Is there a cost-effective way to meet the ever-growing needs of students, faculty, and campus? Network as a Service can provide you with affordable, high-performance equipment that integrates with security devices and enables digital transformation.
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.
A charter school gets e-learning up to speed with a modern WiFi solution
The mission at The Academy of Hope, a public charter school for kindergarten through eighth grade, is to maximize student potential by cultivating business acumen, sharpening critical thinking and improving communication skills. But outdated technology was standing in the way of achieving this goal. The school had a “home-grown” WiFi solution with inconsistent coverage throughout the school building. And the internet service providing the underlying connectivity didn’t deliver enough bandwidth.
Read this case study to learn how, with the help of an E-rate consultant, the school identified telecommunications providers with eligible solutions, and why they ultimately chose Managed WiFi from Spectrum Enterprise.…Read More
How IT leaders tackle 7 digital asset management challenges
Key points:
- Poor digital asset management can lead to lost class time, missing devices, and lost funding
- Innovative approaches to asset management let K-12 educational institutions optimize their operations
- See related article: 5 ways our district streamlines edtech ecosystems
With kids out the school door for the summer, IT leaders now face the daunting task of organizing, identifying, and managing the many thousands of devices per district that have been in the hands of students over the past year. In K-12 education, the importance of digital asset management–from Chromebooks to iPads to chargers and more–cannot be overstated.
Schools and districts run the risk of wasting class time, losing valuable devices, and incurring financial losses if they fail to effectively manage the hardware, software and systems that are essential in today’s classrooms. Fortunately for IT leaders, powerful new digital solutions can be leveraged to address many logistical and functional challenges.…Read More
How Phys Ed and Ed Tech Can Fit
Concerns over kids and screen time versus play time are legitimate. According to the National Survey of Children’s Health, 17.0% of youth ages 10 to 17 had obesity in 2020-2021. That rate has increased slightly from 15.5% in 2018-19, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. And yet it’s pretty plain that the screens aren’t going away. Educators and parents need to figure out ways to work around the devices and get kids moving.
Fit and Fun Founder and CEO, Pamela Gunther, has some suggestions. In this conversation, she breaks down the various scenarios schools face when trying to get students up, out, about and goes into some other ideas about how technology can encourage activity, not taking them from it. Have a listen and scroll through for some edited highlights:
In the work that we do, which is to design and develop physical activities for kids, there are a couple of different ways we get inspired. And how we approach and develop our products. First of all, it’s got to be fun. It’s got to be colorful. It’s got to work and when I mean work, a lot of our products are backed by science-based movements, movements that hit particular parts of the brain.…Read More
Beyond the classroom today
The long-tail impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues in K-12 education, providing rich lessons learned from the experience for both educators and parents and continuing to stimulate new energy around how to improve educational experiences for all students. The jump start for this newfound interest was certainly the seismic jolt to the traditional school paradigm resulting from the shift to virtual learning in most schools and communities due to the pandemic.
As a result of these seismic changes in K-12 education, the classroom looks very different today. But the work of transforming education is still in its infancy, despite the physical changes to the classroom such as more devices for students to use and a greater emphasis on teacher use of digital content in the classroom.…Read More
How asynchronous tech can bridge the digital divide
When pondering the future of education, it’s understandable that most of us will slip into Utopian scenarios. Think Garrison Keiler’s Lake Wobegon, “where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.” The reality, of course, is always going to be different.
So it is when discussing the idea of digital equity. Every student deserves the right to high-bandwidth, solid-state, always-on access to the Internet, right? Reality check: A 2021 report from Common Sense Media found that 15 to 16 million K-12 public school students in the U.S. live in homes with inadequate internet or computing devices. This represents around 30 percent of all public school students in the U.S.
That doesn’t mean those students can’t get the education they deserve. I had the pleasure of speaking with Ryan Ross, CEO of Olivia Technologies, about their attempts to address this issue through synching techniques that don’t require access to the Internet outside the school campus. Their solution has been deployed in schools in Texas and Hawaii, where in certain areas, over 30 percent of students do not have reliable internet connectivity. …Read More
Investing in classroom collaboration tools? 3 things to know
Key points:
- Flexibility and ease of use should be important parts of decision making
- Meet today’s needs, but keep tomorrow’s needs in mind
Modern technological advancements affect virtually every area of daily life, and today’s educational institutions are looking to new digital tools to help improve student achievement and engagement while fostering collaborative learning environments for both in-person and remote learners.
To maximize a system’s effectiveness and ensure investments pay dividends for students and instructors, decision makers and school technology managers must maintain a strong understanding of all the available solutions, devices, and platforms that can meet their needs. While differences in location, age range, and budget naturally affect technology decisions and opportunities, there are several key factors central to any successful implementation.
Keep It Simple, Schools…Read More
K-12 Security Essentials for Beginners
There are few industries that have felt the transformational touch of technology quite like education. In this e-book, we address the unique cybersecurity threats that impact K-12 education, highlight why it is so critical to proactively address them and:…Read More
MDM solutions and gamification make perfect interactive learning partners
In the era of mobile devices and tablets, interactivity has become the norm for schoolchildren. To facilitate effective teaching and learning, modern schools must equip every classroom with interactive touchscreens and utilize gamification techniques. As these modern education tools require management and security, integrating MDM solutions has become imperative for every organization.
Understanding the Basics of Gamification in Education
Gamification means adding interactive gaming elements to processes such as learning. Everyone loves games, and competition motivates people to perform their best. So, by adding gamification elements during teaching sessions, schools can significantly increase their participation and engagement levels.
In addition, gamification can improve student skills such as active learning, problem-solving, and critical thinking. It also helps students enhance teamwork and collaboration.…Read More
Lightspeed Systems’ New ‘Digital Equity’ Module Provides Actionable Insight Into Students’ Internet Connectivity And School-Issued Device Health When Learning Outside of School
AUSTIN, TX – Lightspeed Systems, the leader in safe, secure and equitable education technology, announces Digital Equity—a module that provides robust and real-time connectivity and device health data on students’ school-issued devices. Digital Equity helps school and district leaders understand the challenges students experience while trying to study outside of school so they can ensure all students stay connected to learning.
According to the 2022 Student Home Connectivity Study from the Consortium for School Networking (COSN), gaps remain nationwide in network performance and internet speeds at all grade levels for students connecting from outside a school, with approximately one-third of high school students experiencing “Far Below” or “Below Guidelines” for connectivity from home. In addition, large disparities exist among student subgroups, particularly by ethnicity and socioeconomically disadvantaged students.
Empowering school and district leaders, Digital Equity provides a complete, real-time view of each student’s school-issued devices, including a device’s overall health, operating system, internet speed, service provider and more. Leaders can drill-down into specific data on each individual student and their devices, as well as view overall district-wide usage to help identify local communities that need additional support and resources. Digital Equity is customizable, giving leaders the option to turn on specific data and usage stats. …Read More