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.

The big events, keynotes, and 5 major trends at ISTE 2016

Are you heading to Denver? Here’s a quick look at what you’ll experience

Educators preparing to travel to Denver for ISTE 2016 can expect thought-provoking keynotes, interactive learning opportunities and more than 900 sessions at this year’s conference.

The annual event offers networking and professional development opportunities for educators from every discipline, education leaders, ed-tech coordinators, library and media specialists, and more. And while sessions and events run the full gamut of ed-tech topics, there are a handful of major themes that crop up again and again.

Playgrounds will feature hands-on learning opportunities that let attendees see, touch, hear and feel classroom solutions. Playground themes include Computational Thinking & Computer Science and Maker playgrounds on Sunday afternoon. Creativity, Digital StoryTelling, Early Learning, Ed Tech Coaches, and Games & Virtual Environments.…Read More

Lifeliqe Creator empowers teachers to create, publish interactive 3D content at ISTE

VR-enabled STEM models immerse students in a trip to space, a walk with a dinosaur, and a voyage through the inside of a shark

Lifeliqe, a learning and productivity platform for interactive 3D, VR, and AR, launched Lifeliqe Creator, a feature giving educators the power to create and publish interactive presentations and ebooks that integrate 3D models instead of 2D images.

Lifeliqe users can explore objects with interactive 3D views, zoom deep into the structure of the objects, experience augmented reality, view supplementary text on a subject, and change the language for a bilingual view in English and Spanish. With the Lifeliqe Creator feature, any of the 1,000 interactive 3D models can be dragged and dropped right into a presentation, ebook or lesson plan, so teachers can provide students with full, interactive 3D experiences.

“Lifeliqe Creator pushes the boundaries of publishing,” said Lifeliqe’s co-founder and CEO Ondrej Homola. “Embedding a real-time, interactive 3D model directly into a text document or a presentation takes it to another level. This enables teachers and students to create resources they have never been able to before, using 3D models instead of images.”…Read More

Gale expands historical digital newspaper offerings

New collections include historical archive of The Telegraph – one of the world’s best-known newspapers, a unique collection of Chinese periodicals, and British Library Newspapers

Gale, a part of Cengage Learning, has expanded its digital historical newspaper collections with the launch of several new archives. Now available are The Telegraph Historical Archive, 1855-2000, a 145-year archive of Britain’s best-selling quality newspaper; China from Empire to Republic: Missionary, Sinology, and Literary Periodicals, a collection of English-language periodicals published in or about China from 1817-1949; and British Library Newspapers, Part V: 1746-1950, which adds newspapers from the northern part of the United Kingdom to Gale’s comprehensive digital collection of British newspapers. All collections are fully indexed and the metadata and data are available for text and data mining and other forms of large-scale digital humanities analysis.

“These collections speak to the range of partnerships Gale has with different institutions around the world – from the British Library to the National Library of China and beyond – and what allows us to bring such unique, global content direct to researchers,” said Terry Robinson, senior vice president and managing director for Gale International. “In addition, we hope having access to these archives as data leads to the discovery of new insights by digital humanities scholars. Analyzing historical newspapers is a great way to uncover rich cultural and societal perspectives across any number of themes.”

The Telegraph Historical Archive, 1855-2000 enables researchers to full-text search more than one million pages of the paper’s back issues, including the Sunday Telegraph from 1961. Providing a balance of personal interest stories alongside incisive analysis, the archive offers a fascinating glimpse into daily life as it was experienced over the past 145 years.…Read More

5 ways music and tech are adding a little STEAM to our lessons

Technology plus music is an easy, accessible way to put STEAM in lessons — and students love it

The holy grail for those of us in education is a method that imbues students with higher-level thinking skills that stick, preparing them for what comes next in their lives.  This means not just reaching all students with the content they must learn but making sure this information stays around in their heads to improve their school performance and knowledge base.

As we all know, this can be a tall order, but in my school district, we’ve been using the latest and newest technologies that help to engage kids in learning. Our results have been significant and, I believe, worth sharing.

My job involves instructing both teachers and students in how to implement technology tools into their lessons. All our middle- and high-school students in Moore County, N.C., have Chromebooks so our digital tools must be compatible. As part of our constant brainstorming of new ideas and tools, my team heard about an online music recording studio called Soundtrap that runs on Chromebooks and we developed a curricular program to use it at many schools in our district. I personally use it at both of my middle schools.  One is a Title 1 school with a minority population of about 50 percent, and a free or reduced lunch status of about 65% while the other one is not a Title 1 school and its minority population is about 20 percent.…Read More

Classroom displays new interactive learning technologies

New product suite creates an interactive, technology-rich environment

Boxlight, an interactive classroom technology manufacturer and K-12 education solutions provider, has partnered with Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn to create a showcase classroom that will enable K-12 teachers and students to experience the full capacity and impact of interactive instruction technologies.

The technology showcase will feature Boxlight’s patented, award-winning interactive classroom technology and the advanced classroom solutions from its recent acquisition, Mimio, one of the world’s leading providers of interactive teaching technologies. Visitors to the classroom will be able to see and experience the following products:

• An 84-inch 4K ProColor interactive flat panel display and integrated OPS computer that provides ultra high resolution and accommodates up to 10 points of touch for optimal classroom collaboration…Read More

Fab labs to launch in early childhood programs

Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM will develop early childhood fab labs in Head Start programs

Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM (TIES), a developer of digital fabrication laboratories (fab labs) and STEM curriculum and school design, has been named a partner in the Federal government’s new Early Education STEM initiative.

TIES is among a group of leaders who participated in April’s Early Learning Symposium hosted by The White House, in partnership with the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services and Invest in US. The event highlighted the importance of promoting active STEM learning for our youngest children and to celebrate a broad range of public- and private-sector leaders committed to promoting STEM learning across the country.

In March 2016, The Bay Area Discovery Museum, in partnership with TIES and FableVision, launched the world’s first Fab Lab for young learners (ages 3 to 10) to help them navigate the design process from concept to production, and turn their ideas into reality.…Read More

The 4 essential elements of passion-based learning

Teaching students effectively means getting to know them — and their passions

Think back to when you were still in school. What do you tend to remember most? Do you think back to the unique field trips you went on? The cool science experiments? What about a favorite teacher?

For me, it was projects and Mrs. Gianni. That’s what I remember most about school and the teacher that comes to mind. Mrs. Gianni had blond hair that always looked like it needed to be dyed. She was young and energetic. I also remember the way she made me feel, her high expectations, how she was always smiling, and how I felt like I could be anything in her eyes.

Teachers have always had the ability to make a big impact on their students. The teacher chooses whether it will be a positive or a negative impact. Of course every year we start the year with the best intentions. We love all our kids the same. However, there is always that one student (sometimes more) that we just can’t seem to reach. We try different things, we ask for help, we learn their background, but we still can’t seem to figure out how to get through.…Read More

4 radically different school models upending education

Goal setting and PBL serve as cornerstones for new school models. Is self-directed learning every student’s future?

These days, there are few that would disagree that education needs to start looking more like the world students will one day work and live in and less like, well, school. What that might look like in the future is anybody’s guess, but it may be safe to assume a lot more will be required of students than simple passive learning.

Four school leaders recently spoke about their innovative school models and visions for student success in an increasingly digital world during a panel hosted by Clayton Christensen Institute cofounder Michael Horn at this year’s ASU GSV Summit in San Diego. The new models overwhelmingly favor some combination of project-based learning coupled with self-directed goal-setting and skill building for students’ life after school.

Here are the four school models and their approaches to teaching and learning.…Read More

Researchers: Math needs a more visual approach

Stanford University researchers aim to dispel the belief that students should not use their fingers to learn mathematics

Taking a more visual approach to math instruction at the K-12 and higher-ed levels could dramatically change brain development as it relates to future math success, according to a new paper from Stanford researchers.

“SEEING AS UNDERSTANDING: The Importance of Visual Mathematics for our Brain and Learning,” supports the use of visual mathematics and developing “finger discrimination” in students because it could result in higher math achievement.

According to co-authors Stanford University mathematics researcher Dr. Jo Boaler and brain researcher Dr. Lang Chen, the human brain can visualize a representation of the fingers during math problems. This provides an opportunity for further research and pedagogical development.…Read More

Blackboard launches New Learning Experience platform

Integrated platform enables personalized learning, streamlined communication with family and community engagement, and unified workflows

Blackboard has launched a new K-12 platform for districts and schools that brings together institutions, parents, teachers, and learners in an integrated approach that addresses fundamental requirements for student success including school safety and security, family and community engagement and personalized competency-based learning.

Blackboard’s offering combines multiple products, integrations, and professional services that can be deployed individually or as a comprehensive solution.

Technologies include: Blackboard Mass Notifications™ (formerly Blackboard Connect™), Blackboard Web Community Manager™ (formerly Blackboard Schoolwires™), Blackboard Mobile Communication App™ (formerly Blackboard Parentlink™), Blackboard Social Media Manager™ (formerly Sociability™), Blackboard Collaborate™, Blackboard Blackboard Open Content (formerly xpLor), and a choice of Blackboard’s leading learning management systems: Blackboard Learn™ or Moodlerooms™ and their mobile apps for students and teachers.…Read More