mimio Case Studies

Stimulating Teachers and Students through
mimio® Interactive Technology
A middle school outside Cleveland, Ohio

Delivering the Opportunity for Learning

Paul Gigliotti has an amazing knack for incorporating technology into his U.S. History classes at a middle school in Ohio. An avid supporter of mimio® Interactive systems, he often creates video clips, audio files, wikis, teacher home pages, and other technology-based tools to better aid his students. He has found that interactive teaching stimulates learning in both his students and his colleagues. He is so successful at this that he was named Ohio Middle School Teacher of the Year in 2008 by the Ohio Middle School Conference.

Goals and Challenges

Paul is a real technophile. In fact, he has presented technology and interactive whiteboards (IWB) at professional conferences such as the National Council of the Social Studies and the Ohio Middle School Conference. Unlike most technophiles, however, Paul is not excited so much by the technology itself. What excites him is how that technology delivers the opportunity for learning that might otherwise be missed.
Paul’s school had used interactive whiteboards in the past, but they had not met with a great deal of success with teachers, students, or the administration. Paul needed to demonstrate quickly and convincingly that mimio Interactive systems would be easy for the teachers to use, engaging for the students, and cost-effective for the administration. As he says, "I was counting on mimio and a couple of $40 whiteboards to raise the level of learning for 900 seventh and eighth graders."

Meeting the Challenge

With the mimio Studio software’s Notebook, Tools, and Gallery, Paul was able to overcome all objections. His classroom lessons came alive with PowerPoint slides, annotated maps and documents, educational websites, instructional CDs, and a host of other tools that students love and respond to quickly. Using mimio Interactive technology to its fullest, Paul’s classes turned students into eager learners. This "teaching by example" approach led many of Paul’s colleagues to get on board. After watching Paul and studying mimio Quick Learn™ online learning, many teachers were delighted to realize that they already possessed much of the knowledge needed for using mimio technology – simple tasks like drag-and-drop and highlighting, accessing and using everyday programs like Word, and other basic computer skills.

In fact, most teachers can be up and running with the mimio Interactive system after just one 45-minute training session. And they can develop advanced skills in a matter of days, simply by using the technology and taking additional online training.

Paul’s school is delighted with mimio technology. The other IWB it had tried was less reliable, less adaptable, not as easy to use, and quite a bit more costly than the mimio Interactive system. As Paul says "Why pay substantially more for a system that is bulky and does less? That makes no sense at all."

Outcome

Paul notes that once a teacher has a little experience with mimio technology and students get a taste of what it can do, the system is in daily use in the classroom. Today the school has a number of mimio Interactive systems in use. Paul gleefully relates stories of parents attending school conferences specifically to see the "mimio system that my kid is always talking about."