Mimio Introduces “Get Out the Vote,” Teacher-Designed K-12 Social Studies Lesson Plans and Activities To Support 2012 Elections Free Series Includes Hands-On Voting, Polling and Strategizing Experiences for Students
August 22, 2012 - eSchoolNews
CAMBRIDGE, MA – Aug. 22, 2012 – The presidential and congressional election campaigns are bringing renewed energy to social studies education as discussions in the media and at home spark students’ interest in the electoral processes. Mimio, a global leader in interactive teaching technologies, is helping teachers capitalize on that interest with its “Get Out the Vote” series of teacher-created K-12 lesson ideas hosted at the MimioConnect website.
The standards-based lessons were designed by a team of classroom teachers and cover social studies topics such as citizenship, characteristics of government, rights and responsibilities, civic participation and democracy. Each lesson has built-in assessment questions for monitoring student mastery of the subject matter.
“Many of the lessons integrate with language arts and math curriculums by incorporating vocabulary development and graphing and numerical operations, respectively,” says Paul Gigliotti, an eighth grade teacher at Parma Senior High School in Parma, Ohio, and a member of the MimioConnect teacher team.
The lessons also include ways to bring the concepts of voting and polling to life through the use of MimioStudio™ classroom software and the MimioVote™ student response system. For example, teachers might “poll” their students using the MimioVote handsets and show the results using charts and graphs from MimioStudio.
“We’ve provided alternatives for teachers who do not have Mimio products,” says Gigliotti. “However, the major benefits of using MimioVote are that you’re able to monitor each student’s understanding in real time and you can guarantee 100 percent involvement by ensuring that all students click in.”
Available under MimioConnect’s “Lesson Plans & Activities” section, the activities are arranged in grade level tiers of K-2, 3-6 and 7-12. The MimioConnect teacher team has also created a “Get Out the Vote Guide” PDF file for easy downloading.
“These lessons provide a great opportunity to tie the social studies curriculum to timely, relevant topics,” says Gigliotti. “They can be tailored to each teacher’s needs but if you need a quick but instructionally-sound idea, they’re ready to go.”
Educators can also use other products from the Mimio family of products to create engaging lessons. MimioClassroom products include the MimioTeach™ interactive whiteboard, which converts any dry erase board into a fully-interactive whiteboard; MimioVote™ assessment; MimioView™ document camera; MimioPad™ wireless pen tablet; and MimioCapture™ ink recorder. Each MimioTeach comes pre-packaged with the award-winning MimioStudio™ classroom software, which is compatible with Windows, Macintosh and Linux operating systems, and is available in 33 languages, so teachers worldwide can generate localized activities.
About Mimio
Mimio is a global leader in interactive teaching technologies that offer a better way to learn and an empowering way to teach. As part of Newell Rubbermaid’s global portfolio of leading brands, Mimio designs innovative, affordable educational technologies and solutions to increase effectiveness and engagement in K-12 classrooms. For more information, visit mimio.com.
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