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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.
These 10 TED-Ed videos will hold your students’ attention
Given students’ easy access to videos and digital resources via mobile devices and computers, it makes sense that educators would incorporate such tools into their instruction.
With a wealth of resources online, educators can find content that meets students where they’re comfortable learning, with interactive and engaging presentation.
TED-Ed lessons are among these resources that help students learn while engaging them in the subject matter.…Read More
James Patterson School Library Campaign
The third installment of the James Patterson School Library Campaign, in partnership with Scholastic Reading Club, focuses specifically on teachers: 3,500 individual recipients will receive grants of $500 to enhance and supplement their classroom libraries.
10 TED-Ed videos your students can use today
More often than not, students pick up a mobile device or use a computer to access videos and digital media online. With a wealth of resources online, educators can find content that meets students where they’re comfortable learning, with interactive and engaging presentation.
TED Talks have grown in popularity in part for their inspiring and frank perspectives on any number of world issues, and educators can leverage these resources for learning.
Educators can build lessons around any TED-Ed Original, TED Talk or YouTube video through Ted-Ed. Once they locate the video they wish to use, they next use the TED-Ed Lesson editor to add questions, discussion prompts and additional resources. When the lesson is published, educators can monitor their progress and submitted work.…Read More
Education.com unveils guided curriculum for math, reading
Education.com, an online education destination for teachers, parents, and homeschoolers looking to help their kids succeed in school, announced a new guided curriculum that changes the way they help their preschool and elementary children develop essential skills.
The new skills-focused curriculum combines 30,000 expert-created resources from the industry’s most comprehensive learning library with step-by-step guided lessons mapped to specific skills, to more easily and effectively strengthen the math, reading, and writing skills that are essential for school success.
At the heart of education, children need to develop foundational math and reading skills to succeed in school. All kids struggle with these core skills at some level, and their parents and teachers equally face fundamental challenges in trying to help them: identifying the most essential math and reading skills, finding various ways to keep a child engaged in learning, and finding an educational solution that connects foundational skills to the learning needs of the individual child. Education.com’s new math and reading platform uniquely helps parents and teachers address these challenges by combining easy to follow step-by-step lessons with a variety of learning formats for a multi-sensory approach aligned to the essential skills kids need to learn.…Read More
These 7 keys are helping one district better prepare its students
In any given third-grade classroom, you can find a student who is reading at a level far beyond their age, and another who is still working on letter recognition. How does a traditional classroom teacher with 25-30 kids manage such a wide range of students? As a district leader, how do I support our teachers and ensure that they are challenging students who are at a higher level while providing struggling students with proper support?
These are the tough questions I asked myself when taking over as superintendent of Maury County Schools in Tennessee in August 2015. Within the first few months, we ditched the old literacy model to adopt a project-based focus; deployed instructional coaches (without hiring anyone); and launched a top-down, district-level approach that quickly gained bottom-up buy-in through school and community support. We also implemented a differentiated literacy program and digital library that measures reading with reading—not quiz scores and points.
Creating the Keys to Success
In my first days as superintendent, I did what I called a “22in22 Tour” where I traveled to all 22 schools in my district in 22 days. I know from experience that the best leaders are the best listeners, so I made sure to take the time to hear what school leaders and classroom teachers had to say about Maury’s administrative approach. I heard loud and clear that there were issues of trust, lack of resources, switching initiatives on a dime, and a need for truly aligned and supportive professional development. That’s when I knew I had to eliminate the top-down approach that the district had taken in the past (and many districts employ) and go through a process to determine our Keys to Success.…Read More
Kids Discover Online unveils custom assessments feature
Kids Discover, a provider of engaging science and social studies curriculum, announced that its interactive digital library, Kids Discover Online, now includes custom assessment capabilities. Kids Discover Online enables educators to mix and match material from science and social studies to facilitate students’ exploration of big ideas through cross-curricular learning. The newly added Assessments tool gives educators full control to create, distribute, and assess custom quizzes, tests, and homework assignments directly within the platform.
The Assessments feature includes more than 5,000 pre-built questions covering more than 1,200 science and social studies topics. Question types vary to include discussion prompts, short answer, multiple choice, and true/false. Educators can save content to their Classroom and have questions specifically corresponding to a given article automatically populate the question bank.
“It is so important that our users know we listen to their feedback and requests. They are our best source of information on how to continue making our solution the absolute best for them and their students,” said Ted Levine, the president and CEO of Kids Discover. “With pre-built questions, customization features, automated grading, and Gradebook tracking, teachers will now be able to use our science and social studies content to accurately assess their students’ knowledge and understanding within those subjects.”…Read More
Future Ready Schools heralds school librarians as leaders
New project highlights critical role school librarians play in supporting Future Ready goals
Future Ready Schools (FRS), led by the Alliance for Excellent Education (the Alliance) in partnership with the U.S. Department of Education, announced Future Ready Librarians, an expansion of the FRS initiative aimed at positioning librarians as leaders in the digital transformation of learning.
The FRS initiative helps district leaders recognize the potential of digital tools and align necessary technologies with instructional goals to support teaching and learning.
“In today’s digital world, the school library has evolved from a place to merely check out books to one that offers opportunities for collaboration, project-based learning, and online access,” said Alliance for Excellent Education President Bob Wise. “Similarly, librarians are now playing central roles in school leadership and working daily with students, teachers, and administrators. Through Future Ready Librarians, school librarians will be better equipped to support teachers in their transition to a digital learning environment while themselves becoming more future ready.”…Read More
Impero Software’s keyword library addresses online safety concerns
New terms will help schools flag potential instances of bullying, abuse, self-harm or radicalization
It makes the headlines often: A young man or woman in the U.S. ends his or her own life due to bullying or becomes radicalized and attempts to join ISIS or other hate groups. In both instances, adults in these youth’s lives are often left wondering what they could have done to intervene.
In an effort to protect students in this always-on and connected world, Impero Software, a remote monitoring and management software provider, has updated its keyword libraries to include a more comprehensive list of U.S. specific terms related to bullying, self-harm, radicalization and more, in order to alert educators so they can help students before a tragedy occurs. Impero will showcase the updated library in their booth #708 during the 2016 ISTE conference June 26-29, 2016 in Denver.
The updated library, combined with Impero Education Pro software, gives educators an edge on internet safety by helping them monitor and analyze student activity on school devices. The software alerts educators when a student uses words or phrases that match a term in the keyword library.…Read More
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