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.

How we reached student success with assessment proficiency

Key points:

  • Assessment creation can be uncomfortable, but it is also one of the most important steps in accelerating student learning
  • Teachers are the only professionals who can most effectively build these assessments for their students
  • See related article: 4 engaging assessment ideas for middle and high school
  • For more news on assessment, visit eSN’s Innovative Teaching page

Teachers use a variety of methods to assess mastery of a topic. We use observations, quick formative assessments, longer summative assessments, and long-term benchmark assessments. The problem is that these assessments come in a variety of ways, depending on where you teach.

Many districts utilize pre-built assessments from curricular resource companies. Others build assessments based on curricular resources and change every 4-6 years with their new resource adoption cycles. Some will create assessments based on their state-approved learning standards and work to adapt the curricular resources to their true “curriculum” and assessments.…Read More

What’s the state of K-12 assessment?

Key points:

The majority of educators believe their school or district has an assessment-focused culture, but there are gaps in K-12 assessment literacy and familiarity with state standards, according to the 2023 State of Assessment in K-12 Education report from Instructure and Hanover Research.

With post-pandemic learning loss a continued focus, educators and administrators are relying on both formative and summative K-12 assessment data to direct classroom instruction. However, they are concerned about K-12 assessment literacy; the value placed on assessments; quality and reliability; identifying the right technology to deliver data; and effectively balancing assessment with instruction.…Read More

eSchool Live@ INSTRUCTURECON 2023

Breaking news out of day two at Instructure‘s professional learning event for educators and edtech users in Denver. The company announced a partnership with Khan Academy to integrate Khanmigo, Khan’s AI-powered student tutor and teaching assistantCanvas, into Canvas, the market-leading learning management system. We caught Instructure CEO Steve Daly just after the announcement to provide some context and provide a timeline for when Canvas will be updated with Khanmigo. Scroll down for more details and look for more in-depth conversations With Daly and other senior executives on the Innovation Insights podcast next week.

From the press release: This integrated solution will put the transformative power of generative AI into the hands of students and educators using the Canvas learning environment.

Generative AI represents an opportunity to enhance the role of technology in supporting educators and creating efficiencies in their day-to-day instruction. This new solution will harness this transformative moment by enabling educators with an integrated Khanmigo experience that supports human-driven, technology-enhanced essay feedback and grading, lesson planning and rubric creation. This solution is a large step forward in delivering personalization for each student while allowing busy educators to scale their excellence and impact in ways unimaginable a few short months ago.…Read More

4 ways library media specialists lead digital transformations in districts

During the pandemic era of “emergency teaching,” school systems across my state and around the country made deep investments in edtech resources.  However, as we move into what some call the post-pandemic era, education stakeholders are searching for strategies to ensure that edtech investments continue to pay dividends.

In New Hampshire, library media specialists are playing a key role in driving edtech ROI. The state Department of Education has made excellent investments in edtech resources, and together with iLearn New Hampshire, has rolled out the Canvas LMS by Instructure, the Kaltura platform for media hosting, Zoom video conferencing, and Discovery Education’s digital K-12 platform to schools statewide.

Led by the NH Library Media Specialist Association, the state’s K-12 library professionals have engaged in dialogue around how they can ensure their school system can maximize the state’s edtech investment in their school system. Each participant approached this conversation assuming everyone else in the group had it all figured out or worked in a district that did. However, what we quickly discovered was that we were all grappling with the same issues. So, we worked to identify some common approaches to maximizing edtech ROI in our own district or school setting.…Read More

6 key trends shaping the future of K-12 assessment

Most educators are concerned that summative assessments cause students undue anxiety, adding to growing concerns over the state of K-12 assessments and how they’re created, delivered, and interpreted.

State of Assessment in K-12 Education, a new report from Instructure, the makers of Canvas, explores the current state of K-12 assessments as COVID-19 continues to push schools into crisis

Overall, 81 percent of educators remain concerned that summative assessments are making students anxious, and teachers and administrators want to move to a more balanced assessment approach. …Read More

3 technologies needed for remote learning

As everyone spends the summer preparing for a new school year, many are preparing for virtual options to stick around post pandemic. In a recent survey conducted by Instructure, two-thirds of the educators surveyed believe remote learning will impact classroom practices in the future. But what will this future look like, exactly?

A recent survey of districts estimated 56 percent of schools will offer a remote learning option in the fall. One of the biggest lessons this past school year taught us was that educators teaching students online and in-person at the same time is typically not a successful teaching model. Moving forward, many districts offering a virtual option are planning to have virtual teachers solely with virtual students, while teachers back in their regular classrooms will only teach in-person students.

In this same survey, 89 percent of teachers said they taught online for the very first time during the pandemic. So as districts ask teachers to volunteer to switch to remote teaching, there are technology considerations to get in place this summer to help make teaching virtually this coming school year a success.  …Read More

AtlasRTX Partners with Instructure to Provide AI-Powered Digital Assistant, Serving More than 30 Million Students

PARK CITY, Utah– AtlasRTX™ (www.atlasrtx.com), a leading AI-powered digital assistant SaaS solution building sophisticated real-time experiences, announced today a successful partnership with Instructure (www.instructure.com), a leading global education technology company supporting more than 30 million students, to seamlessly engage parents, teachers and students via web chat in over 100 languages 24/7, 365 days a year.

“Without our AtlasRTX digital assistant handling many of our inquiries, we wouldn’t be able to provide the level of service our customers deserve,” said Michelle Suzuki, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Instructure. “We needed a solution that would satisfy many needs, be affordable and easy to architect and manage. With AtlasRTX, many inquiries that previously required human responses are now being handled through automation, leaving the more complex inquiries to be routed through proper human contacts and departments in real-time.”

Powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and optimized by experts, AtlasRTX is a comprehensive end-to-end customer chat solution that offers the most engaging and natural experience available today via web chat, text, What’s App, and Facebook Messenger through automatically recognized multi-lingual translation, consistent messaging, effortless customer integration, and real-time data and insights.…Read More

InSpace Announces Integration That Will Bring Virtual Communities, Classrooms and Offices to Canvas

BURLINGTON, VERMONT, August 4, 2021 –   InSpace, a leading online communication platform built by educators for educators, is announcing a full integration with Canvas, the industry-leading learning management system (LMS) by   Instructure, which serves 30 million teachers and students worldwide.  

The integration means that the transformative features developed by InSpace, including video-conferencing for learning and socializing, synchronous and asynchronous chat functions, mobile notifications and virtual office hours for professors and administrators, will be available at the click of a button for Canvas users.  

“We have spoken with hundreds of fellow educators who were dissatisfied with the experience of teaching with video-conferencing platforms that were designed for business, not the classroom. They lacked human interactions and social cues necessary for learning,” said Narine Hall, the CEO of InSpace and a professor of data science and machine learning at Champlain College.  …Read More

Instructure Launches Canvas for Elementary User Experience for Back to School

SALT LAKE CITY — June 28, 2021 — Today at ISTE Live 2021, Instructure launched the Canvas for Elementary user experience, a combination of features that make Canvas more user-friendly for elementary students. The new features were developed using feedback collected during the pandemic and thoughtfully designed to more closely mimic an elementary school classroom, supporting both in-person and hybrid learning environments. Among the updates is a new dashboard, subject cards and schedule to orient the student when logging in and help them focus on what needs to be accomplished. 

“The most important factor in any educational setting is high-quality teaching,” said Trenton Goble, VP of K-12 Strategy at Instructure. “Since hybrid learning will continue to impact schools, our job is to develop resources that enable that amazing teaching and engagement to shine through in a variety of environments. We know that younger learners have different needs and priorities, and this new bundle of features makes it even easier for elementary age students to use Canvas.”

Last week Instructure released new research that explores how the pandemic has impacted K-12 education. The report found that hybrid teaching and learning will continue. 81% of educators say that technology will become increasingly important in teaching and learning moving forward, and 67% believe remote learning will impact classroom practices in the future. At the same time fostering and maintaining student engagement is critical, with 92% of teachers ranking it as the number one priority. …Read More

Instructure Acquires Certica Solutions to Make Learning Personal for Every Student

Instructure today announced it has signed an agreement to acquire Certica Solutions, an industry leader in K12 assessment and analytics, and longtime partner of Canvas and MasteryConnect. Through this acquisition, Instructure will provide the comprehensive and open set of tools educators need to drive student outcomes by bringing together a learning management system, assessment management system, assessment content, and data analytics into one streamlined K12 learning experience.

“This topsy-turvy year has only underscored just how important it is to know if our students are learning, whether they are being taught in the classroom or online,” said Steve Daly, CEO of Instructure. “Welcoming Certica into the Instructure family will support educators by combining our assessment platform with smarter, standards-based assessments, assessment item banks, and powerful analytics empowering educators to make learning personal for each student.”

Certica has been a pioneer in K12 assessment creating a high-impact program of standards-aligned item bank content, predictive benchmark assessment, rigorous formative assessment, and teacher-ready analytics to provide the most immediate, accessible and actionable data for educators to use in the classroom.…Read More