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.

Certell’s Poptential™ Free American History Curriculum Highlights Legacy of African Americans for Black History Month

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Poptential™, a family of free, award-winning social studies course packages that infuse lessons with digital storytelling, offers an array of engaging content about the Civil Rights Movement for instruction during Black History Month. Click to tweet.

Observed in the United States since 1976, Black History Month is celebrated yearly in February to honor the contributions and legacy of African Americans across U.S. history and society. Poptential’s American History Volume II curriculum, Bell Ringers, and digital media clips feature the accomplishments of African American leaders and civil rights activists as they fought for racial equality.

Poptential’s Unit 6: The Fracturing of America includes content and multimedia to help teachers lead discussions on the Civil Rights movement, including:…Read More

7 Mindsets Launches App Focused on Mindsets Learning and Well-being for Educators, Students and Families

ROSWELL, Ga. – 7 Mindsets, the leader in PreK-12 mindsets-based learning and well-being solutions, today announced the launch of an app designed to offer free access to the research-based principles for developing human potential from The 7 Mindsets to Live Your Ultimate Life: An Introduction. The company is committed to its mission of driving greater success, happiness, overall well-being and improving school climate and culture.

“The goal of the 7 Mindsets app is to plant seeds and equip our community with attitudes and perspectives that will allow them to not just survive but thrive,” said Jeff Waller, co-creator of 7 Mindsets. “Learning the 7 Mindsets is eye-opening but living the 7 Mindsets is life changing. We’re excited to launch the app and help our users live the 7 Mindsets every day.”

The app, the first of its kind for the company, will provide a comprehensive introduction to the 7 Mindsets for those looking to improve and enhance their personal well-being. It will also serve as a valuable resource for the 7 Mindsets community of educators, support staff, administrators, students and families. Through the app, educators can quickly review the Mindsets to help inform their lesson plans. Families can use the app to better understand the Mindsets and what their children are learning at school. For students, it serves to reinforce the Mindsets learning in the classroom.…Read More

USPTO launches free K-12 invention education platform

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has announced the launch of the free invention education resource, EquIP HQ.

EquIP HQ is a contracted effort created and maintained by Second Avenue Learning. The site is available for grade bands K-2, 3-5, 6-8 and 9-12. The platform provides educators with access to free tools to teach students real-world skills and intellectual property (IP) literacy.

EquIP HQ enables students to personalize exploration of solving real-world problems through innovative design, prototypes and iterative tests and improvements towards real, inventive solutions. …Read More

McAlester Public Schools Select BenQ Boards

COSTA MESA, Calif. — BenQ, an internationally renowned provider of visual display solutions, continues to be the chosen smart board of choice for schools across the nation. McAlester Public Schools in Oklahoma installed BenQ’s Premium RP Series Education smart boards in every classroom in the district. The BenQ Board is packed with features including a germ-resistant screen and Tap & Teach technology delivering instant access to files, cloud storage, and personalized settings. Its license-free and intuitive EZ Write annotation and whiteboard software, and built-in InstaShare wireless screen sharing solution, make the RP Series the central hub for collaboration in the classroom. Plus, BenQ includes tools for IT and admin staff to easily configure, monitor, and update every smart board in the district from a centralized location.

“One of the main reasons for choosing BenQ was flexibility,” said Delilah Rodriguez, instructional technology and STEM at McAlester Public Schools. “My teachers didn’t need a computer if they didn’t want to use one. They could use the BenQ Board as their instructional tool.”

BenQ has been developing and perfecting its BenQ Boards for 10 years, leveraging its leadership in cinematic, esports, and healthcare display technology. The culmination of which is easy-to-use, healthful, and feature-rich smart boards designed for hybrid and remote classrooms. All interactive displays in BenQ’s education portfolio feature a 4K UHD screen with ClassroomCare, a proprietary line of health-centric technologies that includes the industry’s only antimicrobial-certified screens, air-quality sensors, and low-blue-light, flicker-free, and anti-glare technologies to reduce eye strain and create a comfortable viewing experience.…Read More

4 reasons we put all of our district communications on one platform

With 22 schools and 8,000 students—nearly all of whom qualify for free or reduced lunch—we have to cover a lot of area in our district. We’d been using a number of applications to maintain open lines of communications with our parents and guardians. We knew that some were working, and others weren’t, and we wanted to create a more unified school-home communications approach.

In 2020, our new superintendent brought a robust communications platform with him when he joined our district. As soon as we saw the platform’s various functionalities and how it eliminated the need for all of those disconnected communications strategies, we were hooked.

Here are four reasons why we decided to consolidate all of our district communications on a single platform:…Read More

Reading Horizons Launches Free Online Community to Support the Science of Reading

KAYSVILLE, UT — Reading Horizons, a company committed to partnering with educators to eradicate illiteracy, has launched the Science of Reading Collective, a free, online community designed to help teachers confidently and effectively implement the science of reading.

The science of reading identifies the most useful techniques for teaching and learning to read, but adopting a new approach can feel overwhelming, no matter how beneficial it will be for students. To support educators with any level of experience and an interest in teaching reading regardless of grade, the Science of Reading Collective is offering free access to:

  • Bite-sized practical lessons and professional learning events;
  • Monthly Q&A sessions with experts in the science of reading; and
  • An always-open forum for discussion with peers.

“Our mission is to empower educators to eradicate literacy,” said Tyson Smith, the CEO of Reading Horizons. “That’s why we’re offering free access to the Science of Reading Collective to all educators, whether they invest in our products or not. The science of reading comprises the most powerful tools for teaching students to read, and we believe that teachers deserve every advantage available to face the challenges of illiteracy.”…Read More

Free internet could erase the digital divide

Local leaders must play a critical role in closing the digital divide for 18 million American households that have access to the internet but can’t afford to connect, according to a new report.

The urgent prompt comes from EducationSuperHighway, a national nonprofit with a mission to close the broadband affordability gap. The organization released its second No Home Left Offline report on the action needed to accelerate Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) adoption.

The ACP is a $14.2 billion federal broadband benefit funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) that provides eligible households with a monthly discount of up to $30 per month (up to $75 per month for households on qualifying Tribal lands) and a one-time $100 discount toward a laptop, desktop computer, or tablet. 51.6 million households, including 17.7 million unconnected households, are eligible for the ACP, yet only 13 million (25% of those eligible) have enrolled.…Read More

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Rethinking your K-12 cloud strategy

The new school year is upon us, and IT teams are ramping up strategic tech investments and systems to help ensure a smooth year ahead. For many of these IT teams, challenges around cybersecurity are top of mind, with recent research revealing over half of lower education organizations were hit by ransomware in the past year. On top of this, concerns remain around cloud costs, including new limits on free cloud storage, leaving some wondering what they’re supposed to do and having to pay up.

In light of these shifts and growing risks, K-12 IT teams need to rethink their approach to cloud storage costs and security. We recently experienced challenges at Hotchkiss School with our past cloud providers in this regard. We could not obtain the amount of secure storage we needed due to not only data consumption and performance challenges, but also because of their egress fees. In order to modernize and innovate, education decision-makers will need to embrace hybrid or multi-cloud storage options that keep their data secure by moving away from mainstream, high-cost cloud providers.

Further, to meet growing demands on schools’ IT departments, IT leaders will need to adopt a flexible cloud mindset that enables them to effectively and securely store and leverage the growing deluge of data they are inundated with – everything from student health care data to device and research data. Let’s dive into how a high performance, multi-cloud approach can help K-12 schools check the following major pain points off their list.…Read More

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Poptential™ Offers Free Content for National American Indian Heritage Month

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Poptential™, a family of award-winning social studies course packages that infuse lessons with digital storytelling, offers an array of engaging content to illustrate the culture, traditions, and history of Native Americans for National American Indian Heritage Month. Click to tweet.

Signed into law by President George H. W. Bush in 1990, November’s National American Indian Heritage Month is a time to celebrate and pay respect to Native Americans for their culture and contributions to the United States and to raise awareness about the challenges they have faced in the past and today.

Poptential American History Volume II curriculum and digital media examples offer a look at the battles and struggles of the Native Americans as they were removed from their homelands and separated from their families. Content includes:…Read More

Cybersecurity to Be Taught to K-8 students across North America for Free

London, ON – Cyber Legends, the fun, free game that empowers kids to learn online safety through play, today announced the launch of the Cyber Legends Gaming platform and its availability to schools across North America. There is currently no standardized cyber safety curriculum being taught in primary, elementary or intermediate schools. Cyber Legends intends to change that with engaging, curriculum-aligned lessons, masked as a fun video game. The game teaches kids about passwords, identity theft, scams, phishing, cyber bullying, sexting, social media issues and much more.

Cyber Legends has reached out to teachers, schools, school boards, cybersecurity experts, and online safety professionals to collect data over the past 2 years to learn about their challenges.  The company has gathered all the complexities of internet safety and distilled them into engaging, well-tested, curriculum-aligned, and beautifully structured lesson plans (created by teachers) for grades K–8. Cyber Legends also comes with tons of free resources to help teachers, parents, and children.

As critical as it is that children learn about cyber safety early on, teachers often lack the resources to help their students. They aren’t cybersecurity specialists and the vast majority have never received any cybersecurity training themselves. This provides a simple way to give each child the basics on how to stay safe online.  This has become more critical as students use laptops, mobile devices, and home computers routinely.…Read More