It’s been a busy time for TeacherCents! As you may know, I spent last weekend and most of Monday in Atlanta Georgia, attending EDexpo2015, presented by the Education Marketing Association and Edmarketdealer.com. It was an amazing experience!
I must confess, prior to this event, I knew very little about Parent Teacher Stores and the educational product market. As a teacher, when I ran out of classroom supplies that were provided by my school, I would shop at the usual big brand stores to get what I needed. This often led to spending a lot of time and money on things I wanted and inevitably, on things I would never end up using. I did not know there were stores completely devoted to selling educational products and materials to parents and teachers.
Had I known, I could have saved time and money, but most importantly, I could have purchased materials either created by or inspired by teachers, born out of real experience in the classroom, that students enjoyed and found success with. Not only that, I also could have supported Mom and Pop stores who care about each product they carry as well as the companies that manufacture and distribute them.
A few months ago, I was very fortunate to connect with the Education Marketing Association and Edmarketdealer.com and that meeting eventually led to an invitation to participate in EDexpo2015 as a teacher blogger, along with 50 other teacher bloggers. Our assignment was to walk the expo floor and find ten products that spoke to us the most. It was a really big scavenger hunt. I think there were over 1,000 exhibits to visit! I had a lot of fun learning about all the creative, innovative, and yes, educational products that are out there. However, it was really difficult to narrow my favorites down to 10!
At 2:30pm, all the bloggers came back with their lists and presented them to the wonderful staff of the Education Marketing Association. They spent the rest of the afternoon sorting through our lists to come up with the collective “Top Ten Teacher Blogger Products” and that is the focus of the rest of this blog. Next week, I will share my own list of top ten products, as some of them did not make the collective list.
Top Ten Teacher Blogger Products
(Some were too close to call, so there are a few ties in the list)
- Touchtronic Numbers & Letters from Junior Learning.
- The Reading Game from The Reading Game
- Say It! from Felix
- Fidgets from Endless Possibilities, Inc. & Goldiblocks from Goldiblocks
- The F.U.N Empty Number Line System from Learning Advantage
- Math Bands from Learn In Style
- Busy Fingers from Fiddle Focus
- Pencil Grips from The Pencil Grip, LLC.
- Circuit Sticker Books from Chibitronics
- Kapla Blocks from KAPLA Toys & Cool Circuits from ScienceWiz.
EDexpo2015 really had it all! From board games, pencil grips, to Maker Classroom project kits. It also had great people from the marketing and distribution side, to product inventors and the dedicated Teacher Parent Store owners, committed to selling the best and most effective products on the market. If you have never been to a Parent Teacher Store and want to find out where your closest one is, or how to find one online, visit edmarketdealer.com.
Stay tuned next week for my personal “Top Ten Products” from EDexpo2015. If you don’t want to miss anything from TeacherCents, simply sign up for our white paper and you will be added to our mailing list. Thank you for reading and for sharing!
Image Credit: iQoncept / Shutterstock.com
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