If you and your colleagues find yourselves scratching your heads about finding ways to procure the technology you need for your classroom—and your school district suffers from limited educational technology funding—you might consider collaborating to achieve your respective and collective goals. Enlist your school leaders and district administrators to round out your team focused on ensuring that your students have access to the most useful technology to give them the educational edge they need heading further into their studies in the 21st century.
Just as you often work to instill a sense of teamwork in your students, you and your fellow educators and administrators will find it easy to justify new ed tech purchases once you see that many products are useful to several different academic disciplines. At School Specialty, our team frequently works with teachers and administrators to choose products that offer the most value for their budget to benefit as many students as possible.
It may help your team to explore a few of the hottest ed tech products right now, as well as their many and varied uses and benefits:
3D Printers
Bringing a 3D printer into your school adds new dimensions in learning experiences to several possible classrooms. Students impassioned by design in their computer-aided design (CAD) can see draft versions of a project before submitting it for final review while science students get the chance to make 3D molecular models. As a bonus, with their increasing popularity, 3D printers come in a wide range of prices, so you can investigate the different models and features to find just what your teaching team needs.
Whiteboards
It seems like justifying buying a new whiteboard is an open/shut case, but it helps to do your due diligence. And the fact is that whiteboards offer much more than a flat white surface where you can write your own classroom notes. Today’s interactive whiteboards offer a beautifully finished appearance and a smooth surface where students can express their ideas. From math and science to social studies and English—at any grade level—interactive whiteboards add value to any classroom.
Document Cameras
A document camera is an exciting ed tech innovation that allows your students to combine their resources with data files from a PC or SD card to enhance their projects. Many educators encourage students to use their school’s document camera as a tool in graphics, highlighting, project review and discussion, and displaying a final draft.
Your Teamwork Is Likely to Pay Off in Exciting New Ed Tech
Since technology is ever-present and helps to engage students—and let’s face it, students respond well to technology-based lessons—your ed tech team should prevail. If you need more ideas on how to persuade your district’s budget manager, we are here to help.
