Teaching students the skills and importance of asking good questions provides a solid foundation for learning. Learn which INFOhio tools you can use to help students learn to ask good questions. This is the second in a series of several posts about the inquiry process and the Dimensions of Inquiry.

INFOhio is pleased to announce the release of the INFOhio Early Learning Portal. This resource is a collection of quality websites and apps for children ages three through five. While the resources were chosen and evaluated specifically for early learners, the INFOhio Early Learning Portal is designed for educators and parents to use with children.

As you watch the webinar, Inquiry in the Social Studies Classroom and Beyond: Leading the Next-Generation Digital Citizens to Multiple Perspectives and Reliable Resources, we thought you might want a refresher on inquiry—what it is and how several INFOhio tools have used the Dimensions of Inquiry as their foundation. This is the first in a series of several posts about the inquiry process and the Dimensions of Inquiry.

Are you a "Yeah, But..." Educator? Take this short quiz to find out.

1. Have you been in the field for five or more years?
2. Do you attend at least three meetings a week - TBT, BLT, OTES, IEP, EOC, OIP, DLT, AYP, ELL, RTI?
3. Have you read at least two required professional books in the past three years and found best practices you wanted to try, but never found the time?
4. Have you been so busy you can't remember the last time you went to the bathroom?

Did you hear a speaker within the last year who shared inspiring stories of greatness in the classroom? And did you return to your classroom, determined to try their tips, but saw the pile of papers to grade, IEPs to finish, discipline referrals to sign, or list of parents to call and felt overwhelmed?

If you answered "yes" to three or more of these questions, you are at risk of becoming a “Yeah, But…” Educator, or YBE. Admitting that you might be a YBE is the first step to recovery.

The weekend is almost here! It's time to kick back and relax. But we think that the weekend is also the perfect time to get your professional growth on. We're not talking about parking yourself in front of a computer or sticking your nose in a scholarly journal. Instead, we're giving you a weekend playlist for professional growth. So plop down on the couch and turn on your TV, or tune in while you're in your car, or listen on your phone while you go for a walk—and get ready to grow professionally!

As School Library Month comes to an end, it’s natural for library staff to ask: how can we increase awareness and keep the momentum going? INFOhio staff have had several meaningful interactions with library staff, INFOhio Providers, and administrators that have given us a few ideas on how school library staff can continue to demonstrate the value of their school library all year long. Whether your job title is Teacher Librarian, Library Paraprofessional, Library Aide, School Library Media Specialist, or Library Support Staff, make it your goal to demonstrate your school library’s value and finish the school year strong.

It's spring and many educators are beginning to wonder what they can do to further their efficacy, effort, and influence in the classroom for the next school year. They will think back about this year, and ask, "How can I engage my students more?" What approach might work better for teaching this concept?" "Should I consider restructuring my reading program?" That's right—the end of the school year often means it's time for some serious professional development. "Summer is the perfect time to recharge," according this to this article from Educational Leadership about ways that being a better student will lead to being a better teacher. Often districts will have prescribed summer PD, but that doesn't mean there aren't easy options for developing your own PD plan—one that will answer your personal questions and build a better educator based on your needs and expectations. INFOhio can help with that. We like to think of it as Summer Reading—Teacher Style. It's free and all you need is time, some mindfulness, and a device with an Internet connection. 

As we mentioned in a previous post, social-emotional learning is trending lately. That may be related to language in the Every Student Succeeds Act that makes provisions for schools to count social and emotional growth toward their improvement strategies. To see how  this topic is making the news, try a search on your favorite social media platform for one of these:

• #SocialEmotionalLearning
• #SEL
• #mindfulness

Make your data speak

Numbers in a vacuum are rarely impressive. Now that you’ve got some organized data, there are lots of free applications that let you get really jazzy with your numbers. What should you do? Use your data to tell your story.

• In the first quarter of the 2016-2017 school year, INFOhio Staff, ICoaches, and DBICoaches delivered 175 presentations to 4,701 students, educators, and administrators.
• In the first quarter of the 2016-2017 school year, the INFOhio main website had 1,143,692 page views.
• In the first quarter of the 2016-2017 school year, students in all 88 counties in Ohio logged into the INFOhio website.
• During the 2015-2016 school year, Ohio 4^th graders read 2,927,497 pages in Storia.

How does that grab you?​ It probably doesn’t.

With Valentine's Day approaching, it's a great time to talk to your elementary students about all kinds of healthy emotions and feelings, and treating others with kindness and respect. Use the entire week of Valentine's Day to boost your students' social and emotional learning. A recent emphasis on social and emotional learning may be related to language in the Every Student Succeeds Act that makes provisions for schools to count social and emotional growth toward their improvement strategies.

Using graphics to support learning is a strategy proven to have maximum results for student learning in classrooms. According to the National Council for Teacher Quality in a recent study, Learning about Learning, "Young or old, all of us receive information through two primary pathways - auditory (for the spoken word) and visual (for the written and graphic or pictorial representation). Student learning increases when teachers convey new material through both." Not only should teachers pair words with graphics, they should also provide concrete and tangible examples for abstract ideas. These are two strategies identified as, "proven practices that improve learning for all students." Using PDFs from INFOhio's Explora database is one way to integrate images and concrete examples into your classroom.

Happy 2017!  Do any of your resolutions include using new and more effective teaching practices in the classroom? If this sounds familiar, then this is the blog for you! What better time to introduce teaching and learning with digital text than at the beginning of the 17th year of the 21st Century! Digital devices are a regular part of education, and a daily part of most students' lives outside of school. The best way to help our digital natives learn to use their online presence to find, learn, and evaluate is by using digital text in the classroom. That's where engaging, connecting, and reflecting come in. INFOhio's digital text can help you maximize your teaching and student learning using these actions!

The Chicago Cubs just won the World Series. The last time that happened it was 1908. Help students put current events into historical perspective with World Book Timelines.

Ohio's Anchor Standards for College and Career Readiness require students to 

• Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.
• Analyze how and why individuals, events, and ideas develop and interact over the course of a text.
• Analyze the structure of texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the whole.

Close reading and analysis of text require higher level thinking, patience and focus.