BloomBoard

BloomBoard offers personalized professional development for teachers and evaluation tools for school administrators. Teachers browse through tailored articles and videos and earn micro-credentials, while administrators schedule observations and analyze teacher performance on the platform. BloomBoard operates under a freemium model, with free content offered for all teachers and enterprise features like premium content and analytics available within a package.

APPROACH 

Bloomboard for Teachers

Traditionally, BloomBoard has offered professional development for teachers through BloomBoard Marketplace, which allows teachers to find and share professional development materials by grade level, academic standard, subject area and keyword. District administrators could purchase licenses for teachers to access premium content from Pearson, PBS and other education providers. Schools also have the option to upload proprietary professional development content to the platform.

In 2016 Bloomboard launched NEXT, a platform that offers free content for teachers regardless of whether their district or school uses BloomBoard. Instead of the Amazon-esque BloomBoard Marketplace, NEXT offers Pinterest-style “collections” of professional development resources curated by BloomBoard’s hand-picked “master teachers.” Each collection features multimedia content on over 15 student and educator growth topics including Classroom Management, Increasing Engagement and Educator Collaboration.

Through a partnership with Digital Promise, teachers can apply for over 20 micro-credentials including Digital Fluency and Social and Cross-cultural Interactions on Bloomboard NEXT. Each micro-credential “stack” requires teachers to answer a set of questions and provide supporting documentation for evaluation. For example, the Learning to Learn stack includes Choosing Learning Strategies and Practicing Reflection. Several states including Texas, Illinois and North Carolina accept these micro-credentials for professional development credit hour requirements.

Bloomboard for School Administrators

For administrators, BloomBoard offers the ability to track, monitor and analyze teacher activities on the platform both individually and collectively. Analytics provide insight into which teachers are most active in professional development and which professional development resources or topics are most popular.

The administrator tools also include observation and evaluation. Administrators select and schedule teacher evaluations or assign them to other administrators and teachers. The scheduling feature sends meeting and evaluation reminders to teacher and administrators. The platform stores interactive videos awaiting evaluation and a notepad to take notes during a live evaluation. As part of the evaluation, administrators correlate specific points in the video or live lesson with a predetermined rubric. The administrators share their review with the teacher via the platform.

PRICING

The BloomBoard NEXT offering is free for everyone. Schools can also purchase premium content that links to teacher accounts on Bloomboard NEXT.

BloomBoard works with schools at the district and state level (private schools and charter schools may sign up individually) to provide packages for observation and analytics tools. Prices vary according to district size and objectives.