TRENDING  //  Are you connected for digital classroom success?  //  5 Strategies to build into your school’s remote education strategy

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.

Vivi and Headspace Partner to Bring Mindfulness to K-12 Classrooms

MELBOURNE – Vivi, the leading classroom communication and collaboration platform built exclusively for education, today announced an exciting new and unique partnership with Headspace, a global leader in mindfulness and meditation, with a goal of improving social-emotional health for all students. The partnership will give all Vivi users access to easy and effective mindfulness and meditation practices created by Headspace, designed for use in K-12 classrooms.

“We are excited to give teachers and students easy access to resources needed to build mindfulness skills, to help them focus, recharge, and get the most out of every lesson,” says Simon Holland, co-founder of Vivi.io and a key driver of the partnership. “By delivering access to mindfulness and meditation practices designed specifically for K-12, we hope we can play a role in reducing stress and anxiety in the classroom and further improving emotional health and wellness for all students and teachers.”

A study has shown 30 days of Headspace resulted in 32% decrease in stress, eight weeks of Headspace resulted in a 19% decrease in anxiety symptoms and Headspace has improved focus by 14%. Until now, it has been challenging for teachers to gather insights on students’ social and emotional needs and support them in the moment. By pairing Vivi’s emoji-based polling ability with Headspace’s mindfulness practices, teachers can administer a quick, confidential, whole-class check-in to get a temperature read on how students are feeling about the day or lesson, and then offer targeted support to those students in need.…Read More

5 tips to build community-wide support for IT transformation

Technology’s role has been elevated to an integral strategic function in today’s school districts. But getting everyone to understand the value of digital transformation can be challenging and test the persuasion and people skills of even the most seasoned IT leaders.

Here are some strategies IT teams can use to help build a supportive culture for ongoing technology investments.

Set Up Direct Lines of Communication…Read More

1 2

Learn to align your communication strategies with school safety

Having a campus-wide communication ecosystem is imperative, and school district leaders have no higher priority than to create secure and informed campus environments.

Being able to initiate a controlled emergency notification protocol to alert, notify and monitor directly from a mobile device, classroom audio system, or interactive flat panel is essential.

An eSchool News panel of experts, including Brent Thrasher, Instructional Technology Coordinator at Overton County Schools and Todd Eddy from Galaxy Next Generation, offers insights into how to make better decisions, prevent risk, and strengthen communication between faculty, administration, and first responders during an active threat.…Read More

4 ways transparent communication builds trust in our district

One of the best ways to build trust with parents is through transparent communication about what’s happening on campus, the status of all things school-related, and how we’re meeting our students’ needs.

Parents are busy and don’t always have time to chase this information down on their own, so it’s up to district and school leaders to open up those clear lines of communication and then use them.

Technology is a great enabler for districts that want to do a better job in this area. By using our ParentSquare safe and secure platform for school-home communications, we’re getting rid of the many disparate solutions that our schools were using—including social media—and replacing them with a unified solution that everyone can use and rely on.…Read More

1 2

How your communication strategies create safe schools

School district leaders have no higher priority than to create secure and informed campus environments. Having a campus-wide communication ecosystem is imperative. Being able to initiate a controlled emergency notification protocol to alert, notify and monitor directly from a mobile device, classroom audio system, or interactive flat panel is essential.

Join an eSchool News panel of experts, including Brent Thrasher, Instructional Technology Coordinator at Overton County Schools and Todd Eddy from Galaxy Next Generation, on October 6 as they discuss how to make better decisions, prevent risk, and strengthen communication between faculty, administration, and first responders during an active threat.

Register now!…Read More

How to ensure clear communication with your paraprofessionals

As back-to-school commences this fall, in addition to the students and teachers returning to school buildings, somewhere between 160,000 and 250,000–or more–folks will be joining those students and teachers. Known by a variety of titles, from paraeducator and paraprofessional, to aid, to assistant teacher, these educational support personnel have the least training of people working in schools. Add the fact that most paraprofessionals are assigned to work with students with the most significant needs, and one can see why these positions are difficult to fill and have generally high turnover rates.

There are a couple of things that can be done to better assist paraprofessionals in their roles within schools. The first is to ensure more effective communication between teachers and the paraprofessionals who work with the same students and support them in the classrooms.

Building administrators should make sure that teachers provide clear and direct guidance for paraprofessionals at the beginning of each term. Often, paraprofessionals might be new to education and might not have much time to prepare for their assignment. One effective method is to have teachers who will work with paraprofessionals complete a short checklist explaining the items they want the paraprofessional to focus on and what they would prefer is left to the teacher. Building administrators then need to facilitate conversations between the teacher and paraprofessionals so expectations are clear. Such a practice can help eliminate problems before they arise by ensuing clear expectations are set for each paraprofessional.…Read More

1 2

AtomicMind Launches College Admissions Technology Platform for a Personalized and Comprehensive College Application Experience

NEW YORK— AtomicMind, an education technology company that offers families a boutique coaching experience in the increasingly competitive college admissions landscape, today announced the launch of a unique technology platform. The new offering provides a comprehensive and personalized college application experience by combining hands-on expert guidance from dedicated advisors with robust virtual task management, communication and feedback tools.

The platform was designed by MIT and Harvard graduates using best practices identified over the course of their 40+ years of combined experience helping students get into top colleges. It gives college applicants the benefits of enhanced feedback and collaboration with a team of experts including strategists, writing coaches and former admissions staff members from elite colleges such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, MIT and Stanford. The AtomicMind platform addresses every aspect of the admissions process, from crafting compelling essays to mastering interviews to refining activity and college lists. The technology includes tools for keeping track of important deadlines and documents, while offering applicants key insights into what each college admissions committee is looking for. With the platform, a greater number of students will have access to the best resources regardless of where they live.

“The new AtomicMind platform offers families access to the tools and experts needed to navigate the increasingly high standards of the elite college admissions process,” said Leelila Strogov, the founder and CEO of AtomicMind. “The platform aims to maximize college acceptance rates by helping students more effectively build college lists, create tailored applications and stay organized. It also provides parents with an opportunity to monitor the progress of their student’s college applications. This spares busy applicants the extra stress of having to provide updates to their parents or the feeling that they are being interrogated.”…Read More

ParentSquare Partners with MyVRSpot to Enhance Video Messaging to K-12 School-Home Engagement Platform

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. Aug. 10, 2022—In a 2022 national survey about the future of school-home communications, school and district leaders said they would like to add more videos to improve communication with families. To meet this need, ParentSquare has partnered with MyVRSpot, a video and digital media management service, to extend its video messaging capabilities to the ParentSquare school-home engagement platform for K-12.

With this new partnership, K-12 educators from the district office to the classroom teacher can seamlessly record and share video messages using ParentSquare and MyVRSpot to engage families with their communications. Teachers can also easily create and share lessons using the built-in recorder tools in MyVRSpot and then add the videos to the posts they create in ParentSquare – giving teachers and students the tools they need to teach and be future-ready citizens.

“Video provides a powerful tool to help districts and schools deepen their relationships with students’ families,” ParentSquare Chief Strategy Officer Dr. Chad A. Stevens said. “The partnership between ParentSquare and MyVRSpot is a direct response to feedback from our customers who expressed a desire to add video to their future communications plans. This new integration provides flexibility for schools to create and share video messages with families and shows ParentSquare’s ongoing commitment of creating the most robust parent relationship platform through customer-centric partnerships.”…Read More