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.

Social learning networks promote student engagement, global awareness

When students engage with other classrooms around the world, their effort is ‘through the roof.’

Think about it … what do kids want? What do you want? How about the chance to be masters of tasks, have lives with purpose, and have the choice of when, where, and how when it comes to engagement in learning and teaching?

The classroom is no longer a physical place. Perhaps it never has been. Learning is experiential and it occurs, usually not on schedule, but 24 hours a day. What does this mean in an age of Common Core standards and high-stakes testing? The Common Core standards seem to fit well with students’ need for critical thinking and higher-order thinking skills. I doubt that the high-stakes testing philosophy fits well at all. As a teacher, I can’t help but ask if it even fits anywhere!

One of the goals of a social studies curriculum is to ensure that students are aware of different cultures and geographies—including how these are similar to or different from their own. Social learning communities make this easy. They offer a window to the world.…Read More

NYC schools to deploy free eMail, collaboration tools

Parents will now have a way to interact with teachers and school staff in any language. Image copyright ICG.
New York City parents will have a way to interact with teachers and school staff in any language. (Image copyright ICG)

In what could be a huge sign of change in how students learn, New York City Public Schools has begun implementation of communication and collaboration software from ePals and Microsoft—education technology tools that not only will connect students to other classrooms across the world but also will connect teachers to parents, regardless of the language they speak.

The New York City Department of Education (DOE)—the largest system of public schools in the United States, serving about 1.1 million students in more than 1,600 schools—chose ePals in a competitive-bidding process. The DOE was looking for a cost-effective, secure, and private space where students easily could communicate and collaborate as part of their learning.

ePals won the bid, providing the DOE with free access to its SchoolMail product—secure eMail software that is hosted on the web and integrates technologies from Microsoft’s Live@edu, so the district does not need to maintain its own software, hardware, or server-side technology for the deployment.…Read More

Microsoft, ePals team up on collaborative tools

ePals users will have access to online versions of popular Microsoft software within a secure learning environment.
ePals users will have access to online versions of popular Microsoft software within a secure learning environment.

In a move that could spur more widespread use of online tools for communicating and collaborating within K-12 education, software giant Microsoft Corp. has announced a strategic partnership with ePals, which provides a safe online platform for teachers and students to share information and work together on projects.

Under the terms of the alliance, ePals this fall will add Microsoft’s Live@edu eMail and calendaring software to the services it already provides for some 600,000 educators in 200 countries through its ePals Learning Space platform.

Sometime early next year, ePals users also will have access to the web-based versions of Microsoft Office programs such as Word, Excel, and PowerPoint within the ePals Learning Space, the two companies say.…Read More