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.

Super Duper Publications Provides Unique Educational Materials for PreK-5 Distance Learning and Teletherapy

Distance learning has become a staple of our current educational system. With the launching of its new Digital Library, which includes more than 340 resources to support distance learning and teletherapy, educational publisher Super Duper Publications is leading the way in providing online learning materials for young students.

This unique Library:

  • Has more than 340 instructional games, cards, and worksheets for educators and parents to use with PreK-Grade 5 students
  • Is updated with additional materials and features weekly
  • Targets specific skills – basic concepts, literacy, grammar, social skills, critical thinking, sequencing, listening, early skills, phonemic awareness, memory, motor skills, sensory integration, phonics, reading, and more.
  • Offers both short and longer activities to benefit students with limited attention spans
  • Is web-based for easy accessibility at school or home
  • Can be used in-person in a classroom
  • Works on a desktop, laptop, or digital whiteboard, as well as on mobile devices such as a Chromebook, tablet or smartphone.
  • Complies with State and Common Core educational standards

“When the pandemic hit, all education shifted online,” said Thomas Webber, chairman of Super Duper. “Nowadays, educators need easy-to-access resources that they can use with students during distance learning and online special education/speech therapy sessions. Parents are also looking for easy-to-understand materials that their children can use during at-home learning. We created this online Digital Library of our most popular print materials, so that educators and parents would have access to the learning materials their children need.”…Read More

PBS Offers At-Home Learning Broadcast and Digital Resources

As the nation prepares for the beginning of a new school year unlike any other, PBS and member stations are helping support educators, parents and caregivers with a variety of free high-quality, accessible educational media resources. Available to more than 97% of the country through over-the-air television access, the PBS KIDS 24/7 channel(for young learners ages 2-8) and the WORLD channel At-Home Learning Service (for learners grades 6-12) will feature broadcast programming linked to at-home learning resources that can be used by educators to supplement distance learning plans, or by parents to provide added enrichment and support for children’s educational needs.

Research shows that more than 24 million Americans still lack access to fast and reliable broadband internet.* PBS has the ability to reach a majority of these households with free, over-the-air station broadcast and a deep trove of digital resources (PBS LearningMedia, pbskids.org, PBS KIDS for Parents, and more) designed to support both in-school and at-home learning for students, which was critical at the end of the 2019-2020 school year. When COVID-19 shut down schools across much of the country, PBS LearningMedia, an online destination that offers free access to thousands of classroom resources, saw its users quadruple to nearly 4 million per month. Additionally, young children’s engagement with PBS KIDS content increased notably, with reach growing by 15% among kids 2-8 on-air, streaming by nearly 30% and game play by 40%.**

Leading these charges locally, PBS stations across the country forged partnerships with their school districts to address specific, state standards-aligned educational needs in each community, including filming and broadcasting local teachers’ classroom lessons.…Read More

Staying Connected During COVID-19 [Teacher Spotlight]: Stacy Salter

In partnership with eSchool News, Illuminate Education is spotlighting teachers in a series recognizing educators, the way they have moved instruction online during COVID-19, and how they have prioritized the needs of their students.

Stacy Salter
5th Grade Teacher
Walnut Creek Elementary
Henry County Schools, GA

“You need to let your students see you sweat a bit and see that this is as hard for you as it is for them.”…Read More

3 ways educational data helped this district improve outcomes

In the Wilson County School District, using educational data to inform our decisions has reinvented the way students learn, and it has given educators a newfound confidence in their teaching practices.

Last year, we were recognized by the state as an exemplary district, and we’ve achieved level five status, meaning our students are growing at a rate that’s two years beyond what’s expected.

We’ve achieved these results through the hard work of our faculty—and by using educational data to support how we instruct and evaluate our students. Other district leaders hoping to achieve similar results can follow three essential steps to creating a data-centric culture.…Read More

“Technology Tools for Online Education” Mini Book and Udemy Course Released

“Technology Tools for Online Education,” a mini book focused on teaching education leaders how to harness their smartphone, leverage the cloud, and connect with students using online communications, is now available. Written by Paul Richards, live streaming and video production expert and Chief Streaming Officer for StreamGeeks and PTZOptics, the all-new guide can be used as a reference for education leaders to learn new ways to engage with students online. The book is part of a blended learning environment and has an accompanying four-hour, on-demand Udemy course.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a disruption to the in-person learning environment. Over the next five years, education as we know it will undergo more changes than ever before. Learning environments for K-12 students will shift online, leaving educators wondering how to conduct virtual lessons while keeping students engaged. The new guide and online course will pick up where others left off on the topic of educational technology and highlight specific technology tools educators can master to enhance their online education capabilities. Over 4,000 educators are already enrolled in the online Udemy course, which will be free during the book launch August 10-12th.

“As a live streaming instructor and technology adopter, I wanted to share my experience and skills with K-12 teachers,” said Paul Richards, author. “Technology Tools for Online Education makes it easy for anyone new to teaching online to learn some winning strategies for creating fun and memorable classes.”…Read More

Companies Partner to Provide Oral Reading Fluency Tool

Partnership offers automated assessment of students’ oral reading fluency — for testing at school or at home 

Savvas Learning Company, a next-generation learning solutions provider for K-12 education, announced it is partnering with Analytic Measures Inc. (AMI), an educational technology company, to provide a fully automated assessment tool that uses artificial intelligence and voice technology to measure K-5 students’ reading abilities. The new tool will empower teachers with time-saving features that quickly, easily, and accurately assess a learner’s oral reading fluency skills while also helping educators address the combined COVID-19 slide along with summer learning loss.

For the start of the new school year, Savvas is pairing myView Literacy©, its leading core K-5 literacy program, and Reading Spot, a digital library, with AMI’s Moby.Read™. Moby.Read uses advanced speech recognition and scoring technologies to automate the oral reading assessment experience and increase testing accuracy, in and out of the classroom. All reading audio is captured and recorded for teacher playback, a feature essential for blended (remote and in-person online) learning. Moby.Read is easily accessible on any digital device or computer that supports Google Chrome as well as by single sign-on through Savvas Realize™, the edtech industry’s most versatile learning management system.…Read More

Klassroom, the first parent-teacher communication app designed specifically for elementary schools

Klassroom, the Paris-based company that reinvents parent-teacher communication in pre-kindergarten and all elementary school grades, just raised a $3 million seed round led by Bpifrance and several angel investors including Jerome Lecat, CEO at Scality, and Andy Myers, President at Waterford.org and former executive at Renaissance Learning.

This funding will enable Klassroom to accelerate growth in countries outside of France, including in the U.S. where more than 700 educators started using the app during the last school year without any significant investment in that market. Klassroom is already the leading app of its type in France with nearly one million users. Klassroom’s user community doubled in just under two months during school closures and the COVID-19 crisis.

Klassroom: an inclusive, engaging foundation for parent-teacher communication that enables deeper involvement in the school life of children…Read More

Flinn Scientific Launches New Solutions to Support Hands-on Science in Any Learning Environment

Flinn Scientific, a flagship provider of science lab materials and safety and STEM solutions for the K-16 education market, is launching two new solutions – 360Science™ and Science2Go – to support hands-on learning this coming school year. Now, regardless if learning is taking place in a virtual, hybrid, or in-person environment, educators will have the resources needed to teach students about important scientific concepts and phenomena in a safe, effective, and engaging way.

“Even though in-person learning was halted this spring, Flinn has been busy developing new hands-on learning programs for this coming school year,” said Mike Lavelle, CEO of Flinn Scientific. “We saw the need for programs tailored to both in-person and remote learning and created 360Science and Science2Go, respectively, to meet this need. These complementary offerings will help teachers deliver engaging science education no matter where teaching and learning is taking place.”

Designed for in-classroom learning, 360Science is a customizable program that provides high school teachers with 200 easily-modified, hands-on biology, chemistry, and environmental science labs along with complementary digital content. The program, which is aligned to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and other state science standards, features a unique instructional approach in which students begin each class with an inquiry-based lab.…Read More

Forces Join To Grant the Wishes of More Than 500 Classrooms Nationwide

My Wish For U.S., the digital platform that invites Americans to share their wishes for the country’s future, today announced a partnership with First Book, a non-profit social enterprise that provides new, high-quality educational resources to children in need, and AMERICAN HERITAGE® Chocolate. The partnership will provide classrooms nationwide with books to add to their libraries, chosen by educators to support the wishes they submit with their students on MyWishForUS.com. Educators will be able to select books from categories like Activism and Civic Engagement, Making a Difference, Biographies, and more. The program will launch this fall and will distribute approximately 15,000 books to classroom libraries serving children living in poverty.

My Wish For U.S. and First Book will encourage educators across the country to post their classroom’s wish to the My Wish For U.S. platform and social media. At least 500 educators will be chosen to receive gift credits to the First Book Marketplace (www.fbmarketplace.org), where they can select books that support their students’ areas of interest.

“Often, we tell students what they need to know and learn about, and that relationship only goes one way,” said Caroline Kilbanoff, Program Manager for Made By Us. “We are excited to collaborate with First Book to let students tell us what they are interested in learning more about and giving them the tools and information to take action.”…Read More

How edtech companies are helping schools navigate an uncertain year

In the middle of the abrupt changes to the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year, edtech companies offered resources and access to help educators, students, and parents make the best of at-home learning.

Here is insight from a select few of those edtech leaders.

Based on what you’ve seen over the past couple of months, what are the major challenges that schools and districts have faced in the transition to online learning?…Read More