“Technology Tools for Online Education” Mini Book and Udemy Course Released

“Technology Tools for Online Education,” a mini book focused on teaching education leaders how to harness their smartphone, leverage the cloud, and connect with students using online communications, is now available. Written by Paul Richards, live streaming and video production expert and Chief Streaming Officer for StreamGeeks and PTZOptics, the all-new guide can be used as a reference for education leaders to learn new ways to engage with students online. The book is part of a blended learning environment and has an accompanying four-hour, on-demand Udemy course.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a disruption to the in-person learning environment. Over the next five years, education as we know it will undergo more changes than ever before. Learning environments for K-12 students will shift online, leaving educators wondering how to conduct virtual lessons while keeping students engaged. The new guide and online course will pick up where others left off on the topic of educational technology and highlight specific technology tools educators can master to enhance their online education capabilities. Over 4,000 educators are already enrolled in the online Udemy course, which will be free during the book launch August 10-12th.

“As a live streaming instructor and technology adopter, I wanted to share my experience and skills with K-12 teachers,” said Paul Richards, author. “Technology Tools for Online Education makes it easy for anyone new to teaching online to learn some winning strategies for creating fun and memorable classes.”…Read More

K-12 Library & Media Technology Guide

eSchool News Library & Media Technology Guide

Everything You Need to Know. Everyone You Need to Reach.

• Why school librarians are tech integration pioneers
• Librarians are more important than ever—here’s why
• Leveraging a Future Ready Library opportunity
• Helping students build information literacy skills
• Librarians are facilitating learning despite school closures
• Renovating libraries to meet students’ next-generation needs
• 10 reasons admins should collaborate with their librarians
• How librarians can build critical relationships with fellow educators…Read More

K-12 Curriculum, SEL & Instructional Tools Guide

eSchool News Curriculum, SEL & Instructional Tools Guide

Everything You Need to Know. Everyone You Need to Reach.

• Emerging classroom trends
• How to let students drive their learning
• Balancing assessment and digital learning
• Using SEL to combat stress in students
• The right way to choose digital resources
• Discover how movement helps reinforce learning
• Identifying the best curriculum resources for you
• Helping students build life-long SEL skills…Read More

eSchool News launches Online and Blended Learning Guide

We are excited to bring you the latest in the eSchool News Guides series. eSchool News Guides are full of resources, tips, trends, and insights from industry experts on a variety of topics that are essential to the classroom, school, and district.

The April Guide, the Online and Blended Learning Guide, delves into the complications schools face as many have been pushed online in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. It takes a look at how quickly districts, schools, and educators moved to get lessons online and send learning resources home with students to keep their brains active during what is still an unknown amount of time.

Part of the beauty of online and blended learning is that much of the learning and many of the resources are available outside of the classroom. Engaging videos and interactive resources are just a sampling of these learning materials, and our stories connect you to them.…Read More

Read to Lead free web-based curriculum

Read to Lead is a 100% free and proven blended learning solution that leverages game-based learning to help students in grades 5-9 build reading, writing, and leadership skills. Teachers across the country can use the “Be the Boss” learning experiences to engage youth and build core academic and leadership skills essential to their success in school today and the careers of tomorrow.

Read to Lead Website

The free web-based curriculum is modular so students can move at their own pace, logging in any time of day for any length of time. One episode, or one “day at work”, takes about 30 minutes to complete. In that time, students read 5,000 words, make 10 leadership decisions, and practice Reading Anchor Standards. If students read their way through 12 episodes, that’s equivalent to completing a middle school chapter book! The program includes engaging content, data dashboards, and hands-on activities.…Read More

Online and Blended Learning Guide

eSchool News Online and Blended Learning Guide including the latest tools to learn during COVID-19, full of resources, tips, trends, and insight from industry experts on Online and Blended Learning that are essential to the classroom, school, and district.

Robotics isn’t scary! 4 benefits of working with robots

Robotics is attracting more student interest, and there’s a reason–when students can make real-world connections between what they learn in the classroom and exciting careers, their engagement and achievement often improve.

Educators across the country are working to establish robotics clubs after school, they’re creating robotics units in STEM classes, and they’re doing their best to ensure all students have the opportunity to learn just how essential robotics is to our daily lives.

As the director of blended learning in the Lancaster Independent School District (TX), Kimberly Lane Clark works with district campuses to help them implement successful blended learning practices. In that role, she frequently incorporates personalized learning and differentiated instruction.…Read More

5 blended-learning myths to bust in 2019

In February 2016, the Christensen Institute debuted the Blended Learning Universe (BLU)—an online hub of blended learning resources—in response to more and more schools across the U.S. implementing a blended-learning strategy for students. Researchers at the Institute define blended learning as a formal education program that must have three components: it must be part online, with students having some control over the time, place, path, or pace of their learning; it must occur, in part, in a brick-and-mortar location away from home; and the modalities along a student’s learning path must be connected to provide an integrated learning experience.

The BLU houses a directory of blended schools around the world. This directory has helped researchers amass an informative database indicating changes over time across the blended-learning space. Of course, while this isn’t an exhaustive picture of K-12 blended implementations across the world, it is enough data to reveal insightful trends and debunk some of the most common myths surrounding blended learning.

As we kick off the new year, here are 5 myths that blended-learning educators should be aware of:…Read More

6 things to prepare teachers for Digital Learning Day

Digital learning plays an integral part in helping students build the skills they need for academic and personal success. In fact, it’s so important that it has its own day, and this year, Digital Learning Day is on February 28.

Digital Learning Day celebrates educators who create and implement strong instructional practices that use technology and tech tools to connect students with meaningful learning experiences.

The focus isn’t on edtech for edtech’s sake, but instead looks at all the tools used to support and empower teachers and students, such as online courses, blended learning, and digital content and resources.…Read More

6 lessons our district learned from our move to blended learning

Temple Independent School District (ISD), which is located north of Austin and south of Waco, Texas, has a very diverse student population. More than 75 percent of our students are economically disadvantaged and our ethnicity is comprised of roughly equal distribution of African-American, Hispanic, and Caucasian. Like other similar districts, we meet our students’ needs through enhancing instruction, building strong relationships between students and their teachers, and creating opportunities for students to take ownership of their learning. Despite our success, this wasn’t something that happened overnight.

For years, we’ve been working toward blended learning because we felt it would be the answer to meeting the needs of our students. In 2015, Temple High School was chosen to be a Raising Blended Learners pilot site through Raise Your Hand Texas. For the next two years, we had 13 teachers experiment with innovative instructional models and new ways to leverage technology to enhance instruction. After the pilot, we saw how blended learning could help meet our students’ needs. Our teachers in the pilot learned to differentiate instruction, had more time to develop meaningful relationships with students, and helped students take ownership of their learning.

Blended learning for everyone

We’re now in our first year of a district-wide blended-learning initiative. We are proud of the progress we’re seeing already and we have learned a few things along the way.…Read More

10 K12 education trends to look for this year

We may technically be in the middle of a school year, but starting a new calendar year has us looking at and forecasting the new K12 education trends we expect to see in 2019.

In the first half of this school year, we’ve seen some of these ideas start to emerge, and we suspect that as we close out the academic calendar, they will become more prominent. In fact, we’re excited to see what role these trends will play going forward and into the 2019-2020 school year.

K12 trends in education

1. Increased use of immersive technologies

Virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) have been creating new opportunities in teaching and learning. As the technologies become more affordable and available, we expect to see their usage increase dramatically in K-12 education. It gives teachers the ability to show their students aspects of history, travel, and STEM subjects in an immersive experience. Students will be able to take “field trips” across the world and gain hands-on vocational training through VR simulations without ever leaving the classroom. See how a district in Pennsylvania is investing in VR and AR.…Read More

Leave little to chance with a discovery-driven approach to blended learning

Almost every educator I’ve asked about leading a blended-learning initiative has expressed that building a blended program is a process, not an event. That’s a big reason why the Blended Learning Universe (BLU) includes as a resource a 9-step design guide to support educators at every step in their blended journey. The design guide is based on Heather Staker and Michael Horn’s design advice in their 2013 book Blended. The journey launches with identifying a problem to solve or a goal to achieve and continues through refinement and iteration. Just as we portray it as a wheel, like most worthwhile endeavors, a strong blended program essentially involves perpetual effort and ongoing design decisions.

The final step, step 9, of the design process recommends an important discovery-driven planning process. Internally at the Christensen Institute, our team has recently engaged with this very process as we launch a new research project filled with unknowns. Starting with discovery-driven planning has helped us to pave a way forward that doesn’t leave our next year of work to chance. Rather, it lets us identify our goals upfront and think through not only what we want to see happen, but ways of testing whether those aspirations will actually hold true. If we test our assumptions as the project moves along, we aren’t taking the risk of waiting until the end to see if we are right or wrong.

There’s never any guarantee of success, but if as a team you honestly, thoughtfully lay out all of the risks involved when starting an endeavor—especially one as layered and intertwined with multiple stakeholders like blended learning in a school or district—you increase your chances of discovering a clear path forward.…Read More