacher still needs a great deal of help and support. I would even contend that there's really not anything that can prepare a teacher for their first year of teaching. Even if teachers feel confident in their skills and strategies, learning from a mentor with experience is essential to their success.

As an educator, it can be hard to find the time to seek out new ideas and important industry news when all you want to do after a long school day is kick back and relax. Some days, you just want to consume content that makes you smile.

That’s where Twitter comes in. With over 261 million users worldwide, Twitter is an endless stream of inspiration—shared in 280 characters or less, of course. It can be very overwhelming to filter through millions of accounts, from political figures to your favorite musicians, just to find accounts to follow that will bring some happiness to your day. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of 15 Twitter accounts you should follow to inspire your teaching and uplift your day:

Enhance and Transform Your Lessons With SAMR 

The SAMR model was developed by Dr. Ruben Puentedura to help teachers infuse technology into teaching. The model allows teachers to evaluate how they are using technology in their instructional practices. SAMR is an acronym that stands for four levels in the technology integration process: substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition.

I have been thinking about this question a lot lately. I’ve taught for over 20 years in seven different buildings. This includes various grade levels in the elementary setting in the inner city, in military schools, in affluent schools, and somewhere in between. Over the years, I have realized a few things about what it takes to make a school great. 

In our district, we ask teachers to post learning objectives in the room so that the students can see the goal of their learning. The idea is that by posting this, both the teacher and the students will have a focus for the lesson and be able to determine at the end of learning whether they have met the objective for the day. 

This clarity of learning is critical for students. It helps the teacher and the students to clarify what they are trying to accomplish. The second layer to this is to add a success criteria to the goal. This is language that shows the student how they will be able to demonstrate they have learned the objective to an appropriate degree. By adding success criteria, we then know how a student can prove learning to the teacher—and more importantly, to themselves.   

In the first part of our micro-cloud learning series, we discussed how this technology is impacting educators and students worldwide. But what exactly does it take to get this technology up and running?

A micro-cloud implementation spans three distinct levels of a distributed architecture. These are the centralized cloud console, the micro-cloud instance(s), and the intelligent devices.

The potential to create a better world through global learning initiatives has never been greater. All of the wisdom and knowledge ever created has been captured, digitized, and catalogued to allow young people to learn and grow faster than ever before. World leaders from both the government and technology sectors have rallied over the last decade to increase learning absorption through e-learning initiatives that put this knowledge at the fingertips of students everywhere in the world.

Back in September, I was sitting in a district computer teacher meeting discussing activities we used in our classrooms. My colleagues mentioned how they participate in the Hour of Code and other coding activities. Meanwhile, I was sliding down in my seat, embarrassed that I wasn’t doing the same cool activities as the others.

I have only been teaching computer class for five years, and I’m still learning how to balance life as a teacher/librarian as well as a technology instructor. Still, I want to do well on the technology side of my job. Instead of sitting around and feeling incompetent, I got online and found out more information about Code.org—an organization that sponsors the Hour of Code and a website that provides resources for teachers. Code.org also offers many professional development opportunities; I found a workshop close to home and signed up.