Happy New Year! As you return to your classroom this month after the holiday break, it’s the perfect opportunity to spruce up your lessons. Here is our collection of themed content to help you keep students engaged all month long:

November is here and the holidays are quickly approaching, but there’s still plenty of learning and teaching time before the break! Here are our top tips to help you create engaging lessons all month long.

Be sure to check out the latest content for November on MimioConnect™ , our interactive teaching community, to help you get started on the right track:

We all want to create fun lessons and activities that make learning engaging and interactive for our students. However, we don’t want it to take forever or be overly complicated. That’s why I use MimioStudio™ classroom software, which conveniently works with any projector or interactive display. Whether you are using the MimioTeach portable IWB and your existing projector, an interactive projector, ProColor Display, etc., it just works. MimioStudio software is the powerhouse behind it all and is designed with the teacher in mind to be easy to use, intuitive, and powerful. 

The end of the school year is upon us, but that doesn’t mean the learning has to stop! Here are some fun lesson plans and activities for June to help keep your students engaged until summer break:

End of the Year Review: These renovated lessons offer the perfect opportunity to review math and language arts concepts covered during the school year. Choose from either K-2 elementary students or grades 3-5.

If you enjoyed the above content, consider joining our MimioConnect interactive teaching community to access more of our valuable lesson plans, content, and resources. Click here to register today!

My school district—along with many others across the nation—is moving toward a more paperless work environment. This is a great idea on many levels as it boosts cost savings, can be environmentally friendly, and is many times more efficient.

These same things are true of the classroom environment. It is a great concept to go paperless, but what does that really look like for an organization? There are some learning management systems that can be used to help with this, such as Moodle, Google Classroom, Blackboard, SuccessNet, and many others. If adopting an LMS is not possible due to budget, time, or training, here is a trick to increase efficiency: To head toward a more paperless system, consider using hyperlinks.

In most classrooms, individualized learning is the norm, and it can be problematic for many teachers. How can a teacher possibly keep all the students learning at a level that is challenging for each of them? How can a teacher tap into students’ curiosity to keep them motivated to learn? And how can a teacher make sure that all students have access to learning all the content standards? Short videos may be the answer.

Finding the Right Videos

Online videos are one powerful solution to these challenges. Students’ learning changes when they have a connected device to help them learn. But the number of methods for learning new information is almost endless on the Internet. Who has the time to sift through them all?

We’ve put together a “go-to” list of excellent sites with short videos that teachers can use to provide content knowledge and standards-based tutorials, or to tap into the curiosity of students.

Technology can be a great tool for reinforcing and therefore promoting positive student behavior in the classroom. Students who can use technology to track their behavior in the classroom have shown increases in positive behaviors and decreases in negative behaviors and their consequences.

Why does tracking reinforce positive behavior?
There are a few reasons why these tracking and monitoring strategies are effective. First, the social skills of students are still developing, so they may not immediately recognize negative behaviors. Students may benefit from simply being made aware that unwanted behavior is occurring. Second, the evaluation portion of the process gives students concrete feedback about particular unwanted behaviors, which helps them learn to keep them in check. Instead of feeling unable to control or impact the behaviors, students develop a greater sense of control.

Enhance and Transform Your Lessons Through Using 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.

What does each SAMR level look like in the classroom?

Below are various classroom examples of SAMR. As one moves through the levels, the technology becomes seamlessly woven into teaching and learning to encourage higher order thinking.

An Interview with Christopher Leonardo, Director of R&D

It's been an exciting year for Mimio. We released several new interactive devices (the MimioProjector™ interactive and touch projectors) and made major updates to our classroom software and educational app, which really expanded the capabilities of classroom collaboration. In this interview with Director of R&D Christopher Leonardo, you’ll learn what he thinks about the newest products and get some hints about what’s to come. You’ll also find out what has him excited about education technology.

The Mimio team returned, inspired from the TCEA Convention and Exposition in Austin, TX held February 4-6, 2015. We were privileged to be among like-minded peers eager to learn about the latest innovations for educators in today’s digital world. And we weren’t disappointed. We heard exhibiters discuss different tools, techniques, resources that are advancing teaching and learning. We also saw new highlighted products like ultra-thin monitors, VDI solutions, and interactive large format displays showcased as key pieces needed to create dynamic learning environments for today’s students.