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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.

ShopWithScrip Rebrands as RaiseRight, Announces Lou Agnese as Chief Executive Officer

GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan (May 12, 2022)—ShopWithScrip, the largest gift card fundraising platform in the United States, has rebranded as  RaiseRight and announced that Lou Agnese, an executive with extensive experience in consumer-facing digital marketplaces, has been appointed as chief executive officer to drive a new era of growth.

“Our new brand and website more strongly reflect our mission to offer non-profits and community-based organizations the easiest, most effective way to meet their fundraising goals,” said Lou Agnese, Chief Executive Officer, RaiseRight.  “I am honored to have joined the passionate, purpose-driven team at RaiseRight during this exciting time and look forward to working with them to develop new, innovative tools to magnify our impact in local communities.” 

The RaiseRight name was created to underscore that the company’s solution is the right way to fundraise.  RaiseRight’s year-round fundraising platform is easy and more convenient than selling goods or recruiting volunteers. Nonprofits and other community-based organizations earn money simply by purchasing gift cards for their favorite brands at face value and getting a rebate back from those purchases.  The new website offers a seamless, more consistent user experience across the platform for shopping all brands, including a mobile wallet for ease of redemption and a dashboard to manage fundraising proceeds.…Read More

Case Study: How Weston School District Built a Digital Strategy with Digital Signage, 15 Minutes at a Time

(May 12, 2022) –– Rise Vision has released a new case study of Weston School District, a small school district which serves three rural communities of Cazenovia, Hillpoint, and Lime Ridge, Weston and has a student population of 300 students. While Weston School District doesn’t face the problems a very large school does, it does face its own challenges.

Amanda Keller, who has been social media and public relations director at Weston for the past 4 years discussed the district’s challenges of its students across 12 years of compulsory education. Back in 2018, Weston struggled with keeping families updated with printed, physical newsletters.

‘It was frustrating to put so much time into communication we knew would be outdated before it reached our families and community,’ Keller continues. ‘It was also time-consuming to create bulletin boards that were very limited in how we could use them. These bulletin boards also had to be recreated often to keep the images current.’…Read More

Charleston County Schools Selects Open Up Resources And Kiddom To Provide K-8 English Language Arts Blended Learning Program

CHARLESTON, SC – Open Up Resources, a nonprofit increasing equity in education by making the highest quality curriculum accessible to educators, and Kiddom, the first all-in-one education platform for high-quality digital curriculum, announced today a new partnership to bring the top-rated EL Education K-8 English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum to Charleston County School District (CCSD) in support of the district’s blended learning efforts.

The partnership will provide teachers the ability to utilize the ELA curriculum on Kiddom’s platform to share assignments digitally, communicate with students, and deliver personalized feedback on submissions, while prioritizing student reading proficiency and content knowledge of science and social studies. Additionally, the partnership will equip CCSD with a full-service, multi-year professional learning plan from EL Education to support teachers, plus access to peer-to-peer communications within Open Up’s K-8 EL Education digital community.

“Putting students at the heart of this work has been our tagline for a while, but we watched schools make the decision to opt-out of what’s easier or more comfortable and that’s the true evidence that we are putting students first,” saidEmilie Woody, Executive Director of Curriculum & Instruction, Charleston County School District.…Read More

Louisiana Public Broadcasting Renews Long-Term Partnership Supporting the Design and Delivery of Engaging Learning Experiences in Classrooms Statewide

SILVER SPRING, MD (Wednesday, May 11, 2022)— Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB) today announced the renewal of its long-term partnership with  Discovery Education, the worldwide edtech leader whose state-of-the-art digital platform supports learning wherever it takes place. 

LPB’s renewal of its 19-year collaboration with Discovery Education provides educators high-quality digital content from Discovery Education’s award-winning K-12 learning platform that supports the design and delivery of engaging learning experiences in classrooms statewide. 

LPB is Louisiana’s largest classroom over the air, on every device, in schools, and in the community. LPB’s Educational Services Department is committed to providing extensive information, lesson plans, materials, and digital resources to support formal K-12 education statewide. Through its nearly two-decade long partnership with Discovery Education, LPB has offered educators and students a host of digital resources including Discovery Education’s flexible K-12 platform. …Read More

Poptential™ Free Curriculum Brings History Alive for Independence Day

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — (May 6, 2022) — Poptential™, a family of free social studies course packages that pair pop culture media with engaging digital storytelling, provides teachers and students media-rich lessons on the American Revolution and Declaration of Independence, celebrated July 4. Click to tweet.

“While the Declaration of Independence was adopted 246 years ago, the heroes guiding the birth of our nation are brought to life in popular culture, which appeals to today’s digitally-savvy learner, and can make teaching more effective and relevant,” said Fred Fransen, CEO of Certell, Inc., the maker of Poptential.

Poptential courses, used by more than 30,000 teachers in 50 states, include everything instructors need to teach a subject, digitally accessible in one place, including lessons, ebooks, bell ringers, quizzes, and tests, as well as pop culture media to make lessons interesting and relatable to students. Curriculum packages are standards-based and developed by social studies teachers.…Read More

Popular Ebooks and Audiobooks Keep Students Reading All Summer Long

CLEVELAND – May 6, 2022 – As schools seek innovative new strategies to increase reading and learning, teachers are using digital tools inside and outside the classroom. In response, OverDrive Education is offering the most expansive Sora Sweet Reads summer reading program yet, May 4–August 17. In its ninth year, this free program is designed to help educators and students beat the “summer slide” with popular digital reading materials through the award-winning Sora student reading app. Currently, over 53,000 schools around the world are opting into the program. 

Sora Sweet Reads provides free access to a variety of popular digital books during the next 100+ days to encourage student reading during the rest of the school year and summer break. From May 4 through August 17, students from participating schools worldwide can enjoy free, 24/7 access through the Sora reading app to 50 juvenile and young adult ebooks, audiobooks and Read-Alongs from their school, the largest amount ever offered through the program. The Sora Sweet Reads titles are provided by 21 publishers and divided into elementary, middle and high school sections. Ebook titles include 10 Blind Dates, Sal and Gabi Break the Universe, Ironheart, and Ark Angel. Audiobook titles include Flannery and Game Changer. See the  full list. 

“When our students began using Sora last spring, they were excited to check out ebooks and we wondered whether that excitement would carry over into the summer months,” said Alexandra Brown, Educational Technology Specialist at National Heritage Academies in Michigan. “When we participated in Sora Sweet Reads our students were so enthusiastic about the selection of books that our checkouts surpassed all our expectations. Sora Sweet Reads gave our students access to ‘always available’ books ensuring there was no waiting list and students could read favorites at the same time as their friends.” …Read More

Educator and Family Resources for Mental Health Awareness Month from Discovery Education and Social Impact Partners

Silver Spring, MD (Friday, May 6, 2022) — In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month 2022, observed annually in May, Discovery Education and partners are proud to present educators, students, and families a diverse array of dynamic digital resources supporting the mental health of students everywhere.  

Centered this year on the theme “Together for Mental Health,” Mental Health Awareness Month supports all forms of mental wellness. The following resources created in collaboration with social impact partners support students’ wellness through family and educator empowerment:  

Professional Development Content 
Deepen educator capacity around social-emotional learning (SEL) and its various applications in a variety of learning environments with professional learning resources from the Social-Emotional Learning Coalition, a network of partners committed to bringing critical, culturally relevant social-emotional learning resources into core instruction to support educators and students nationwide.  …Read More

Showbie brings Hybrid learning around the World content to TrilbyTV

Tuesday 3rd May 2022 – Showbie and TrilbyTV have announced an exciting new partnership that will bring ‘Hybrid learning around the World’ content to digital signage screens in schools across the UK. It adds to an already epic education line-up that includes; Vocabulary Ninja, Rodocodo, Britannica and WWF. 

The perfect combination to get students learning about different languages

The partnership combines TrilbyTV’s easy to use digital signage solution with Showbie’s ‘Hybrid learning around the World’ content, creating a fantastic way to get students to learn about different languages. It shows short, easy to remember words and phrases, automatically switching between different countries, enabling students to pick up bite sized pieces of information to expand their foreign language vocabulary. TrilbyTV’s Neil Emery, had this to say about the new partnership,…Read More

Los Angeles Unified School District Offers Spectrum Enterprise Stay Connected K-12 Solution to Families as a Way to Receive Robust Home Internet Access at No Cost to Students

LOS ANGELES – Charter Communications, Inc. today announced that it is working with the  Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the country’s second largest school district, to help thousands of families who lack robust internet connectivity at home enroll in the  Spectrum Enterprise  Stay Connected K-12 solution, which is provided at no cost for students. The Stay Connected K-12 offering is part of the District’s broader efforts to help close the digital divide in its communities and make it easier for all students to fulfill their academic potential.

Stay Connected K-12 provides schools the ability to offer high-speed, reliable broadband internet access directly to their students in their own homes so learning and teaching are uninterrupted. Participating families are not billed for the service.

“Without reliable internet access, our students don’t have what they need to learn,” said Alberto Carvalho, Superintendent of LAUSD. “It’s as simple as that. Los Angeles Unified is relentless in our efforts to equip our students with the resources they need to achieve their full academic potential.”…Read More

CenterPoint’s Illustrative Mathematics Certified and EL Education Aligned Assessments Now Integrated with Kiddom’s High-Quality Digital Curriculum to Support Learning and Instruction

WASHINGTON, May 3, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —  CenterPoint Education Solutions, a nonprofit provider of assessment solutions, curriculum services, and professional learning designed to help schools and districts build aligned education systems, today announced that their Illustrative Math (IM) certified and EL Education aligned interim assessments will be available for the 2022-2023 school year on  Kiddom, the first all-in-one education platform for high-quality digital curriculum. The partnership will provide educators and students with instant access to high-quality assessments aligned to the curriculum already being used in their classrooms.

“CenterPoint welcomes this opportunity to expand student and teacher access to our one-of-a-kind assessments,” said LJ Sylvester, Vice President of Growth at CenterPoint. “Aligned assessments allow educators to gauge both student understandings and misunderstandings — paramount information to guide instructional planning. Kiddom supports aligned instructional models by connecting curriculum, instruction, and assessment onto one platform, which fits nicely with CenterPoint’s larger mission of building aligned education systems.”   

Interim assessments are administered throughout a school year and are key to supporting learning. They empower educators to measure student learning, identify where students are on their path to grade level expectations and provide data to drive instructional strategy. With Kiddom now hosting CenterPoint’s IM certified and EL Education interim assessments, students and educators are provided with expanded access to high-quality curriculum-aligned assessments that align with Kiddom’s digitized curriculum. Via Kiddom’s platform, CenterPoint’s assessments will make use of the existing assessment functionality in Kiddom, including technology-enhanced question types to heighten student engagement and real-time standards-aligned data reporting for teachers to inform instructional strategy. Additional benefits include:…Read More