Hertz Furniture 2017 New Year’s Contest
New Year’s has finally arrived and at Hertz Furniture we made a resolution to start off the year by giving back to some of our favorite heroes, classroom teachers! We are giving away 1 Kore Executive Stool and 4 Kore Wobble Chairs to whomever has the best ending to this sentence.
“In 2017 my students and I will be successful because __________”
Tell us how you will be a better teacher in 2017. Why? Because doing so can win you 1 Kore Executive Stool and 4 Kore Student Wobble Chairs for your students! Use your brand new Kore stool and wobble chairs to focus your most active students, as a center for a collaborative activity or as a prize for well-behaving students.
Information Literacy: How to Combat Fake News
In a world where click-bait rules supreme and anyone can publish what they want, it is downright difficult to separate the truth from fiction. The internet is full of people manipulating the truth to serve their own agendas, at best. At worst, there are those who are deliberately lying to sensationalize people or events. If, as adults, it is difficult for us to know where to get reliable information, and when stories are blown out of proportion, how can we possibly expect our students to beat these challenges? If educators don’t make information literacy a priority, we run the risk of allowing precious minds to be contaminated unknowingly with all manner of falsehood and lies.
7 Tips for The Successful Principal
Whether you are in your first year as an administrator or you have decades of experience, it’s always a good idea to periodically take a few moments and reflect on the effectiveness of your performance. These 7 tips for the successful school principal will help you stay focused, set goals and create a manageable workload so you can serve your students, parents and faculty in the best way possible.
1. Delegate and Trust Your Staff.
Don’t be the go-to person every time a student is late for class or misses a homework assignment. Do be present and available when serious discipline and safety issues arise. Empower teachers to manage their relationships with parents and students, and to approach other support staff such as department chairs, the school psychologist and the vice principal(s) when they are in need of a consultation or assistance. Teachers need support and people to bounce ideas off of, but you don’t need to be the one they reach out to on a daily basis.
Designing and Optimizing Your 21st Century Higher Ed Learning Space For Millenials
Administrators, Department Heads and Facilities Managers: Section 1: Setting Up Ideal Learning Conditions for Millennial College Students
Professors, Lecturers, Instructors, and Teachers: Section 2: Using Your Learning Space to Be a Better 21st Century College Teacher
The best practices in higher education spaces have evolved. University education isn’t what it used to be. Enormous lecture halls with hard seating and tablet-arm chairs, professors speaking with a monotone from printed notes, and standard library tables with old-fashioned seating are out. They have been replaced by collaboration, project-based learning and modern technology. If you want to stay in the game of higher education, you must update your space and learn how to utilize 21st century learning tools.
5 Great Back To School Technology Projects and Activities
There are lots of ways to incorporate technology projects into your back to school repertoire. With students and teachers just getting to know each other, using technology in the classroom can be a great way for everyone to shine as an individual. There are lots of digital tools out there which can help make this year’s return to the classroom better than ever for your entire school community.
Back to School Technology Projects and Activities
1. Fakebook Pages
This Facebook-style website allows you to create profiles which can then be printed as a PDF. By incorporating colorful images and personal details that they would like to share with the class, students can express their individuality. Profiles can be printed and hung up around the classroom to add an engaging personal touch, or presented individually directly from the computer, giving each student the opportunity to shine and work on presentation skills.
Can Cell Phones in the Classroom Be Educational Tools?
The odds are that you will find cell phones in the classroom no matter where you are, unless you are in a school enforcing a zero-tolerance policy. Kids in elementary school are already engaged on an almost constant basis with personal devices. While the initial reaction to smartphones in the world of education was to eliminate phones from lessons, today there are so many ways to promote productive cell phone use in class. With the right tools and the right attitude, an educator can transform cell phones from a constant distraction into one of the coolest educational tools.
The Ideal Classroom Designed by Today’s Educators. What Would It Look Like?
Hertz Furniture is proud to present the Designing The Ideal Classroom Infographic detailing what today’s educators think our classrooms should and should not look like. We surveyed a cross- section of educators including school principals, ed tech specialists, consultants, designers, and administrators. They responded to questions about the most important components of a classroom, what ideal classrooms should and should not look like, what color scheme the ideal classroom would incorporate and more.
Closing the Digital Divide? WiFi on Busses
As internet skills become increasingly important and teachers incorporate more and more technology into the classroom, the digital divide widens. The digital divide, the social and economic inequality created by lack of access to technology, is growing and there is no more critical technological tool than internet access. With internet homework becoming increasingly popular, students with no wifi or high-speed internet at home are at a distinct disadvantage.
If educators, taking into consideration their less fortunate students, stop requiring internet homework, everyone loses out. With such a drastic measure, all students will be missing out on the opportunity to develop the skills and reap the many benefits of the internet, including access to information, collaboration and communication. On the other hand, teachers can’t require every student to have internet at home. The solution is to find a way to provide internet access to all students outside of school. This is quite a daunting feat in poor and rural areas.
BOOK REVIEW: Tech Out Your Classroom: 6 Projects to Meet Common Core and ISTE Standards by Amy Prosser
Overview:
Amy Prosser takes the time tested practices of researching, writing and presenting which every one of our students needs to learn and weaves technology into six technology-rich, customizable projects aligned to Common Core and ISTE Standards.
The projects are:
Revamping Research Papers
Epic Student Presentations
Powerful Digital Storytelling
Spreadsheet and Chart Magic
Simple Screencasting
Why Blogging Won’t Die
The author provides the standards addressed in the project, the tech tools and collaboration information that you need, details on how to plan the project, examples and grading considerations.
Innovative Use of New Collaborative Desks
Liberty Christian School in Argyle, Texas shares their excitement over the innovative use of their new collaborative desks from Hertz Furniture.
“The kids drew the urban models on their desks
and then presented them to the rest of the class!”
-Sharon Ramsey, teacher at Liberty Christian School
Had to share!!! New desks being put to great use!
-Julie Barber, Director of Liberty Christian School
Blogging Your Way through Class: Class Blogs
A class blog offers an excellent tool for getting students to actively participate in lessons while learning some great twenty-first century skills. If you are thinking about starting one, there are some unique platforms designed for education which will make a worthwhile investment for your classrooms. With concerns like security, accessibility and ease of use, choosing the right platform is critical when starting to utilize a class blog.
Blogging classes learn how to express and publish their thoughts. Children as young as kindergarteners can start to enjoy posting answers to questions and prompts assigned by the teacher. As students get older, they can respond to peers on class blog forums and maintain open conversations. This is a great tool for students who might be less likely to speak up in class. If students are required to respond to questions or answers from their peers on a blog, they can carefully construct their posts before publishing and participate without being forced to speak. Teachers can request for assignments to be submitted via the class blog as well, which allows them to easily keep track of who has handed in what and provide feedback on drafts in progress. No matter how old your students are, blogs help them work on proper typing and internet skills, both of which are becoming increasingly important.
Insights Into A Brand New 21st Century Commons Area!
Crossroads Academy of Kansas City staff and students share insights into their new 21st century commons area and how it is already impacting student learning. Furnished by Hertz Furniture!
Technology and Personalized Learning: An Ideal Teaching Strategy?
Wouldn’t it be great if you could give each child exactly what they need? With personalized learning, educators have the opportunity to tailor material to each student – at least in theory. While this new individualized approach has become a hot new trend in education, it’s important not to jump on the bandwagon before you understand all of the ramifications. Personalized learning through technology may be just the revolution our education system needs, or it might just be another passing fad.
With Intrinsic Motivation Your Students Learn More and Better
Keeping a room full of students interested in anything can be tough, but using intrinsic motivation in education can make a big difference. Tapping into students’ interests and making the information relevant can help them learn more, and better. But is it possible to keep your whole class intrinsically motivated? How can a teacher create a positive learning environment based on these principles? The challenge may be more than our educators have bargained for.
So what exactly is intrinsic motivation? It is an internal drive to pursue a certain subject or activity for its own sake, without expectation of external rewards. Intrinsically motivated students enjoy learning a subject because it interests them and they feel that it is relevant. They can also be driven by a sense of accomplishment at mastering a difficult task or subject.
A Dream Come True? Mark Zuckerberg’s 100 Million Dollar Donation
Mark Zuckerberg’s Donation to Schools in Newark, N.J.
A failing school district gets tens of millions of dollars from a popular tech tycoon. It sounds like the opening scene of a Cinderella story blockbuster movie. But for the Newark school district, it was a dream come true in 2010 when Mark Zuckerberg, owner and founder of Facebook, announced that he was donating 100 million dollars to save the city’s failing schools. What could be bad about poor neighborhoods improving their public education system with the help of some generous funds? Well, money isn’t everything. Making sure that money is used in the best way possible is much more complicated than it sounds.