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.

3 ways our district avoids data overload

Schools give many tests throughout the year to identify students’ skills and gaps in their learning, including universal screening, diagnostic, formative, interim, and summative assessments. These tests generate a huge amount of data meant to guide instruction—but all of this information can be overwhelming if teachers don’t have an easy way to process it.

There is such a thing as having too much data. If teachers have to sort through an abundance of data to figure out what their students need, and if they don’t know which data points they should focus on to achieve the greatest impact on learning, then they won’t use data to inform their instruction—and the money invested in data analysis and reporting tools will have been largely wasted.

That used to be our experience in California’s Buena Park School District, which serves nearly 5,000 students in grades K-8. We had a great data tool, but teachers weren’t using it. After making a few simple changes, however, we saw our teachers’ use of data begin to skyrocket.…Read More

6 reasons why district-wide tech implementations are the right choice

In any given K-12 district, you’ll find at least some teachers choosing their own edtech products. Why? If their district hasn’t shown tech leadership, there are no shortage of tempting free apps to choose from. Why not fly solo, so to speak?

But that’s contrary to what districts have come to learn over time: that students and their parents benefit most when all teachers in a district are assessing and reporting on students using a common, approved set of tools and schemes.

In some instances, teachers independently using their own technology can work out well. But teachers run multiple risks when finding solutions to use on their own that aren’t integrated into the district’s systems or procedures. Without centralized budgetary or student-privacy management, teacher-sourced software in classrooms is getting some teachers and their districts into trouble.…Read More

3 lessons on innovating in PBL

After 28 years as a classroom teacher, administrator, and superintendent in rural, southwestern Pennsylvania school districts, I left the traditional school setting and began working for Pennsylvania’s alternative education system, serving at-risk and special needs students.

Many students struggle to learn and master concepts in traditional classroom settings. Without a hands-on connection, lessons can be easily lost and remain unhelpfully abstract. I firmly believe that project-based learning (PBL) is one of the best ways to solve this disconnect, so I applied to build a Fab Lab for students in Pennsylvania’s Intermediate Unit 1 (IU1) region. We were chosen, and three years ago, in partnership with Chevron and the Fab Foundation, we launched a campus lab—accompanied by a mobile counterpart—to serve as a hands-on STEM learning center for students to experience and master high-tech tools and concepts. None of us predicted the success we’ve seen.

Students with long disciplinary records and attendance issues started coming to class because they enjoyed it. Those who were frustrated by typical lesson plans and lectures have found the Fab Lab to be a place where their unique learning styles are engaged. Academic progress in a safe, collaborative setting is encouraging students and helping to solve behavior challenges.…Read More

One-to-one: Overcoming financial and other obstacles

Today the Lake Park Audubon School District in Minnesota is known for its technology, but it didn’t earn this reputation overnight. Six years ago, the 700-student district carefully planned an ambitious one-to-one initiative and worked through significant challenges along the way.

Lake Park Audubon launched a one-to-one program in 2012 to provide equity for students. A significant number of students qualify for free and reduced-price lunch programs and many don’t have computers at home. The district believed that providing devices for every student—and allowing the high school students to take the devices home—would level the playing field by giving all students equal access to technology.

I served as Lake Park Audubon’s technology director from 2008 to 2017 and shepherded it through the one-to-one planning, development, and implementation. Along the way, we encountered several roadblocks: How do we pay for the devices? How do we get buy-in from the school board? Those issues have to be addressed before you can even begin to address a third question: We’ve got these devices; now what?…Read More

6 steps for using data to improve instruction

Research suggests that when principals work directly with teachers in explaining how and why they should use data to improve their instructional practices, the effect on student achievement is more than twice as powerful as any other leadership dimension.

Clearly, K-12 leaders hold the keys to data-driven improvement. And if they want to lead this practice effectively in their schools, they need to understand how to use data as a leadership tool.
According to Datrow, Park, and Wohlstetter, there are six key strategies that performance-driven schools and districts should follow if they want to use data to produce significant achievement gains. Let’s explore them.

1. Lay the foundation.…Read More

Fixing the grade passback pain point

Grade passback is a pain point for educators and school systems. Just go online and look up the help desk for popular grading platforms and you’ll notice the cries for help from users:

“Anybody have a solution for passing a midterm and final letter grade to their SIS?”

“Who is having problems with grade passback?”…Read More

5 things every K-12 employee should do to protect student data

Student data privacy and security are top priorities for edtech leaders. When asked to rate the importance of these topics, 68 percent of respondents said they were more critical than the prior year, according to an annual survey of K-12 chief technology officers from the Consortium for School Networking.

While IT leaders in education have their hands full trying to protect the student information stored and accessed in the software and data systems used by their schools, the actions of other employees throughout the district can support—or undermine—these efforts.

Here are five practical steps that every school or district employee should take to keep student data from being compromised.…Read More

5 ways tech + education can change the world

Twenty years ago, Cisco recognized a shift toward a knowledge-based economy. We felt it was important that everyone have an opportunity to participate in this economy—and that education, combined with technology, would have the power to achieve that. From this, Cisco Networking Academy was born.

What began as an act of community turned into a global movement as schools, students, and teachers were inspired to harness the power of technology to provide the skills people and businesses need to thrive in the digital economy.

Today, we look back at how this IT-and-career-skills-building program has reached 7.8 million students in 180 countries since 1997 and highlight best practices and lessons we’ve learned along the way.…Read More

The best edtech PD isn’t about technology

Schools and districts spend billions on edtech, even while questions continue to swirl around whether such investments yield solid returns. Few companies can reliably ensure the educational outcomes that teachers and administrators expect, and according to one estimate, only 35 percent of edtech tools purchased are actually being implemented.

Barriers to successful implementation often have little to do with the technology itself or teachers’ comfort with technology overall. Instead, success is impeded by a lack of strategy on how to integrate the technology into the classroom. Even as they spend up to $18,000 per teacher per year on professional development (PD), schools and districts have underinvested in quality PD that focuses on the skills and know-how educators need to make edtech effective in the classroom. It’s not from a lack of demand, though—research nearly always suggests that educators are asking for more and better training.

District leaders must meet this demand and provide the very best edtech PD by focusing less on the technology itself and more on fundamental pedagogical strategies that can bridge the divide between investments, implementation, and outcomes.…Read More

5 steps to implement OER in your LMS

As open educational resources (OER) become a more viable option for K-12 school districts that want to adopt new resources, curating these “free” and “open” educational assets has become increasingly difficult. With the U.S. Department of Education making a clear push for OER via its #GoOpen campaign, where districts take on the challenge of replacing at least one textbook with OER, the need for reliable vetting and selection tools has grown exponentially.

Here are five steps districts can use to implement OER in their LMSs:

1. Create a centralized “hub.” Focused on using OER that empowers students and improves educational outcomes, our strategy for vetting open resources is similar to the one we use for adopted publisher content. In our itslearning LMS, which we recently rebranded as the Wayne Learning Hub, we have created a complete digital learning environment for our teachers and students.…Read More