A few weeks ago, we teamed up with the TechRabbi — a designer and edTech superstar, to explore the ways that Smore empowers teachers with professional-grade tools, and gives them the ability to engage audiences of both students and fellow educators. The TechRabbi looked critically at the ways that educators reach their students, and how Smore can help educators embrace their creativity — without a steep learning curve or scary editing software.
It’s all part of Smore’s mission to enable people do beautiful work, and to communicate with the audiences who matter to them. Here’s a quick five-point review of what the TechRabbi covered in his amazing blog post and video review of Smore.
Smore is for Professionals
Even though Smore is fun and easy-to-use, don’t let its good looks fool you. It’s built to help you do your best work. As the TechRabbi writes, “We do ourselves and our students an injustice by mastering and utilizing platforms that do not lead to professional real world use.”
The Hive Has the TechRabbi Buzzing!
The Hive is Smore’s home for beautiful, education-centric newsletters. It’s a place where educators can submit their best newsletters, and where they can look for inspiration from other passionate, creative educators. The TechRabbi particularly loved that, if a user sees a newsletter she likes in the Hive, she can duplicate and modify the template, to create her own unique spin! Check out the video below for the TechRabbi’s full thoughts:
Follow Other Edu-Rockstars
The TechRabbi is a big fan of edu-rockstar Lee Araoz, a Coordinator of Instructional Technology and a learning coach, who also uses Smore. In the vibrant world of education, it’s important to be able to understand how other educators engage their audiences, and Smore enables users to “follow” other users, and to observe their work in the Hive, as well as duplicate and modify the work that inspires you the most.
Simplicity is Key!
Smore makes it incredibly simple for students to create their own newsletters using Smore — without needing an email address. The TechRabbi loved this, and wrote “This might be the most important feature of ANY platform in education.”
Empower Students
The TechRabbi loved the ease with which students — and teachers — can add multimedia to content. pictures, video, audio — all work super-easily. He writes, that Smore “gives you a large set of features and tools to promote student content creation. The platform is simple to use and that is very important for adoption in education.”
