Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.
Even if the old spoon under the pillow trick hasn’t worked for the students in your district yet, it doesn’t mean it won’t be your turn next!
No matter how well prepared you are, weather cancellations can be cause for confusion. It’s worth taking a few extra precautions so your families know exactly what the story is.
Here are a few simple tips districts can follow to make sure weather communication messages are reaching home without causing confusion:…Read More
Digital learning has not always been as ubiquitous as it is today–in fact, a decade ago, the concept made many educators uncomfortable. But today, digital learning resources are embraced as tools that highly-skilled educators can use to boost student engagement and connect classroom lessons to the real world.
Digital Learning Day celebrates this evolution and highlights how educators across the country are using digital learning tools to create authentic connections and personalized learning opportunities for every student, everywhere. Check out All4Ed’s Digital Learning Day resources to find digital learning tools, hear from fellow educators about their digital learning strategies, and more.
Here, five educators share the digital learning tools and resources that have proven successful in their classrooms and in their schools.…Read More
As dust from the pandemic settles, students across America are facing another disruption to quality education. This crisis, however, shouldn’t be a surprise. It is two centuries in the making.
The most recent legislation introduced in Congress, which would see a minimum salary base of $60,000 for public school teachers, is certainly a welcome step in the right direction. However, it still misdiagnoses the problem; burnout will still occur, regardless of the paycheck. That’s why we need to fundamentally reimagine the role of a teacher in the modern classroom.
The teacher job description crafted in the 1800s by the Common School Movement led by Horace Mann served a one-adult-room-full-of-kids model with the goal of civilizing American children. Hopefully, in the year 2023, we can aspire beyond assimilation as the goal of education and aim for creating learning spaces that value diversity and support every student in reaching their full, authentic potential.…Read More
SAN MATEO, California and NEW YORK, New York — IXL Learning, developer of personalized learning products used by millions of people globally, announced that it has acquired TPT (otherwise known as Teachers Pay Teachers), which offers the world’s largest catalog of educator-created content and tools for digital instruction. More than 7 million educators, including 85 percent of PK-12 teachers in the U.S., use the platform to find teacher-created resources that help them support students and benefit from the expertise of fellow educators.
Teachers Pay Teachers is the newest member of the IXL Learning family of world-renowned brands, which include Rosetta Stone, IXL, Vocabulary.com, SpanishDictionary.com, inglés.com, ABCya, Education.com, Wyzant and Emmersion.
Tapping into the collective wisdom of educators…Read More
The metaverse is a tool that blends experiences typically associated with either the virtual or physical worlds. It can deliver greater immersive learning for students while also creating some new and exciting teaching opportunities. For educators, it is crucial to not only understand what the metaverse is and its uses within education but to also realize the benefits of immersive learning with the metaverse.
The metaverse is an emerging technology that is gradually becoming more mainstream within education, in part because it delivers immersive learning experiences for students. Essentially, the metaverse allows academic institutions and educators to create engaging experiences that teach valuable information, which encourages exploration and experimentation. What’s more, the metaverse itself can be accessed using a variety of devices.
With that being said, metaverse learning is a relatively new concept and one that many educators are still getting to grips with. At the same time, because the metaverse is also being used in areas like social media and the creation of video games, its use as an educational tool has not necessarily been fully understood by all.…Read More
Education institutions are forced to do more with less, putting extra stress on employees. Without realizing it, schools often have processes that create even more work, particularly in the business office. Fortunately, accounts payable (AP) automation can cure fatigue from overwhelming manual workloads and give AP staff more time to focus on something much more important: the students.
Challenges in the business office:
Without the help of automation, AP specialists spend several hours each day on tedious, repetitive tasks such as keying invoice data, pushing paper, fixing typos, chasing down information, and responding to calls and emails from suppliers and stakeholders about the status of invoices and payments. All the while, school business officers also juggle additional responsibilities impacting their institution and student outcomes.…Read More
School models are, for the most part, outdated–and very overdue for replacement. When students reach high school, research shows that close to 66 percent of students are disengaged. But even students who do successfully navigate their schooling emerge with only a specific (and often narrow) skillset that may or may not match their strengths or interests.
Conventional schooling often leaves students disillusioned, questioning their intelligence and value as it is framed by a system that needs an overhaul.
Learner-centered education can play a critical role in reshaping education systems, offering a more holistic approach to meeting learners’ needs and helping students find fulfillment in their academic accomplishments.…Read More
According to a recent study, grading is one of the least stressful activities early career teachers have to complete. Grading is time consuming, however, and more grading-related questions are popping up in the news these days. For instance, are teachers allowed to reduce grades for late work? Are students allowed to retake tests on which they did not do well? It is essential that teachers have a clear and supportive grading system in place to address the scrutiny of today’s students, parents, and other stakeholders.
Setting up a grading system requires more than a calculator. A philosophical foundation is important to how a teacher grades. Having a philosophical basis for grading helps instructors explain grades, their meaning, and their value to students, who may then see the grade as less arbitrary.Two common approaches to further mitigate this arbitrary nature include normative-based grading and criterion- or standards-based grading. To build a strong, meaningful grading policy, instructors must choose the approach that best fits the course design and student learning outcomes.
Instructors who choose a normative approach will grade based upon relative performance. A teacher’s fallback practice may be to grade on a curve; however, curved grading is philosophically flawed in most course level applications. Effective instructional design models and psychometrics generally anticipate that students can master an end-of-course exam with a 70 to 80 percent score. Exams that do not reflect that criteria may have been poorly designed. Otherwise, instructional challenges or lack of student engagement could be to blame. Some college courses simply provide a curved score for students to lower the failure rate or to stratify student performance. This, however, does not evidence how students understood the content. Curved grades only show how students performed in relation to other students instead of reflecting students’ mastery of the materials.…Read More
Many educators have left the school environment to join edtech companies, seeking new ways to serve students while solving for the shortcomings they felt in the school-based workplace. How has it worked out, and what have we learned?
The experience has shifted the equilibrium in the corporate world, as edtech companies tap into a larger talent pool and it has been eye-opening for former educators as they bring their expertise to the table in new ways. It has also provided valuable insights for school administrators seeking to improve their retention of teachers.
Insights for school administrators…Read More
CHARLOTTE, NC — Wisconsin’s Stevens Point Area Public School District today announced it has renewed its multiyear partnership with Discovery Education supporting science education in grades K-5. This continued collaboration ensures students and teachers in the district’s K-5 classrooms will continue to use the company’s award-winning Mystery Science service to deeply engage students in science instruction. Discovery Education is the worldwide edtech leader whose state-of-the-art digital platform supports instruction wherever it takes place.
The Stevens Point Area Public School District lies directly in the center of Wisconsin, covering over four hundred square miles. While being one of the State’s largest districts, in both area, and student membership, the district exemplifies excellence in education, as evidenced by the fact that Stevens Point’s students continually achieve higher percentages than the State average, of proficiency and advanced proficiency in the Wisconsin Forward Examinations.
Following a careful review of the district’s usage and success with the Mystery Science service, school administrators elected to renew for three additional years the partnership with Discovery Education that brings Mystery Science to Stevens Point’s K-5 classrooms. By doing so, the district believes they are leveraging students’ natural curiosity about the world around them to build the scientific fundamentals that will drive future success in the subject in middle school, high school, and beyond. …Read More