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.

Gale expands historical digital newspaper offerings

New collections include historical archive of The Telegraph – one of the world’s best-known newspapers, a unique collection of Chinese periodicals, and British Library Newspapers

Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, has expanded its digital historical newspaper collections with the launch of several new archives. Now available are The Telegraph Historical Archive, 1855-2000, a 145-year archive of Britain’s best-selling quality newspaper; China from Empire to Republic: Missionary, Sinology, and Literary Periodicals, a collection of English-language periodicals published in or about China from 1817-1949; and British Library Newspapers, Part V: 1746-1950, which adds newspapers from the northern part of the United Kingdom to Gale’s comprehensive digital collection of British newspapers. All collections are fully indexed and the metadata and data are available for text and data mining and other forms of large-scale digital humanities analysis.

“These collections speak to the range of partnerships Gale has with different institutions around the world – from the British Library to the National Library of China and beyond – and what allows us to bring such unique, global content direct to researchers,” said Terry Robinson, senior vice president and managing director for Gale International. “In addition, we hope having access to these archives as data leads to the discovery of new insights by digital humanities scholars. Analyzing historical newspapers is a great way to uncover rich cultural and societal perspectives across any number of themes.”

The Telegraph Historical Archive, 1855-2000 enables researchers to full-text search more than one million pages of the paper’s back issues, including the Sunday Telegraph from 1961. Providing a balance of personal interest stories alongside incisive analysis, the archive offers a fascinating glimpse into daily life as it was experienced over the past 145 years.…Read More

First-ever Israel EdTech Summit brings a global reach

Debut event featured ed-tech entrepreneurs, educators, and more

The first-ever Istrael EdTech Summit has just wrapped, bringing together a decidedly global group of educators, startup founders, and other critical stakeholders to discuss innovations in the future of ed-tech. The event, held June 8-9, took place at the Tel Aviv Cultural Center.

Throughout the two days, more than 500 attendees from around the world — including China, Brazil, Germany, and the United States — listened to panel discussions on topics such as personalized learning and big data, improving STEM education, and the role of capital in ed-tech investment success. Other sessions focused on closing the skill gap, bridging tech inequality among students, and building out a successful company.

The keynote was delivered by former president of Intel Israel Mooly Eden.…Read More

When using data, remember monkey sex

Freakonomics co-author explains why using data to predict future trends is trickier than you may think.

When you talk about big data these days, as well as its potential to help predict future trends and, therefore, courses of action, stories about turkey breasts, hand washing and monkey sex don’t also make the rounds; but according to the Freakonomics author, they should.

“What people say they feel or say they do versus what they actually do are often two completely different things,” explained Stephen J. Dubner, journalist, author and this year’s Infocomm 2016 Las Vegas keynoter. “And this is what makes the use of data tricky whenever industry looks to it for answers in behavior.”

infocommvegas…Read More

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3 major ways to boost basic data literacy in K-16

A new report outlines the need for K-16 students to develop key data literacy skills

Focusing on three specific areas could be key to boosting K-16 students’ data literacy in a world where big data’s importance grows daily, according to a new report.

EDC’s Oceans of Data Institute (ODI) convened an expert panel of data analysts and educators for a workshop on data literacy, and panelists focused on what it means to be data literate in today’s world of big data, as well as what to teach students to prepare them to be part of today’s workforce and society.

The panelists’ recommendations are included in a new report, Building Global Interest in Data Literacy: A Dialogue.…Read More

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What teachers want in a data dashboard

The data dashboard has become more sophisticated, but it is still only one lens through which educators should view their students

When Amber Teamann was a teacher in Garland, Texas, seven years ago, her use of data to help guide her instruction was fairly limited.

“Based on the programs I was using, I could evaluate how to differentiate instruction for my students,” she said. But tracking how well her students were meeting specific grade-level standards at any moment during the year wasn’t an option for her at that time, nor was looking at larger trends until after the school year had ended.

Data “was something you would use as an autopsy when everything was over,” she said.…Read More

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Common Core is changing how schools teach ELA and math

New report finds Common Core is affecting reading and math — but not test scores

States considered strong adopters of Common Core are more likely to see a de-emphasis of fiction and a decline in advanced math enrollment among middle school students, according to a new report that also found a trivial difference in test scores between states that have and have not adopted the standards.

The report, from the Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings, pulls data from surveys conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) to see how far Common Core recommendations have seeped into states’ instruction, comparing data from 2011 to 2015. The question of whether students should focus on analyzing fiction, which has been traditionally favored by schools, or nonfiction, which is favored by the CCSS, was considered a major implementation hurdle just a few years ago.

On that point, it appears Common Core’s suggestions are winning out over entrenched practice. In 2011, according to the data, 63 percent of students had teachers who said they emphasized fiction, compared with 38 percent of students with teachers who said they were emphasizing nonfiction — a 25 percent gap. By 2015, however, that gap had shrunk to just eight percent, with 45 percent of students who have teachers emphasizing nonfiction. The gap shrunk for eighth grade students from 34 percent in 2011 to 16 percent in 2015.…Read More

Edsby making cloud service available on Microsoft Azure

Forthcoming cloud service from Edsby will build on earlier integration work

Edsby, a cloud-based learning management system for K-12 school districts that connects teachers, parents and students using modern technologies, will soon be available on Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s hyperscale, enterprise-grade cloud platform, as part of a global relationship between the two companies.

Edsby will be making its Edsby cloud service available in Azure data centers in the U.S. for American customers. In Canada, Microsoft Corp. recently announced plans to establish Azure cloud data centers in Ontario and Quebec and Edsby will be available in these Canadian facilities in time for the 2016-2017 school year. Shortly after, Edsby will be made available in Azure data centers in Australia, Europe and elsewhere.

“By utilizing Microsoft’s global network of Azure data centers, we can streamline how we provide Edsby in multiple regions around the world. This also enables us to meet customers’ regional or national data sovereignty requirements,” said John Myers, Edsby President. “In addition, the dynamic scalability and high availability of Azure will enable Edsby to scale to handle the millions of new users required by provincial, state and national level deployments.”…Read More

Making classroom observations more efficient — and effective

A custom web-based system is making for more thoughtful classroom observation

Instructional leaders need to know what is happening when the bell rings and the door closes — in every classroom, in every building, every day. And the best way to do that is through careful but effective classroom observation. The challenge, then, is how to design a customizable, user-friendly system to observe classroom teaching that doesn’t seem like a top-down affair.

Just over five years ago, my organization, the Southwest Plains Regional Service Center in Kansas, set out to do just that, and to date, 13,572 teachers have been observed in 726 schools. This includes over 150,000 observations and over 6.5 million data points.

First, here’s what we know: Quality of teaching is the number one factor affecting student learning; collaborative dialogue is the number one factor affecting quality of teaching; and collaborative dialogue requires data.…Read More

7 ways data collection is improving STEM education

One district is getting students more active and analytical with data-collection tools, like probeware

Today’s students, being technology natives, expect the same kinds of engagement in the classroom as they seek out online. STEM classes in particular have a natural potential to be both tech-rich and inquiry-based, especially hands-on lab activities. The recent addition of probeware—sensory-based handheld devices for measuring things like water quality, light, and temperature—has allowed us to bring students out into nature and introduce them to the world of data collection and analysis. Here are 7 ways technology is enhancing and expanding STEM education in our school district.

Technology helps students acquire scientific literacy and hands-on experience.

Science isn’t about memorizing facts and formulas. It’s about developing an understanding of the scientific process and giving students opportunities to apply that process to their learning.…Read More

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Editor’s Picks 2015, No. six: Where blended meets personalized learning—and gets results

A coordinated, intentional program of blended learning is changing teaching and learning in the Nation’s capital.

Ed. note: This year the editors selected ten stories we believe either highlighted an important issue in 2015 and/or signaled the beginning of an escalating trend or issue for 2016 (look for No. 1 on Dec. 31). Blended and personalized learning were two topics on the rise this year. In D.C., the focus is mostly on blended instruction, but they’re not just sticking kids behind computers. The goal is to produce deeper learning.

dc-blendedFor the past two years, the Washington, D.C. Public School District (DCPS) has earned a sort of celebrity status with lawmakers, superintendents, and think tank heads filing in to see what, and especially how, students are learning. They have a good reason to visit. In a district that has been plagued with low test scores and student performance, several D.C. schools have seen student proficiency levels jump in math and reading in recent years.

Part of their success has hinged on the way teachers are using blended learning in the classroom.…Read More

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