Incredible: Teachers are forming job-specific collaboration networks. Here’s why and how

A large percentage of public school districts across the U.S. are comprised of 15 or fewer schools; 46 percent of districts have fewer than 1,000 students and a third have fewer than two schools. While many of these smaller school districts face the same challenges as larger school systems, they often lack the infrastructure and supports of larger districts—especially in the form of peer collaboration.

Several research studies have pointed out that educators in these districts—many of which are located rural areas—often experience “professional isolation,” making it hard to gain traction with the greatest school-related influencers on student achievement: the recruitment, development, and retention of teachers, teacher leaders, and principals.

As research has clearly stated for decades, there is no greater school-related impact on student achievement than the teacher in the classroom. The second-greatest school-related impact on student achievement growth is principal effectiveness. Not surprisingly, the largest impact on teacher retention is administrative support and school culture, both of which are impacted directly by the principal.…Read More

ISTE issues Digital Citizenship Week challenge

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) will leverage Digital Citizenship Week (Oct. 16-20) to raise awareness of the importance of teaching digital citizenship to students of all ages. ISTE challenges students, educators and parents to take time each day during Digital Citizenship Week to explore what it means to be good citizens in a digital world.

“The need to teach digital citizenship skills has never been greater. These skills include concepts like how to use tech to organize around good causes, how to respectfully disagree online, and how to distinguish between true and false information. As our interactions with friends, community members and government leaders become increasingly mediated by technology, we must model and teach the behaviors we hope to see in our next generation of digital leaders,” said ISTE CEO Richard Culatta.

ISTE is providing a number of resources to support schools and families in taking the Digital Citizenship Week challenge:…Read More

AR for ELL: ‘I had students screaming and jumping up and down’

Almost 10 percent of students in US public schools are English language learners (ELLs), and that percentage is growing every year. One of the biggest challenges today’s teachers face is helping ELLs develop the literacy skills they need to keep pace with their peers. An essential first step in that process is getting their attention in class.

Here, two educators discuss how they use the engaging powers of the emerging 3D technology, augmented reality (AR), to do just that.

Hugo E. Gomez: Using AR to Engage Kindergarteners…Read More

Technology teacher: These are “My Tech Essentials”

At Gordon J. Lau Elementary, of our 690 plus students, 68 percent are English language learners (ELLs). Many of our ELL students have come to the United States only a few months ago, some even a few days ago. For these students, their ability to successfully use the tech tools we supply them, regardless of their language, reading, or comprehension level, is crucial.

By using tech tools, teachers actively create, customize and enhance educational approaches to meet the new and growing challenges of the 21st century. The tech tools offer a practical introduction to and a reinforcement of requisite skill-sets for our students, who are English learners and native speakers alike. In this complex and increasingly “multi-plex” digital age, the tech tools ground instruction and learning in prodigious and “joyful learning.” This is done in a manner. which infuses a unique methodology that no other non-tech tool can imitate.

An Instructional Technology Resource Teacher’s Tech Essentials…Read More

23 amazing STEM and digital learning tools

Technology changes at a rapid pace, and educators have to keep up.

Check below for the latest marketplace news to keep you up-to-date on product developments, teaching and learning initiatives, and new trends in education.

College and Career Readiness…Read More

Blackboard Hackboard Hackathon

This contest challenges developers and college students in the United States to create a unique, user-friendly and impactful application that will integrate with the Blackboard Learn learning management system to improve the teaching and learning experience.

 

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Infographic: Why mobile technology is hurting some students

[Editor’s Note: Read “Infographic: The edtech challenges faced by immigrant students” here.]

Although most children in families earning below the median U.S. household income have internet access and devices that connect to it, they struggle with being “under-connected.”

Ninety-four percent of families surveyed by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, have some kind of internet access and most have at least one device connecting to the internet, but the quality or consistency of their internet access is lower than they would like it to be.…Read More

How our elementary school got a tech makeover

Kids gravitate to technology in the classroom, so it makes sense for teachers to utilize digital projectors—that is, unless no one can see the lessons they display.

This was our situation a couple of years ago at Northwest Elementary School in Chatsworth, Ga., in the summer of 2014. We were having challenges with the technology in our learning environments: Our digital projectors were eight years old, so the projections weren’t very bright anymore, and it was difficult for our students to see the images on the screen. Worse still, sometimes the projectors wouldn’t boot up at all, or conked out midway through a class, which frustrated teachers who needed them for the day’s lesson.

We wanted to include funding for these upgrades in the budget, but after planning for essentials, there just wasn’t much money left over. We looked at replacing a few digital projectors at a time, but we have 29 classrooms–how would we prioritize which classrooms would get the new projectors first? What do you eliminate from the budget so the kids can have another computer? It was frustrating. We thought there was no way we were going to be able to get everything we needed.…Read More

3 challenges to OER implementation

Open educational resources (OER) have made their presence known in education, with teachers and administrators voicing their excitement over free resources that are easily shared and adapted.

In fact, the movement has grown so much that it has received federal attention. The U.S. Department of Education’s #GoOpen campaign encourages states, school districts and educators to use open educational resources.

The Department is proposing a regulation that would require all copyrightable intellectual property created with ED grant funds to have an open license.…Read More

Education.com unveils guided curriculum for math, reading

Education.com, an online education destination for teachers, parents, and homeschoolers looking to help their kids succeed in school, announced a new guided curriculum that changes the way they help their preschool and elementary children develop essential skills.

The new skills-focused curriculum combines 30,000 expert-created resources from the industry’s most comprehensive learning library with step-by-step guided lessons mapped to specific skills, to more easily and effectively strengthen the math, reading, and writing skills that are essential for school success.

At the heart of education, children need to develop foundational math and reading skills to succeed in school. All kids struggle with these core skills at some level, and their parents and teachers equally face fundamental challenges in trying to help them: identifying the most essential math and reading skills, finding various ways to keep a child engaged in learning, and finding an educational solution that connects foundational skills to the learning needs of the individual child. Education.com’s new math and reading platform uniquely helps parents and teachers address these challenges by combining easy to follow step-by-step lessons with a variety of learning formats for a multi-sensory approach aligned to the essential skills kids need to learn.…Read More