Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Chicago Public Schools is monitoring students’ social media for ‘worrisome behavior’

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

Chicago Public Schools is monitoring students’ social media posts for signs they might engage in violence on campus or harm themselves so that school staff — and in some cases police — can intervene. 

A Canada-based company the district hired started scouring public posts for threats and “cries for help” last month. District leaders say the program is key in efforts to prevent violence and self-harm as the district responds to an uptick in school shootings nationally and in the number of local students expressing suicidal thoughts.…Read More

Listen EVERYWHERE in High School Theater Brings Clear Audio to Those with Hearing Loss

BLUFFDALE, UTAH –  Listen Technologies, the leading provider of advanced wireless listening solutions for 24 years, announced that John Rennie High School, a secondary school in Quebec, Canada, has selected Listen EVERYWHERE for use in its theater to support assistive listening.  

John Rennie High School decided to upgrade the audio in its Louise Chalmers Theatre during a recent renovation. It also sought to install assistive technology to accommodate students and guests with hearing loss.  

Assistive listening systems retailer Oreille Bionique recommended Listen EVERYWHERE, an audio over Wi-Fi assistive listening system, and provided a demo unit for the high school to test in the theater. Listen EVERYWHERE streams live or recorded venue audio over wireless networks to smartphones. Users can listen via headphones connected to their smartphone, or by streaming sound from their smartphone directly to their hearing aids or cochlear implants. After a successful 30-day trial, John Rennie High School began the procurement process. …Read More

Savvas Learning Company Acquires Rubicon Publishing, Canada’s Leading Digital Learning Provider for Math

PARAMUS, NEW JERSEY — March 3, 2022 — Savvas Learning Company, a leading provider of next-generation learning solutions across all K-12 grade levels and disciplines, announced today its acquisition of Rubicon Publishing, Inc., the developer of Canada’s most widely used all-digital math program.

Headquartered near Toronto, Rubicon is the provider of MathUP, an inquiry-based math program for students in grades K-8 that has become the best-selling online math product in Canada.

“With its hugely popular online math program, MathUP, Rubicon has evolved into a cutting-edge digital learning company that has transformed math education in Canada,” said Bethlam Forsa, CEO of Savvas Learning Company. “I look forward to building upon Rubicon’s successes and becoming the solutions provider of choice for educators on both sides of the border.”…Read More

SplashLearn Rolls Out Dates For Its Much Loved ‘SpringBoard Math Challenge 2022’

San Francisco, CA, 23nd February 2022: The popular game-based learning program SplashLearn, today announced the 8th edition of its massively popular SpringBoard Math Challenge. The math competition is a calendar marked event and is highly anticipated by teachers across the US and Canada. SpringBoard Math Challenge 2022, open to all classes from Kindergarten to grade 5, will run from March 1 – May 8, 2022.

Participation is free for the SpringBoard Math Challenge, whichis designed to give teachers and schools the opportunity to engage their elementary school students through fun math challenges aligned to the curriculum. The 10-week challenge will allow students to master their math skills and enter the new class with confidence, whilst having fun. 

Joy Deep Nath, co-founder, SplashLearn, said“SpringBoard is a math competition, but it has achieved more than that. It has grown to be a platform for social and emotional bonding for both students and teachers alike. Of course, it also helps reduce the attainment gap and ensures students are prepared for the next grade. There is a growing appreciation for SpringBoard as an effective way to challenge students in a familiar, secure and friendly setting to practice with their peers which is paramount in the present times”.  …Read More

Q Academy Kids Boosts Coding Skills of Children, Teens Worldwide, Launches Kids’ Projects Via Incubation Platform

The global e-learning market is poised for growth, especially post COVID-19. The size of North America’s e-learning market in particular is projected to reach US$135 billion by 2026, boosted by advancements in digital infrastructure in the United States and Canada, according to recent research.

Virtual classrooms, online learning, and vocational learning will all contribute to this growth. Companies are zeroing in on kids’ learning and development online, such that British Columbia-based Q Academy, a pioneer in tech-focused education in the region, has ventured into a kids’ coding and online learning platform through Q Academy Kids.

QA Kids caters to ages 6 to 18 years old, offering students one-on-one or group online classes on coding, Minecraft, graphic design, comic creation, 3D animation, digital marketing, and photography, among others. Designed with learning flexibility in mind, QA Kids enables parents to choose the courses and the schedule of classes best suited for their kids. It also makes available trial classes for free and prioritizes youth safety by making use of secure servers in its classes and a stringent vetting process in place for instructors as part of the site’s enhanced security features.…Read More

Edsby K-12 LMS incorporates Microsoft Teams and Zoom real-time video, chat and whiteboarding

New EdsbyLive capability makes synchronous learning easier and safer for K-12 students and educators

ONTARIO, Canada (May 6th, 2021) – Edsby®, a multi award-winning, next generation K-12 learning management system (LMS), has introduced new built-in support for popular platforms to enable simpler and more secure real time synchronous learning in hybrid or online-only environments. A new EdsbyLive feature now programmatically connects Edsby classes to popular real-time online meeting services.

EdsbyLive initially supports Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and all of the rich, real-time video, chat, whiteboarding and other capabilities they offer. EdsbyLive has been built to be platform-agnostic, and support for other systems is planned in the future.

Once configured to use a school district or region’s official platform, teachers receive new “Go Live Now” buttons in their Edsby classes. These buttons launch online meetings and make them available only at the time a teacher has requested it, and only to students in the class. If configured by the district, only authenticated users may participate in meetings, and only with their real names, minimizing the chance of unauthorized intrusions.…Read More

New NetSupport Classroom Management Platform: classroom.cloud Keeps Students on Task, Whether in School or Remote

NetSupport today announced that its new solution for classroom management, classroom.cloud, is available to schools throughout the U.S. and Canada. This is the latest product from NetSupport, which has been supporting teachers with award-winning instructional and educational technology for over 30 years.

As teachers and administrators are once again thinking through major transitions in learning locations and models, classroom.cloud is now fully available domestically.

classroom.cloud provides unique flexibility, allowing teachers to monitor the applications and internet use on each student’s computer no matter where they are connected. With classroom.cloud, a teacher can launch a learning tool or open a website for every student in the class at the same time or bring individual students back on task when they have wandered away from the lesson whether they’re in the classroom or at home or somewhere in between.  …Read More

Osmo For Schools Celebrates Fifth Anniversary

Osmo for Schools, the educational division of Tangible Play that promotes in-classroom usage of Osmo’s award-winning educational systems, celebrates its fifth anniversary March 30, 2021 and highlights recent achievements. These include upgrading to plastic pieces in all its school bundles to maintain the highest standards of classroom hygiene, along with reaching 100,000 downloads of the Osmo Projector App intended for teachers, which helped grow Osmo’s community of active users. 

“Osmo for Schools began thanks to all the incredibly enthusiastic teachers across the U.S. and Canada who adopted Osmo as an educational device for classroom settings, promoting its usage, so that schools and districts started to purchase it,” explains Jan Richards, head of education sales and marketing at Osmo for Schools. “In early 2016, Osmo began our division by forming a sales team, a conference strategy, plus a Classroom Kit for schools, which really took off. It’s come a long way since!” The division now has 15 sales and consulting executives who work under Richards, offers nine different learning system bundles, and works with thousands of school districts.

All Learning System Bundles Upgraded To Plastic Manipulatives for Effective Sanitization…Read More

Young Empowered Startuppers’ Online Entrepreneurial Learning & Activity Platform provides competitive advantage for today’s teachers, students and schools.

The latest of the awards was an Award of Excellence in Applied Innovation, with a perfect score of 12/12 from the Institute for Performing and Learning, the judges commented that “it is no doubt this project will be an example to follow in improving the work the Institute for Performance and Learning seeks to explore in the future.” Using a fully integrated online learning and project platform, YES takes students and teachers seamlessly through their entrepreneurial journey from problem solving ideas to viable, pitch-ready ventures. The program meets Canada wide Entrepreneurship Curriculum Requirements and can be delivered flexibly depending on the needs of the students, teachers, and school.  

The platform can be a 100% online plug and play course or be used in a hybrid or flipped classroom model.  The ability to seamlessly move between varying models has made teachers’ work that much easier during the current ever-changing times. “The program leverages the LMS system by offering an experience-based platform where learners receive support and engagement by mentors and administrative staff, as directed by the learner. It also offers an intuitive interface that promotes use of just in time data,” commented the judges from the Institute of Performance and Learning.  

Shauna Stanyer, an entrepreneurship teacher from Holy Cross Regional High School in Vancouver, Canada recently remarked “I really appreciate the content brought throughout the training modules and how it is delivered through the platform. It makes planning an exciting and innovative course easy, while allowing me to focus on the project-based learning with my students.”  The content and curriculum developed for the course are engaging and exciting for students, and teacher feedback on this new tool has been overwhelmingly positive.…Read More

SplashLearn Announces ‘SpringBoard Math Challenge 2021’

The popular game-based learning program SplashLearn, announced the 7th edition of its massively popular SpringBoard Math Challenge today. The math competition is a calendar marked event and is highly anticipated by teachers across the US and Canada. SpringBoard Math Challenge 2021, open to all classes from grade 1 to grade 5, will run from March 1 – May 9, 2021.

“SpringBoard is unique because it brings students together in an environment that enables competition as well as collaboration. This year, it assumes a new meaning as different classes compete with each other but are also coming together, learning together while also having fun – something they haven’t been able to do this year,” said Joy Deep Nath, Co-founder, SplashLearn.

After creating an account on SplashLearn, teachers can enroll their classes for SpringBoard 2021. Once enrolled, all the math problems the students solve will earn them points, which will count towards the total class score. The best performing classes with the highest points win weekly prizes at both the state and national level. The grand winners will be announced at the end of SpringBoard. Prizes worth more than $20,000 are up for grabs this year.…Read More