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.

Beyond ESSA: How to use your data to make informed decisions

The deadline has passed for states to submit final Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) plans. Now it’s up to school districts to figure out how to capture and report data about student performance. While the additional reporting can seem like a burden, buried in that task is a great opportunity to boost strategic decision-making capabilities. District administrators just need a simple method to look at student data in a new way.

ESSA reporting requirements include the need to publish specific educational data sets separated by student subgroups and categories. School districts are challenged to rethink how they collect, analyze, and present data.

One Chicago-area high school district—let’s call it Chi-High—discovered the data needed for ESSA compliance reports also provides the administration with key insights about students. Better yet, they are using that discovery to move the needle on student performance.…Read More

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5 biggest data center mistakes (and how to fix them)

Behold, the school district data center.

To the untrained eye, it’s just a room full of servers, racks, cables, power supplies, storage devices, and whatever other components happen to be lying around.

But it’s so much more than that. It’s the backbone of your entire technology infrastructure. If even the smallest thing goes wrong, you could very well lose access to the network and systems you rely on to keep your district functioning.…Read More

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3 ways our school uses data to drive instruction

For the last six years, data has been part of our “secret sauce” here at Bronson Elementary School in Bronson, Fla. Many of our students come from economically disadvantaged homes so we know we need to continually work harder than most schools to help our students succeed academically—and data helps us do this.

Our teachers and administrators are constantly looking at data trends—including data over periods of time, across grade levels, and for individual teachers and subgroups of students—to help drive instruction and student achievement. Specifically, Bronson uses schoolwide data to determine core instructional needs and proficiency targets. We use grade-level data for insight into groups for intervention, classroom data to support differentiation in the classroom and teacher effectiveness goals, and student data to identify intervention needs and IEP goals.

The data we analyze is collected from various sources, including the Florida Standards Assessment (FSA) in reading and math for grades 3-5 and the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test Science for grade 5. We also use diagnostic data that we collect three times a year using the i-Ready program for reading and math in grades K-5.…Read More

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How to take a student-centered approach to classroom AV

Schools are increasingly moving toward personalized and adaptive learning programs. The idea of tailoring teaching styles, materials, and approaches to individual students promises deeper engagement and better academic outcomes.

Technology plays a leading role in making personalized learning possible. In previous generations, the ratio of one teacher to a few dozen students made an adaptive approach almost impossible, but today’s students can engage with curriculum in new ways. For example, many schools have adopted one-to-one initiatives in which each student receives a tablet or laptop for educational use.

In addition to school-issued devices, many students also carry at least one personal electronic device with them to class each day. Today’s typical student is adept at a wide variety of devices, from smartphones to wearable technology. To keep pace with the students’ technology-rich world outside the classroom, it’s important for schools to use audiovisual (AV) technology that meets—and exceeds—those expectations.…Read More

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8 benefits of cloud-printing solutions

It has been nearly 600 years since the printing press was invented. With this much history behinds us, why is printing across all the schools in a district so challenging?

There needs to be a better and easier way, as printing is an essential element for any education ecosystem.

A quick history of printing…Read More

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Are K-12 data systems ready for AI?

As educators who love technology, we can barely contain our enthusiasm for the potential applications of artificial intelligence (AI). But AI requires massive amounts of data, so before jumping on the AI bandwagon we need to:

  • reflect on the kinds of data that would make teaching more effective and improve learning outcomes;
  • consider the systems that will allow us to collect and manage the data; and
  • create processes to share and analyze the data.

Most districts do not yet have the foundation to make the leap to AI (other than what is already embedded in the apps and programs they’re currently using). Schools still exhibit a lack of maturity around data collection that should make us cautious about AI. There are also algorithmic bias and equity issues that need to be resolved before we move to wide-scale AI adoption. For most districts, spending money on AI over the next three to five years would be money down the drain. The ecosystems to support AI implementation are simply not yet in place in most schools and districts.

5 essential questions to test your district’s AI readiness…Read More

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3 tips for jumpstarting your district’s connectivity discussion

This year’s E-rate cycle may be over, but in order to be well prepared for the next one, now is the time to start the connectivity conversation with your school district. In today’s classrooms, high-speed internet is no longer an option; it has become a necessity.

Digital learning helps students grasp concepts more fully, and not having access to the wealth of information found in online videos, apps, and curriculum puts these students at an immediate disadvantage to their connected peers. As schools increasingly turn to digital learning, all classrooms must have reliable, fast internet connections in order to prepare students sufficiently for future challenges like college and the job market.

While dramatic progress has been made in closing the connectivity gap in our public schools, there are still 6.5 million K-12 students who lack access to high-speed classroom internet, leaving them unprepared or underprepared for the world’s digital expectations.…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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What it really means to be a data-driven district–and how to make it happen

A simple internet search for “data-driven instruction” yields nearly four million hits. Clearly, the concept is neither new nor novel.

Yet still, research continues to show that educators’ ability to actually use data to guide instructional decisions is lacking. How can that be?

While sifting through those search results, I realized something: Just about every article focuses on why data-based instruction is important, but not a single one I’ve found has addressed what that really means and how to make it happen in real classrooms with real students.…Read More

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6 ways school bus wi-fi could benefit your district

Gaps in internet access are an all-too-familiar struggle for many schools, particularly those in rural or low-income districts where coverage is spotty or too expensive.

In 2015, President Barack Obama said internet access was no longer a privilege, but a basic necessity. School districts are adopting that frame of mind and are trying their best to keep students connected as long as possible.

Equipping school buses with wi-fi helps extend learning, especially for students who have long bus rides due to rural locations or extra-curricular activities.…Read More

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