bing in the classroom: 3 reasons parents will love it

This post was created in partnership with Bing.

It is so hard to imagine a time without the internet search.

Any time there’s a question in our house, the kids run to the computer: Search it! Search it! Let’s search for it!

But searching isn’t always safe, and it isn’t always easy–especially for curious and tech-savvy kids, and this is why I totally dig Bing in the Classroom.

Bing in the Classroom is a program designed to do a few things:

establish ad-free, safe search for schools;
provide ways for schools get their hands on tablets for students via Bing rewards;
offer teachers (and parents!) tons of really cool (free!) lesson plans.

Sure, you’re a parent, and school’s almost out for the year. So why does this matter to you?

Seriously, I’m going to love Bing in the Classroom this summer, when my 10, 8, and 7 year olds are hangin’ around the homefront each and every day.

It will provide for us a ton of resources to use to keep the kids’ learning fresh, exciting, and interesting over the summer.

Here’s the skinny. . .

Bing in the Classroom–3 Reasons You Will Love it (even this summer!): Learning about the program now gives you a few solid weeks to learn about Bing in the Classroom and share it with your school’s administration or technology team so that they can implement the program next school year.

And? Like I said, Bing in the Classroom gives you a ton of things to do this summer.

Take a minute to see how it works:

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How will I use Bing in the Classroom this summer?

I’m a huge fan of providing kids with tons of cool things to do to stretch their brains and flex their creativity throughout the summer, and two big pieces of the Bing puzzle can do just that:

Free Teaching Tools: The premise behind the Common Core aligned resources available on the site is that parents or teachers can spend only about 10 minutes each day helping students learn to navigate the wilds of the internet, through amazing visuals and thought-provoking prompts.

Simply make your way to the Teaching Tools page.

Then enter your search perimeters, or you can just browse all resources for a certain age.

The activity that caught my eye is below. Some are Power Point, some are Word docs, and some are mixed media. I love the detail, the options, and the focus on one powerful image, not to mention the link to Common Core at the end of each lesson.

I’m confident that this summer an activity or two each week will be engaging and interesting for Maddy, Owen, and Cora.

Bing Searches: I love, love, love the Bing searches, and I think the photos on the main screen are perfect for getting kids interested in learning.

The photos rock. And the fact that you can mouse over all parts of the photo and learn fun facts is awesome.

The Bing homepage looks like this. . .

. . . and when you click more info, you get the skinny on the location and photographer. Every day.

Love this.

Always, always, always you want to go to your settings tab once you log into your Microsoft account so that you can properly adjust your search mode.

Though these settings are never 110% completely foolproof, Bing’s safesearch filters are pretty close:

My plan for this summer, among other things for our Tabletop Surprises, one day a week I’ll just leave the photo up on our Intel AIO Touchscreen or Chromebook and let the kids go free. Along with some internet search help tips and some guided practice, hopefully after the summer the kids will be ready for the new school year!