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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.

How our district is becoming “Digital from Day One”

Four years ago, our schools in Pickens County, South Carolina had funding approved for a 1:1 initiative that we called Tech It Home. We started with Chromebooks for 9th graders, then added tablets and at-home internet access for 6th and 7th graders.

Now in our fourth year of Tech It Home, students in grades 4-12 have devices, but we’re still working to be “digital from day one,” meaning that all of our systems and applications are interoperable so that students have access to every resource they need, starting on the first day of school. Here are the steps we’ve taken to get us this far.

1. Start with a vision.
Over the last four years, we have dedicated the time and effort to really understand what interoperability means. Interoperability can encompass a wide variety of facets, including account provisioning, class rostering, single sign-on, and shared learning data, all of which play a role in providing students and teachers the right tools, all in one place, at any moment.…Read More

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A 3-step recipe for personalized learning

What are the ingredients and directions in a recipe for personalized learning?

Take one learning platform (because we want only one place to go for everything) and add a variety of digital content and learning applications from all different sources.

Next, whisk the content until it’s broken down into discrete learning objects that can be made available to the right student at the right time for the right learning objective.…Read More

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Here’s how to make your digital strategy seamless

When a district goes digital, it is doing everything necessary so that students can seamlessly access and use all of the digital learning tools available and teachers can easily manage the administrative functions associated with these tools, such as rostering students into apps and connecting learning applications, tools, and content into the learning system.

When a district wants to “go digital on day one of learning,” it is faced with a greater set of challenges because day one of learning doesn’t always mean the first day of the school year. Day one of learning means the very first day that a student has the opportunity to learn; that might be the first day of the school year or it might be the day a student transfers into a new class or school. The value of digital on day one is that learning starts immediately versus waiting for the IT department for days or even weeks to roster certain systems. This is especially important to transfer students who are in catch-up mode to begin with, so giving them access to all materials on day one is critical to them getting up to speed with other students.

Recently, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) produced a report on the educational impact of access to digital learning resources at home. The report, which is required as a part of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), focuses on access to the internet and the types of devices that are available for accessing these resources, but it does not address several other factors that have a tremendous impact on students’ ability to complete assigned tasks in or out of the classroom. Consideration must be given to whether students face issues accessing resources as a result of the same challenges that exist in the classroom, including login issues, lack of user provisioning for a resource, and the challenge of updating rosters, sections, and courses as students transfer in and out of schools and districts. It is for these types of issues that an effective digital on day one strategy can be a practical solution for school districts of any size.…Read More

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Everything you ever need to know about interoperability standards

Digital systems need to work together to meet your district’s needs, but today’s digital learning environment is disjointed. The ever-growing number of tools do not seamlessly integrate into the learning environment, thus making it time consuming for teachers to innovate and personalize instruction. Luckily, there is a way to greatly reduce the time spent manually uploading rosters so that teachers can access digital learning tools and content, search multiple platforms to find the right resources, link them in the learning platform, and automate the pass back of grades from various digital tools into their gradebook system.

How does a school district make these things possible? One way is by using IMS Global interoperability standards to achieve a successfully integrated digital ecosystem.

A quick guide to interoperability…Read More

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