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.

One Animation’s Oddbods Partners With Splashlearn’s Digital Learning Program – Reaching Over 40m Kids In The USA

SINGAPORE/USA 10 February 2022 – Award-winning content creation, distribution and licensing studio One Animation has secured a new partnership for Oddbods with SplashLearn. The massively popular digital learning program for reading and math, SplashLearn has benefited over 40 million children internationally. Under the deal, Oddbodsdigitalbooks, including ‘The Pied Piper of Oddsville’, ‘Pogo and the Magic Lamp’ and ‘The Great Bod Bake Off’, will launch exclusively as part of SplashLearn’s reading program on 10th February. 

SplashLearn, one of the fastest-growing learning programs in the USA, has bagged many prestigious edtech awards such as the Stevie Award for best edtech product, Tabby Award for the best business and the Parents Choice Award, is also backed by prominent investors. In 2021 alone it added 7 million new users and is currently accessed in over 150 countries, including the UK, Australia and India. The program is also used by over 750,000 teachers in around 77,000 schools. SplashLearn is free for schools and teachers, ensuring every child gets access to quality, fun education resources in their classroom. 

SpashLearn’s reading program, which will feature the Oddbods books, has been designed to develop core reading skills through a sequential learning path that takes into consideration factors such as sentence predictability, word features, story structure, among several others. It’s a comprehensive and interactive program that caters to children aged 3-11 years and features a rich library of titles. …Read More

How school leaders can empower video creation in classrooms

Some of the best educational content develops with creative thinking and a willingness to try new things–and if teachers and students have the right tools, they’re on the right path.

Think about how students today communicate outside of school–so much of it is video-based, and if educators can meet students in that space, they’ll be able to create more engaging and impactful lessons. In the TikTok, Instagram Video and Snapchat era, video has also provided the perfect medium to encourage and empower intuitive content creation in classroom environments.

Learn more during this eSchool News webinar featuring educators and edtech experts who can speak to how video lets teachers gauge student understanding, enables students to access content at their own pace, and more.
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How scholastic esports opens up college pathways

Esports programs continue to grow at a rapid pace at both the collegiate level and at the high school level in the United States. With that growth, there are often salient questions that parents have when their children dive into the new world of scholastic esports and content creation: Are scholastic esports legitimate? What will they teach my child? Are you actually serious about a bunch of kids playing video games?

The answer to all of those questions is, without hesitation, yes. We are no stranger to those questions at NASEF and often talk with parents, educators, and students about the benefits of scholastic esports and the inclusion of video games into school curriculums.

Scholastic esports allows educators to open new pathways for their students in the burgeoning digital age of entertainment and education. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that in many ways, forcing classrooms to use online tools. Scholastic fellows are educators in a community of practice who develop and refine in- and  out-of-school curriculum that leverages student interest in esports. One of the most common refrains among the NASEF fellows was how the digital tools of gaming and esports helped keep their students connected to each other in a world-state that demanded we stay apart. In our interconnected world, games are often a dominant force in bringing millennials and Gen Z together.…Read More

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Schell Games’ Virtual Reality Educational Tool HistoryMaker VR Now Available For Free

With a majority of schools participating in distance learning this year, Schell Games announced its virtual reality education tool HistoryMaker VR is now available for free on Steam for all to use.

HistoryMaker VR is an immersive content creation tool that helps students learn history in an entertaining and engaging way. This innovative application allows learners to display their knowledge of history, civics, and social studies, while offering educators and parents a new way to improve student engagement, increase lesson retention, and introduce an exciting alternative to textbooks and Zoom lectures. HistoryMaker VR seamlessly integrates into curriculums and includes classroom guides and recommended activities for teachers and parents to use.

Using an Oculus Rift/Rift S headset and a PC, learners and/or educators can upload a script, prep the stage with a variety of props and set pieces, and record themselves giving a speech as one of eight diverse characters in U.S. history, including Benjamin Franklin, Harriet Tubman, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, and more. At the end of the recording, speeches can be exported as a video and shared with others, without the need for a VR headset. The videos can even be edited with any video editing tool, giving learners another opportunity to demonstrate their creativity and skill.…Read More

Lifesize Acquires Kaptivo to Fuel Next Generation of Advanced Collaboration

Lifesize®, a global innovator of immersive enterprise communication solutions, today announced the acquisition of Kaptivo, a digital collaboration solutions company. With the addition of Kaptivo, Lifesize further expands its portfolio of cloud-based unified communications and collaboration (UCC) solutions for contact centers, video conferencing and meeting rooms with a new suite of advanced collaboration tools.

An industry pioneer in computer vision, image processing and artificial intelligence for visual collaboration, Kaptivo develops solutions that make remote brainstorming, education, planning and content creation more effective and productive. Kaptivo’s current products address an unmet need in remote meetings: Connecting the hundreds of millions of existing, traditional whiteboards to modern collaboration tools so that participants can brainstorm, teach, plan and draw as if everyone was in the same room. The Kaptivo solution pairs advanced image processing software that eliminates shadows, reflections and people in front of the whiteboard with an enterprise-grade, secure, cloud-based collaboration platform.

Along with the acquisition, Lifesize also announced the immediate availability of a new Kaptivo-powered digital whiteboard application, providing enhanced capabilities for remote collaboration and instruction within Lifesize video meetings. According to a recent report from Nemertes Research, more than half of organizations are using or planning to use digital whiteboards by 2021.…Read More

New remote learning hub

Buncee recently released their new Remote Learning Hub – a centralized collection of resources to support your remote learning needs! If you’re looking to transition to a distance learning environment, Buncee’s new site features helpful resources and lessons to help integrate Buncee along with tools like Microsoft Teams and Immersive Reader, Google Classroom, Wakelet, and Flipgrid.

You’ll also see examples of how educators are currently implementing Buncee into their remote instruction by sharing engaging resources and lessons, having students create to demonstrate their learning, and keeping the community connected with personalized communications. There’s also a guide of fun activities for families to work on at home.

For more information: www.remotelearning.buncee.com…Read More

7 free flipped classroom creation apps you might not know

You might not know these apps for creating lessons, video, and more—perfect for the flipped classroom

flipped-appsThe flipped classroom gives students more time in class to do, not just listen,  and gives teachers new opportunities to revamp their lessons in creative, multimedia ways for at-home consumption. But for all that you need the right tools.

Here, we’ve gathered a handful of apps for content creation, from video to podcasting to slideshows, summarized on APPitic.com, an app resource site with more than 6,000 apps in more than 300 subcategories. And this time, we’ve selected apps that don’t typically crop up on flipped classroom lists, so you and your students can try something new.

[Editor’s note: eSchool News has selected these apps, which were originally curated by Apple Distinguished Educators, that may help you meet your instructional needs.]…Read More

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