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.

Free Family Engagement Tool For Impacted Schools and Districts

PowerMyLearning, a national nonprofit,  is committed to helping school and district leaders who are mobilizing to implement remote learning plans in response to COVID-19. We know how critical it is for you to support students’ learning while also keeping families connected. PowerMyLearning Family Playlists® can help make that transition smoother.

  • Unlike other online initiatives, Family Playlists use families’ phones, so families can fully participate without having a laptop or computer at home.
  • Family Playlists can be delivered in over 100 languages, ensuring seamless two-way communication between families and teachers.
  • Family Playlists are easy to integrate with Google Classroom and Clever.

 

PowerMyLearning is offering our Family Playlists program completely free of charge to all schools and districts impacted by COVID-19 from now through the end of the school year.…Read More

Complimentary LanSchool Air licenses to help lessen the impact of Coronavirus closures

As COVID-19 continues to impact our communities, schools are implementing emergency distance learning plans to prepare for potential closures. LanSchool, is committed to helping you protect students and staff while minimizing disruptions to instruction. LanSchool is offering complimentary LanSchool Air licenses as an online learning solution through July 1, 2020.

How LanSchool Air supports distance teaching:

  • Screen Monitoring mimics the classroom environment, enabling teachers to provide assistance and encouragement to keep students on task.
  • Messaging makes it easy for teachers and students to stay connected and collaborate on assignments.
  • Raise Hand allows teachers to quickly address student questions in remote settings.
  • Integrations with solutions you love – including Google Classroom and Clever – streamline digital instruction.

https://lanschool.com/lp/complimentary_lsa_covid19/…Read More

Comcast offers services to learn and teach from home

Comcast is opening its Xfinity WiFi Network Nationally for Free, Offers Unlimited Data for Free, Confirms Its Commitment to Connecting Low-Income Families

On the heels of offering new, low-income Internet Essentials customers two months of free internet and raising the speed of that program’s service to 25/3 Mbps, Comcast today announced additional steps to help ensure people stay connected to the Internet as more schools suspend classes and companies encourage employees to work from home due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Comcast is taking steps to implement the following new policies for the next 60 days, and other important initiatives:…Read More

3 districts that battled malware–and won–with endpoint security

It’s not exactly a secret that most educational institutions are vulnerable to data breaches and security hacks. All it takes is one attack to freeze school operations and disrupt learning, to say nothing of putting sensitive data and private information at risk.

Being proactive is better than being reactive, and one of the biggest proactive steps districts are taking today involves targeting endpoint security and beefing up endpoint resilience.

Endpoint security, essentially, involves protecting the endpoints, or the devices and tools, connected to school and district networks. As BYOD and mobile initiatives expand, endpoints multiply, underscoring the importance of this security strategy. Endpoint resilience combines protection and response in a way that allows a district to recover quickly from an attack.…Read More

4 ways to improve digital equity in your classroom

As a former middle school teacher who taught in a lower-income, majority-minority school equipped with lots of “high tech” tools, I often wondered about digital equity. For me, students’ access to tech at school wasn’t the issue. However, I knew that things were a lot different once students left my classroom. Because the majority of my students lacked internet access at home, I never assigned homework that required technology.

But that was over 10 years ago, and a lot has changed since then. Today, using tech for teaching and learning–both in class and for homework–is a lot more common than it was. Nevertheless, many teachers and students are struggling to adapt to a world where it seems like everyone is connected, yet not everyone has the same access.

A number of key findings in Common Sense’s recently released research report, The Common Sense Census: Inside the 21st-Century Classroom, speak to this disconnect. According to the report, nearly a third of teachers said it would limit their students’ learning “a great deal” or “quite a bit” if their students didn’t have access to a computer or the internet. Yet, nearly a third of teachers also shared that they assigned homework online at least once a week–although those teachers who said they did assign digital homework were more likely to teach in affluent, non-Title I schools. Together these findings highlight the importance of understanding that, while access to technology may be nearly universal today, using those same technologies for learning isn’t always equitable.…Read More

3 must-haves for a mobile learning environment

Gary Lambert: Wi-fi at home and on the bus

Beekmantown (NY) Central School District, a rural district of 2,070 students, was on a mission to be the most progressive educational institution in the area. When funds were earmarked for school wi-fi, we wanted to harness the Internet to provide a world-class education for every student in this district.

Our initiative to address digital equity issues began with the rollout of Kajeet SmartSpots for students who needed home Internet access. In the four years since we had started our 1:1 program, the number of students without Internet has dropped from 30 percent to 10 percent because parents saw the benefit for their kids and made it a priority to get connected. For that 10 percent who still don’t have Internet, we had an easy-to-use solution.…Read More

Family tech nights can narrow the digital divide

When we talk about digital equity, the conversation often focuses on providing opportunities for all students to learn in an increasingly connected world. We talk about devices and home connectivity. We talk the importance of parental support. We talk about training all educators to integrate digital tools in their classrooms in meaningful ways.

Seldom, though, does the conversation focus on ensuring that parents acquire the same skills we want for our students.

But when schools support students in transferring their skills to their parents, they are narrowing the digital divide.…Read More

3 tips for jumpstarting your district’s connectivity discussion

This year’s E-rate cycle may be over, but in order to be well prepared for the next one, now is the time to start the connectivity conversation with your school district. In today’s classrooms, high-speed internet is no longer an option; it has become a necessity.

Digital learning helps students grasp concepts more fully, and not having access to the wealth of information found in online videos, apps, and curriculum puts these students at an immediate disadvantage to their connected peers. As schools increasingly turn to digital learning, all classrooms must have reliable, fast internet connections in order to prepare students sufficiently for future challenges like college and the job market.

While dramatic progress has been made in closing the connectivity gap in our public schools, there are still 6.5 million K-12 students who lack access to high-speed classroom internet, leaving them unprepared or underprepared for the world’s digital expectations.…Read More

6 ways school bus wi-fi could benefit your district

Gaps in internet access are an all-too-familiar struggle for many schools, particularly those in rural or low-income districts where coverage is spotty or too expensive.

In 2015, President Barack Obama said internet access was no longer a privilege, but a basic necessity. School districts are adopting that frame of mind and are trying their best to keep students connected as long as possible.

Equipping school buses with wi-fi helps extend learning, especially for students who have long bus rides due to rural locations or extra-curricular activities.…Read More

Weak cell service? How schools can solve this still-pervasive problem

Today’s students are more connected to their devices than ever before, whether they’re using their tablets or cellular devices to take notes in class, conduct research, or write a report. As such, strong cellular connectivity has become a must for schools and universities. Faculty and students rely upon secure wireless data and mobile coverage in order to teach, learn, and grow together. Having good cellular service also enhances safety on school grounds, keeping staff connected in emergency scenarios in which an instructor or staff member is not near a landline telephone and must instead place a cellular call for immediate assistance.

Unfortunately, due to the nature of cellular signals, schools can’t always provide consistently strong cellular signal for students, faculty, and staff. Accessing a strong indoor signal can be difficult depending on campus size and location, the distance to the nearest cell tower, or natural obstructions such as mountains and district budgets.

Construction materials can also cause issues with cellular signal. Modern schools and universities are usually a combination of older buildings and newer, environmentally friendly construction. Both styles can interfere with radio frequency waves coming from the nearest cell tower. What’s more, the many hundreds of students and teachers in the buildings can easily overload a weak network.…Read More