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.

Common Sense Education ramps up ‘Digital Citizenship for All’

Common Sense Education’s new Digital Citizenship for All campaign, part of the organization’s commitment to making digital citizenship a national priority, urges educators to take a digital citizenship pledge and model behavior for students as they use technology responsibly.

The campaign is the cornerstone of Common Sense Education’s back-to-school offerings and invites teachers and administrators around the world to “Take the Digital Citizenship for All Pledge” to guide students in using technology safely, responsibly, and effectively.

Common Sense Education launched its K–12 Digital Citizenship Curriculum in 2011.…Read More

Yes, teens are addicted to mobile devices — but so are adults

Infographic shares realities behind today’s mobile device addiction

As kids get older, cries for strict limits on their screen time tend to taper off. By the time students hit high school, many are accustomed to texting in the hallways or even sneaking a peek at Facebook during dinner. But is the laissez-faire approach to device use actually enabling addictive behavior? Parents think so—and so do many of their kids, according to a recent Common Sense Media poll of 1,200 parents and teens centered around technology use and addiction.

Multitasking, toggling between multiple screens or between screens and people, which is common for kids doing homework or socializing, can impair their ability to lay down memories, to learn, and to work effectively, according to the report.

See also: Report: Teens feel ‘addicted’ to mobile devices…Read More

App of the Week: Eat your way to basic math skills

Ed. note: App of the Week picks are now being curated with help from Graphite by Common Sense Media. Click here to read the full app review.

What’s It Like? DragonBox Numbers surreptitiously introduces kids to basic number concepts through puzzles, challenges, and free play. “Nooms” represent each number from 1 to 10. Kids can stack Nooms, have them “eat” each other and turn into different Nooms (for example, 3 eats 5 and becomes 8), or slice them into smaller Nooms. In the sandbox, kids freely experiment with the Nooms against a number line. In “ladder,” kids build a Noom to reach a star on a number line, which gets more challenging as they want to avoid or pass through certain points along the way. In “puzzles,” kids create pictures using the Nooms in certain ways. All activities earn coins that kids can use to “buy” more levels.

Rating: 4/5…Read More

App of the Week: Daily news and events, just for kids

Ed. note: App of the Week picks are now being curated with help from Graphite by Common Sense Media. Click here to read the full app review.

What’s It Like? News-O-Matic, School Edition, 2015-16 is a daily news and activity app for kids in grades 2–5. Teachers and kids can read five current events articles daily, answer questions, chat with classmates about the stories, and send comments or questions to the editor. Topics include everything from religion and politics to scientific discoveries and kid entrepreneurs.

Rating: 4/5…Read More

App of the Week: Skaffl

Ed. note: App of the Week picks are now being curated by the editors of Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. Click here to read the full app review.
 skaffl

What’s It Like? Skaffl is a tool for distributing, completing, and grading work on the iPad. Teachers create classes and then share each class’s unique access code with their students, who can then use that code to enroll in the class via their own Skaffl login. Teachers then create three types of activities: an in-app assignment, a student dropbox, or a handout. A handy workflow for these activities appears every time teachers create a new one. Teachers can distribute activities instantly (to some classes, some students, or all at once) or schedule them for a later date.

Price: Free/subscription

Grades: 6-12…Read More

Five apps for boosting middle school math skills

These five apps can help middle school students learn math skills such as geometry, estimation, and simple algebra

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These math app reviews come from Common Sense Media and its free Graphite service.

Here are reviews of five high-quality digital apps that can help teach middle school math, courtesy of Common Sense Media and its new Graphite service—a free database of teacher-written reviews of learning technologies.

Slice It!

Grade range: 3-7…Read More

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Seven great ed-tech tools for music instruction

Here are seven music apps, tools, and websites for use in the classroom, courtesy of Common Sense Media and its new Graphite service.

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Here are seven music apps, tools, and websites for use in the classroom.

As we reported recently, new research confirms that music education can help close student achievement gaps and enhance learning in other subjects. Here are seven music apps and websites for use in the classroom, courtesy of Common Sense Media and its new Graphite service—a free database of teacher-written reviews of ed-tech tools.

 

Flocabulary…Read More

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Special Report: Teaching with digital apps

Finding high-quality digital apps and integrating them into instruction isn’t always easy. Here’s how some educators are making the shift.

teaching-with-apps
Want to create your own video game to help students learn phonics? Or poll students to check their understanding in the middle of a lesson? There’s a free app for that.

For social studies teacher Jean LaBelle, the value of her school’s new iPad program was driven home by a recent lesson on the Emancipation Proclamation.

LaBelle, who teaches U.S. history and other subjects at Maynard High School in Massachusetts, leads a lesson in which she asks her freshman students, “Did the Emancipation Proclamation end U.S. slavery?”

In prior years, she would hand out a photocopy with the text of the document and call students’ attention to the passage that reads:…Read More

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Are texting and tweeting making our students bad writers?

Common Sense Media reports that The Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project surveyed middle and high school teachers about the impact of digital tools on student writing. While some 78 percent of the 2,462 teachers surveyed said tools such as the internet, social media, and cell phones “encourage student creativity and personal expression,” others expressed concern that such tools are also having undesirable effects on students’ formal writing. Ninety-six percent of the advanced placement and National Writing Project teachers surveyed agreed that digital technologies “allow students to share their work with a wider and more varied audience.” An additional 79 percent also said that these tools “encourage greater collaboration among students,” which, teachers said, is ultimately beneficial…

Read the full story

…Read More

New resource helps educators teach with digital apps

Common Sense Media says its system is the first centralized source for unbiased reviews of the learning potential of apps developed for a variety of platforms.

The sheer volume of new learning apps being created every day poses a key challenge for educators looking to teach with mobile devices, as many teachers say they don’t have time to find and evaluate the best apps for their classrooms.

But a brand-new service, announced June 24 at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) 2013 conference in San Antonio, could help.

Called Graphite, it’s a free online portal to help educators from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade find, use, and share the best digital apps, games, and websites for their students.…Read More

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