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.

How two districts tackle the digital equity gap

Students expect easy and immediate access to technology tools and high-speed internet in schools, and recent research shows that 99 percent of school districts are offering enough bandwidth to support digital and mobile learning in classrooms. But the digital equity gap isn’t so easily solved.

While many schools have reliable high-speed internet access, many students leave school and go home to unreliable internet access, or no internet access at all. This means that even if students have a school-issued take-home device, or a device of their own at home, they have no internet.

Some districts are hoping to close this digital equity gap by giving students take-home Wi-Fi hotspots with filtered, district-provided internet access. Kajeet‘s SmartSpot is one such example. Kajeet’s SmartSpots are filtered mobile hotspot devices designed to give students safe wireless internet connections. Kajeet partners with five major U.S. wireless networks to offer coverage.…Read More

eSchool News launches Digital & Mobile Learning Guide

We are excited to bring you the latest in the eSchool News Guides series. eSchool News Guides are full of resources, tips, trends, and insights from industry experts on a variety of topics that are essential to the classroom, school, and district.

The November Guide, the eSchool News Digital & Mobile Learning Guide, offers expert insight on the reasons digital and mobile learning support students’ academic achievement and build the skills they’ll carry with them into the global economy. In the guide, we take a look at the various factors present in successful digital and mobile learning initiatives. Plus, we’re giving you tips to incorporate more digital resources into your instruction.

Have you dreamed of using more digital tools and resources in your district’s classrooms, but don’t know where to look for those resources? In the eSchool News Digital & Mobile Learning Guide, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most popular digital learning apps and websites. Do you want educators throughout your district to understand just how much digital equity impacts students? We explore this issue, which is vital to digital and mobile learning.…Read More

3 must-haves for a mobile learning environment

Gary Lambert: Wi-fi at home and on the bus

Beekmantown (NY) Central School District, a rural district of 2,070 students, was on a mission to be the most progressive educational institution in the area. When funds were earmarked for school wi-fi, we wanted to harness the Internet to provide a world-class education for every student in this district.

Our initiative to address digital equity issues began with the rollout of Kajeet SmartSpots for students who needed home Internet access. In the four years since we had started our 1:1 program, the number of students without Internet has dropped from 30 percent to 10 percent because parents saw the benefit for their kids and made it a priority to get connected. For that 10 percent who still don’t have Internet, we had an easy-to-use solution.…Read More

Teachers may not be so hot on students’ use of digital devices for learning

Close to half of teachers (42 percent) in a Gallup poll say they think digital devices have a “mostly helpful” impact on students’ education, but they have less positive views of devices’ impact on physical and mental health.

Thirty percent of teachers in the March 5-12 poll say digital devices are neither helpful nor harmful to students’ education, and 28 percent say devices are mostly harmful.

Fifty-five percent of surveyed teachers say digital devices have a “mostly harmful” effect on students’ physical health, and a resounding 69 percent of teachers say students’ digital device use has a mostly harmful impact on their mental health.…Read More

5 questions we should be asking about student screen addiction

Numerous voices have emerged in the last two years to warn us about the effects of digital screen addiction on children. These voices include Adam Alter in his book “Irresistible”, Nicholas Kardaras in his book “Glow Kids”, Jean Twenge in her Atlantic Monthly “iGen” article, Delaney Ruston in her film “Screenagers”, and Anderson Cooper in his 60 Minutes “Brain Hacking” segment.

They have told us that our screens are as addictive as any drug, that they fragment children’s attention, consume an inordinate amount of their time, isolate them from others, reduce the time they spend exercising, cut into their sleep, reduce the quality of their study and learning, diminish their cognitive functioning, and make them anxious and depressed.

They have told us that tech companies have a deep understanding of the mechanisms of screen addiction, and that they use this understanding to make apps super-addictive. Facebook co-founder Sean Parker affirmed this point in November during an interview with Axios in which he said that Facebook was all about “…how do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible (by) exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. We understood this consciously, and we did it anyway.”…Read More

How school IT pros can use BYOD principles to ace the BYOA test

Just when school IT administrators thought they were on level ground after wading through the murky waters of BYOD (bring-your-own-device), a new challenge has emerged.

BYOD has led to the burgeoning popularity of BYOA (bring-your-own-application). Students and teachers alike are now using their own apps, on their own devices, for their own educational purposes. Video streaming, word processing, and other online learning tools are all apps, and they’re increasingly being used to both supplement and even replace traditional forms of learning in all grades and education levels.

BYOA presents a number of IT challenges. In addition to the strain that applications and data usage can put on school networks, users will undoubtedly be using unauthorized apps that may compromise network security. School administrators will need to do double-duty. They must make sure that their networks are running seamlessly, while locking them down to ensure unerring security, all without compromising the user experience.…Read More

6 tips for making the most of your Chromebooks

Before my second year of teaching, my principal suggested that I pilot a class set of 35 Chromebooks in my ninth- and 11th-grade English classes. In exchange for exclusive use of this Chromebook cart, I agreed to provide professional development on the Google for Education platform to the rest of our small staff and to simply use the devices in my classroom every day.

I was ecstatic about the possibility of transforming my classroom into a nearly paperless learning environment. I knew the potential for creativity, differentiation, and student-directed learning that one-to-one Chromebooks would offer my teaching, and I was lucky to have an administration that supported experimentation and innovation.

However, with more than 80 percent of my students qualifying for free and reduced lunch and a majority lacking access to computers at home, I worried about the feasibility of training them to use technology effectively. I didn’t want the introduction of technology to derail the respect and order I had worked hard to establish in my diverse and sometimes difficult classroom.…Read More

App of the Week: Using video for reflection

Ed. note: App of the Week picks are now being curated by the editors of Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. Click here to read the full app review.

Recap: Video Response and Reflection for Education

What’s It Like? 

Recap is a video response and reflection app that allows students to record short videos (or typed text) in response to teacher prompts. Recap is designed for formative assessment, but it feels very informal and conversational — which is an asset. Video reflections offer teachers a new way to check for understanding, personalizing questions for students and assessing their reflections, and give students a perhaps more engaging mode for demonstrating learning.…Read More