5 ISTELive 22 sessions that caught our eye

It’s that time of year again–ISTELive 22 is just around the corner, and this year, the nation’s largest edtech show takes place in New Orleans.

Focusing on empowering educators and elevating equity, ISTELive features in-person content live and streamed from the conference, along with online content from remote presenters.

Sessions include focuses on blended learning, curating classroom resources, using augmented reality, project-based learning, building student media literacy, time-saving tech tricks from librarians, using digital tools with students who have special needs, digital problem-solving, and more.…Read More

The future of education is blended and hybrid learning

Blended and hybrid learning models were first introduced to extend personalized and flexible learning options to selected individuals or groups of students. But with onset of the pandemic, widespread adoption of blended and hybrid models suddenly became a necessity across all student populations.

Two years later, how have districts overcome the initial challenges and applied the lessons learned to re-imagine teaching and learning and develop an innovative vision for change in their school communities?

Join eSchool News for a panel discussion with leaders and educators who share a passion for the bold new vision of blended and hybrid learning as the future of education.…Read More

Charleston County Schools Selects Open Up Resources And Kiddom To Provide K-8 English Language Arts Blended Learning Program

CHARLESTON, SCOpen Up Resources, a nonprofit increasing equity in education by making the highest quality curriculum accessible to educators, and Kiddom, the first all-in-one education platform for high-quality digital curriculum, announced today a new partnership to bring the top-rated EL Education K-8 English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum to Charleston County School District (CCSD) in support of the district’s blended learning efforts.

The partnership will provide teachers the ability to utilize the ELA curriculum on Kiddom’s platform to share assignments digitally, communicate with students, and deliver personalized feedback on submissions, while prioritizing student reading proficiency and content knowledge of science and social studies. Additionally, the partnership will equip CCSD with a full-service, multi-year professional learning plan from EL Education to support teachers, plus access to peer-to-peer communications within Open Up’s K-8 EL Education digital community.

“Putting students at the heart of this work has been our tagline for a while, but we watched schools make the decision to opt-out of what’s easier or more comfortable and that’s the true evidence that we are putting students first,” saidEmilie Woody, Executive Director of Curriculum & Instruction, Charleston County School District.…Read More

Here’s why blended and hybrid learning are the future of education

Blended and hybrid learning models were first introduced to extend personalized and flexible learning options to selected individuals or groups of students. But with onset of the pandemic, widespread adoption of blended and hybrid models suddenly became a necessity across all student populations.

Two years later, how have districts overcome the initial challenges and applied the lessons learned to re-imagine teaching and learning and develop an innovative vision for change in their school communities?

Join eSchool News for a panel discussion with leaders and educators who share a passion for the bold new vision of blended and hybrid learning as the future of education.…Read More

How to evolve your K-12 cybersecurity approach

We’re now two years into the COVID-19 pandemic and we continue to see massive digital transformation and innovation shaping the way we live, work, and learn. Technology supports the transformation of every industry imaginable–especially education. New models of learning, such as hybrid, blended, and remote, have led to more accessible education for many. However, with many devices moving out of schools and into the often less-secure homes of students, teachers, and administrators, K-12 cybersecurity threats have become more prevalent. The digitalization of schooling has created an environment that gives cybercriminals even more of an opportunity to target K-12 schools.

We know that schools are under attack. In just one month in 2021, educational organizations were hit by 5.8 million malware attacks – and that’s just what was disclosed publicly. One of the largest incidents involved 1.5 terabytes of data, including academic transcripts, resumes and financial support documents, being exposed due to unsecure processes and storage.

The realities are deeply appreciated by our school leaders.  Respondent data from a recent survey found that 86 percent of K-12 and higher education institutions believe their organization has increased exposure to data loss from cyber threats with the growth of staff and students working and learning from home. Yet, despite the prominence and perceived awareness of such threats, 67 percent of those respondents are concerned their existing data protection measures may not be sufficient to cope with malware and ransomware threats. Therefore, educational institutions must urgently take action to improve their protections.…Read More

3 resources for building engaging paperless lessons

As an inner-city U.S. History teacher of 17 years, I often reflect on my instructional practice in an effort to find new ways to improve. As I recently reviewed some of the videos I have of own instructional practice, I was struck by the massive amounts of paper-based assignments being handed out and collected.

While COVID-19 has forced educators to rapidly embrace digital resources, I have taken the opportunity to lean deeply into “green instruction” and attempt to go completely paperless. Thankfully, when the Duval County Public Schools went completely virtual in 2020, our district put into place a host of digital learning applications teachers could use to support blended instruction.  While my district has thankfully gone back to in-person teaching and learning, the resources we used to teach in the remote or hybrid environment are now supporting efforts to move to paperless teaching and learning.

A good example of what paperless lessons can look like in practice can be seen in how I teach my students about the history of D-Day. As the Team Historian for the Round Canopy Parachuting Team USA—an organization dedicated to honoring America’s paratrooper by performing the same types of parachute jumps that occurred on D-Day—I had access to a treasure trove of materials about the Allied landing in Europe.  Using these resources, I created a unique digital lesson on the history of D-Day using content from Discovery Education and the Airborne Special Operations Museum Foundation.…Read More

EdisonLearning Joins with Digital Learning Collaborative to Improve Online Education

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL – December 6, 2021 — EdisonLearning, a longtime innovator in public education and leading provider of digital learning solutions for grades 6-12, is proud to announce that it has joined The Digital Learning Collaborative (DLC), a membership organization dedicated to exploring, producing, and disseminating data, information, news, and best practices in digital learning.

“Online and blended learning have become powerful solutions to improve students’ access to a high-quality education, regardless of their life circumstances, socioeconomic status or zip code,” said Thom Jackson, President and CEO of EdisonLearning.

“As the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the spread of digital learning, we see the need for collaborative thinking around successes and best practices, which is why we are excited to partner with the DLC to transform opportunities and outcomes for schools, educators and students across the country,” Jackson said.…Read More

4 lessons I’ve learned about supporting all students

Over the past several years, I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with many innovative student teachers and have taken advantage of several blended learning instructional opportunities in my building. These experiences have been the best thing to happen to my teaching practice.

Between the small group instruction and differentiation used in the special education classroom that translated perfectly to my inclusion and general ed classes, the new technologies I’ve learned about from my co-teachers, and my own constant pursuit of professional learning, I have been mindful that even as a 32-year classroom veteran, I must continue to evolve my approach and incorporate new strategies so I can be at my best for all learners.

The challenges we’ve faced as a profession throughout the pandemic have validated my thinking and reinforced the importance of being adaptive and always learning as an educator. With the new approaches I’ve implemented and with new technology, I’ve seen students achieve some marvelous things.…Read More

Fresno USD’s personalized, blended approach carried students through COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, and that means educators across the globe are still finding inventive and innovative ways to support and teach students in classrooms, during hybrid instruction, and in virtual settings.

The eSchool Media K-12 Hero Awards program, sponsored by Trox, recognizes the determined and dedicated efforts of educators throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

Never before have educators been challenged and tested as they were, beginning in March 2020 and up until today, and never before has their resilience been more apparent. Administrators, technology leaders, classroom teachers, and educators in all roles have persevered as they taught each and every one of their students during a global pandemic.…Read More

NetSupport further enhances classroom.cloud’s online safety provision by including integration with Microsoft Teams

NetSupport today announced that its newest solution for classroom management and online safety, classroom.cloud, will now further enhance students’ online safety at all times – and, critically, in any location – by including integration with the widely-used communication and collaboration solution, Microsoft Teams.

With many students equipped with their own school learning devices to enable blended and individual learning to occur both inside and outside of school hours via platforms such as Teams, online safety no longer stops at the end of the school day or applies to only certain applications.

Schools can now widen their safeguarding provision by connecting their Microsoft 365 tenancy to classroom.cloud to allow keyword and phrase monitoring of  Teams channels and chats. Powered by more than 14,000 phrases across multiple languages, classroom.cloud’s keyword and phrase monitoring tool enables schools to monitor what topics their students are typing or searching for across diverse applications and learning environments – helping to identify, support and protect students engaged in any concerning activity. It also allows schools to share and exchange local terms with other schools and add any new ones to their database to further broaden their eSafety net.…Read More