Before we announce the winner of our funniest classroom stories contest, we want to thank everyone who shared their humorous classroom experiences. They were a blast to read! Check out all the entries in the comments section of this post.

The winner of the $25 gift card is Tiffanie Brown with her story of curious students on a field trip. Congratulations, Tiffanie! Contact me at taylor.rose@imaginelearning.com to claim your prize.

In case you missed it, here’s Tiffanie’s winning story: Read more »

The Learning Curve

As President Obama told students in his back-to-school speech today, diversity is what makes life precious and wonderful.

I think this is especially true in the classroom, where the unique students you work with every day make working in education so wonderful. For example, my sister-in-law just started her first year as a fourth-grade teacher. Amidst the stresses of lesson plans and getting acclimated to a new school and career, she found a moment of comic relief when a student commented that she  “looked like she was ready for picture day every day!”

So in honor of all those unique students out there, we’re hosting a giveaway and awarding a $25 gift card to the store of your chioce to the commenter with the best, zaniest, most hilarious story of working in education. To get inspired, check out a presentation of our favorite comics from The Learning Curve below. Each month, our writers and artists reflect on unique, ironic, and humorous classroom scenarios to create this comic strip. And every month, we share the comic with our customers in a monthly newsletter. But this month, we want to hear from you.

Read more »

Recently, members of the Imagine Learning instructional design and writing teams have started using Twitter to connect with educational communities. In this way we have each developed our own personal learning network (PLN), and we retweet the best of what we discover through our @ImagineLearning account. By doing so we have found a powerful space in which educators can interact with developers. Here we learn about student needs and teacher challenges.

These vital conversations allow developers to build pragmatic tools that can ease teachers’ burden of addressing individual student needs, ultimately translating into more effective learning environments. We’re grateful to you for allowing us to participate in these online communities and are excited about our future involvement and the new discoveries we will find together.

Using Twitter has helped me stay connected to the educational community. Yet I realize the hesitancy some may have about using Twitter. This post’s aim is to help you maximize your Twitter experience and grow your PLN. Read more »