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.

ChatGPT can generate, but can it create?

While artificial intelligence (AI) has been a relatively silent partner in higher education’s early warning systems, personalized learning platforms, and more for some time now, we might fairly say that ChatGPT is the big boom heard ‘round the university. The AI chatbot is taking many of us by surprise and startling more of us to attention, not in small measure by its charming, eager extroversion: it “talks” to us. What’s happening here? Is ChatGPT a threat? What happens next?

Diffusion of ChatGPT

ChatGPT has been quite the busybot, going to business school, law school, the office, Congress, and more. We are experiencing the unfolding of Rogers’ (1962) innovation diffusion in real time. Since OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in research preview on November 30, 2022, we’ve been busy ourselves, curating links and disseminating our treasuries to each other. We’re also creating artifacts such as the Advancements in AI Timeline developed by the Center for eLearning Initiatives at Penn State Behrend. The twin goals of all of our awareness-building activities are to hasten the development of our individual and collective opinions about whether ChatGPT is aide or adversary and to decide our next steps accordingly.…Read More

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7 Mindsets Announces Key Additions to Executive Leadership Team Amidst Growth

ROSWELL, Ga. — 7 Mindsets, the leader in Pre-K-12 mindsets-based learning and well-being solutions, today announced the extension of its executive leadership team with the appointments of Robin Glenn as chief strategy and business development officer and Clark McKown, Ph.D., as chief science officer.

Glenn, founder of BASE Education, a student mental health solution acquired by 7 Mindsets in January 2023, will oversee curriculum development and strategic initiatives for 7 Mindsets. Since 2013, Glenn has been dedicated to the development and growth of BASE Education, utilizing her 25 years of experience working with at-risk teens to build the company’s online mental health curriculum. Her professional work has included roles as a school-based therapy specialist, parent, educator, and law enforcement trainer, private practice therapist for adolescents and their families, treatment coordinator for intensive in/outpatient teen programs, and research specialist in clinical trials for adolescents with addictions.

McKown is the founder of xSEL Labs, a creator of scalable systems to assess and address the social and emotional needs of children, which was also acquired by 7 Mindsets last month. As chief science officer, he will lead 7 Mindsets’ work to provide meaningful and actionable assessments alongside its program offerings. McKown, a nationally recognized leader, researcher, and author in the field of SEL assessment, has served as a principal investigator on several federal and foundation grants whose purpose was to design, develop, validate, and scale social and emotional assessment systems.…Read More

Konica Minolta Joins ZeroNow Alliance to Foster Safer Schools

Ramsey, NJ (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. ( Konica Minolta) announced it has joined the ZeroNow Alliance for safer schools.

ZeroNow is a member-based nonprofit that facilitates collaboration between industry, association and education partners to foster new solutions to keep school campuses safe and secure. The organization was founded by technology partners Additional, Axis Communications, Johnson Controls and Omnilert, along with campus safety nonprofit partners the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA), NASPA (the Association of Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education), Campus Safety Magazine and VTV Family Outreach Foundation.

“The last decade has shown the world just how essential school security has become,” said Stephanie Keer, National Practice Manager, Government/Education, Konica Minolta. “The next decade will bring historical changes, and Konica Minolta is anticipating and preparing to meet the challenges ahead by creating school security solutions that can and will save lives.”…Read More

We can teach math better–here’s how

In 1997, the National Reading Panel issued a report on the findings of dozens of studies looking into the most effective methods of teaching and learning reading. The report offered specific recommendations for effective practices, such as intentional and explicit phonics instruction for all students.

Lately, there has been movement toward codifying science-based literacy learning practices into law, but it took 16 years before the first state to do so, Mississippi, took such action. In the meantime, many educators—and even entire schools and districts—continued using outdated teaching methods or only engaged in phonics instruction with students in need of remediation.

Something similar is happening in mathematics classrooms right now. A national mathematics panel has not been convened to lay out the science of how students most effectively learn math, but there is a large body of research available. Unfortunately, the math instruction most students receive is not based in the science of math—but it could be.…Read More

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Poptential™ Offers Free Content for National American Indian Heritage Month

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Poptential™, a family of award-winning social studies course packages that infuse lessons with digital storytelling, offers an array of engaging content to illustrate the culture, traditions, and history of Native Americans for National American Indian Heritage Month. Click to tweet.

Signed into law by President George H. W. Bush in 1990, November’s National American Indian Heritage Month is a time to celebrate and pay respect to Native Americans for their culture and contributions to the United States and to raise awareness about the challenges they have faced in the past and today.

Poptential American History Volume II curriculum and digital media examples offer a look at the battles and struggles of the Native Americans as they were removed from their homelands and separated from their families. Content includes:…Read More

Allentown-Area School Buses Modernized with Safety Technology to Protect Kids and Stop Dangerous Drivers

Allentown, PA (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Children returning to school on the yellow school bus can expect a safer, smarter commute this fall, thanks to the launch of a new safety initiative across Eastern Pennsylvania. Allentown, Bethlehem, Kutztown Area, and Northwestern Lehigh school districts have each partnered with local law enforcement and BusPatrol to tackle the illegal passing of stopped school buses.

More than 300 buses across Berks and Lehigh counties will be outfitted with automated enforcement technology to detect the license plates of vehicles that fail to stop for school buses, putting children at risk. The video evidence is shared with local law enforcement for review before a citation is issued.

The programs will go live on Monday, August 29, to coincide with the start of the new school year. In addition to enforcement, the initiative includes an education and awareness campaign to remind motorists of school bus safety laws and teach students safety tips for getting on and off school buses.…Read More

Navigate360 Sets New Standard for K-12 School Safety with Fully Integrated Visitor, Volunteer & Emergency Management Suite & Alyssa’s Law-Compliant Panic Alarms

RICHFIELD, OH, July 20, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Schools nationwide are working quickly to enhance safety and security plans to satisfy updated state mandates and give their students and staff the confidence they need to be successful. Navigate360 is proud to aid in their efforts with a new, fully integrated Safety & Security Suite that seamlessly provides the tools and technology schools need to ensure proper plans and processes are in place to prevent a critical incident and respond to a crisis if necessary. 

Navigate360’s Safety & Security Suite integrates state-of-the-art Visitor, Volunteer and Emergency Management systems with Alyssa’s Law-compliant panic buttons, enabling schools to directly – and silently – alert first responders when faced with an emergency incident. The cloud-based solution enables 360-degree visibility of both the site and the location of students, staff, visitors and volunteers, which is critical when every second counts for first responders and school security teams.     

“School safety is a complex, multifaceted issue, and it’s clear that point solutions aren’t enough on their own,” said Navigate360 CEO JP Guilbault. “We’re delivering on our ‘better together’ commitment by providing a modern, connected platform that eliminates schools’ functional and data silos by integrating visitor, volunteer and emergency management into a single platform with Alyssa’s Law-compliant panic buttons. This is the new standard for modern school safety.”  …Read More

Pivot Interactives Announces New Iris™ Technology to Increase Students’ Active Phenomena-Based Learning

(May12, 2022) — Pivot Interactives introduces a new set of tools, Iris™, which make learning critical science concepts—such as heat transfer, Beer’s Law, light emission, population density, temperature (infrared and blackbody), pH, and wavelength—accessible to students regardless of classroom equipment or teaching experience. With this new patent-pending collection of color and light measuring tools, students can now take quantitative measurements of color & light for themselves directly from information encoded in a video within a web browser.

“Making measurements using light is a fundamental practice of science. From optical measurements made by microbiologists to the light gathered by powerful telescopes, light, and color-based measurements are at the heart of science at every scale,” says Peter Bohacek, CEO and Founder of Pivot Interactives. “But light- and color-based measurements are normally out of reach in the classroom, limited to expensive and complex equipment. Pivot Interactives brings the power of light- and color-based measurements to students’ fingertips. As the leader in using interactive videos for science education, we are thrilled to be the first to make the power of light- and color-based measurements available to classrooms everywhere.”

Iris technology addresses three critical issues that science classrooms face:…Read More

Can web filtering really harm the kids?

Web filtering is undoubtedly an essential when it comes to school cybersecurity. However, when the service is not set up correctly or a number of blocked categories is way too high, it starts to annoy both staff, and kids. Let’s see how to use web filtering to stay safe out there on the internet and make full use out of it.

Starting with the basics, it makes sense to remind ourselves what CIPA is. The Children’s Internet Protection Act, signed into law in 2000, is a document that regulates the exposure of inappropriate content to children. To be precise, the content that shall be filtered or blocked is divided into 3 groups: obscenity, child pornography & content harmful to minors. To receive funding, an educational institution must follow the guidelines of the act. The easiest way to comply with it is to purchase a web filtering solution. Needless to say, K-12 schools must be CIPA compliant to use E-Rate discounts, but those schools and libraries that do not receive the fundings do not have this obligation.

Web filtering solutions work on a DNS level, blocking all unwanted websites: both malicious ones with viruses lurking around, and all kinds of explicit content. In a nutshell, the DNS system matches IP addresses and the names of the websites working as a phonebook of the Internet. DNS filtering, however, also categorizes the website to see if it belongs to any restricted groups. This part is usually customizable: you choose which type of sites you want gone (or vice versa – you create an Allow list, which contains only the resources you want your students, staff & guests to see, and everything else is blocked), and leave it be.…Read More

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ParentSquare Appoints Derick Sutton as Chief Financial Officer

Santa Barbara, CA — Dec. 6, 2021— ParentSquare Inc., provider of the premier unified school-to-home engagement platform for K-12, announced that Derick Sutton is joining the company as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO). In his new role, Sutton will lead the company’s accounting, finance, and human resources functions.

Sutton has extensive experience as a financial leader at high-growth technology companies. Before joining ParentSquare, he served as CFO for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies such as Simplee (now part of Flywire Corporation) and SCI Solutions as well as the training solutions provider NAVEX Global (formerly Employment Law Training).

Sutton also held several executive roles at the financial software and SaaS company Intuit. As CFO of Intuit’s international division, he helped re-establish its small business accounting software market leadership. Additionally, Sutton served as the vice president of finance and investor relations for the biotechnology firm Codexis, contributing to that firm’s IPO.…Read More