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.

World’s largest K-12 reading survey identifies trends, highlights best practices

Tapping into data collected from nearly 10 million K-12 students who read 346 million books and nonfiction articles last school year, Renaissance® releases its ninth annual What Kids Are Reading report. Researchers at the K-12 learning analytics company produce the report, which provides the comprehensive review of students’ reading habits and achievement. What Kids Are Reading: And How They Grow, 2017 includes most read fiction and nonfiction books by grade level, nonfiction selections by gender, and a sampling of popular reading across the curriculum. The report is an important annual reflection on reading trends in U.S. schools.

By analyzing the data and reading habits from Renaissance’s Accelerated Reader 360® platform, researchers compiled national and state reading trends, reading habits by age and gender, and best practices for student growth.

“What Kids Are Reading offers important and unique insight into K-12 reading as we continuously seek to better understand how students read and grow as learners,” said Eric Stickney, director of educational research at Renaissance. “Each year, we discover key insights about our student readers, such as the difference dedicated reading practice can mean to a student previously thought to be constrained by the label of ‘struggling reader’.”…Read More

Renaissance Learning and ClassLink align for single sign-on solution

Renaissance Learning, provider K-12 cloud-based assessment and learning analytics, announced a major new alliance with ClassLink, provider of single sign-on and rostering solutions for schools.

The partnership paves the way to faster, easier access to one of the most trusted education providers and offers millions of educators and students secure, OneClick access to Renaissance solutions.

ClassLink’s OneClick delivers single sign-on to online cloud-based resources, such as the Renaissance platform, and to files, whether they are stored in the cloud, on a device, or on the school network. With more than 3,000 single sign-on connectors, ClassLink has brought together more resources than all other single sign-on platforms combined.…Read More

New analytics could help measure content efficacy

New analytics tools from uClass aim to give users a better picture of what instructional materials their teachers are using—and whether these resources are effective

analyticsLearning analytics have become a key feature within many school software programs. These tools can help educators understand trends and patterns in student learning, helping them target their instruction more effectively to improve achievement.

Most of these tools focus on analyzing student performance—but what if educators had tools that could measure the effectiveness of the instructional resources they’re using as well?

That’s the idea behind new analytics tools developed by an ed-tech company called uClass.…Read More

6 questions to ask about data

Data–including big data and learning analytics–has incredible potential for teaching and learning

data-analyticsThe term “big data” is everywhere and, in a nutshell, is the term used today to describe large collections of data that companies use to personalize their products and services.

But what does this concept mean for K-12 education? Well, for starters, increased knowledge of individual students can lead to personalized teaching and learning. This is called learning analytics, which involves using big data for educational purposes, as defined by the New Media Consortium K-12 Horizon Report. The report is produced in collaboration with the Consortium for School Newtworking (CoSN), which recently released a report that examines, in-depth, learning analytics’ potential.

School districts already use data, but learning analytics would enable educators to use this data to a greater extent, examining what the report calls “student-level data” and using that information to determine how students are learning, what might help them learn better, and what teacher practices are or are not having an impact on this learning.…Read More