When testing season is upon your classroom, it makes for a very anxious time. Not only are students worried about the disruption to their routine, where multiple-choice questions and long periods of quiet and sitting-still take over the school day, but many teachers struggle with the entire process as they throw all their energy into easing students' fears to enable success. With over 30 years of teaching experience between them, we reached out to Jill and Cathy of The Curriculum Corner to gather some tips for test-taking that align with 21st Century Skills for learning to invoke the "4 Cs" of creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking. With the help of the VariQuest tools, they'll show you how to prepare yourselves and your students for a successful testing environment. Check out their ideas in this video, download our free testing poster, then try things out for yourself! (And don't forget to like the VariQuest Facebook Page to stay tuned for more tips!)

According to the U.S. Department of Education website, the Title I Grant program is meant to provide funding to disadvantaged Local Educational Agencies (LEAs) to improve their academic achievement. The most common of these, Title I - Part A, "...provides financial assistance to LEAs and schools with high numbers or high percentages of children from low-income families to help ensure that all children meet challenging state academic standards." As these funds are meant to improve instruction and provide additional academic support and learning opportunities, they are often allocated towards reading or mathematics curriculum, supplemental programs to reinforce and extend the regular school curriculum, or additional staff members to lead and teach the students. And as we look at the bright future of the job market as it relates to STEM and 21st Century skills, we'd like to give you some ideas for tools that Title I Funding can be used for!

We at VariQuest® are passionate about engaging every learner in reaching their potential, and thus we're dedicated in our efforts to make every VariQuest product easy-to-use, efficient, and full of features and benefits important to you, our nation's educators. And that's why our VariQuest Perfecta® STP Series Printers come fully equipped with a built-in scanner to support and improve your classroom-centric and school-wide communication. We believe that scan-to-print functionality makes your life easier - allowing the ability to enlarge small images up to 36" banner size, or minimizing a 24" poster down to student handouts. We're not all graphic designers, able to recreate and resize images on the fly - but we want to help you act like one! So now you may be thinking, that SOUNDS like a great feature, but what types of things would I actually DO with it? We picked the brains of some former and current educators to come up with a "top 10" list of ideas to get you psyched about scan-to-print in your school...but the possibilities are endless!

The newest additions to the VariQuest suite of solutions provide endless options for creating on-the-spot school-wide communication, recognition, and student engagement materials. (Brooklyn Park, MN) March 23, 2018 — Varitronics, creator of the VariQuest® suite of solutions and leading provider of visual and kinesthetic learning tools for the K-12 market, is pleased to introduce two new products to its robust line of educational offerings to promote student achievement, student engagement, and further schools in their pursuit of STEM and CTE development – the Perfecta® 2400STP and Motiva™ 400.