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 Owen J. Roberts School District made the remote transition

That COVID “where were you when” moment from last March is still fresh in Paul Sanfrancesco’s mind. Watching neighboring districts announce closures and realizing his own faculty would be stranded at home, contingency plans were hatched and devices were launched to prep students for remote learning.

And while no one could have been completely prepared for what has since developed, schools in the Owen J. Roberts School District (OJRSD) were already using several learning management tools that eased the transition. They also continue to learn new techniques and strategies as all schools everywhere move into the unknown.

Sanfrancesco is Director of Technology for OJRSD. The district, located in northern Chester County, Pennsylvania, comprises five elementary schools, one middle school, and the Owen J. Roberts High School. The student population for the entire district is around 4,800 students. Sanfrancesco teaches as a professor in the Graduate Education Department at Saint Joseph’s University, Philadelphia, PA and Neumann University, Aston, PA. He was named CTO of the Year by the Pennsylvania Association for Educational Communications and Technology and one of the “20 to Watch” educators by the National School Boards Association for his work in IT.…Read More

How we found budget for student programs in our printers

Demographics

Hatboro-Horsham School District, located in suburban Philadelphia, has a strong history of academic excellence. Serving approximately 5,000 students, the district provides education from grades K-12.

It has received blue ribbon honors from both the Pennsylvania and United States Departments of Education. Hatboro-Horsham’s schoolboard, parents, teachers, and staff are committed to moving into the future of education.…Read More

30+ new tools and services we saw at ISTE 2019

Another ISTE has come and gone–were you in Philadelphia for ISTE 2019? If not, don’t worry–we’re highlighting some of the newest and most innovative edtech tools we saw at the show.

Coding and robotics (check out our ISTE 2019 robotics round-up), social and emotional learning, and building employability skills were at the top of the many trends and focus areas highlighted during the conference.

It was nearly impossible to see and attend everything the conference had to offer, and many educators who couldn’t attend followed keynotes with the #ISTE19 hashtag (they also threw in a #NotAtISTE tag for good measure).…Read More

3 winning characteristics of a school STEAM program

I started my career at The Shipley School, an independent K-12 school located in the suburbs of Philadelphia, at an innovative and exciting juncture. In 2014, Shipley was starting an engineering course from scratch, and having spent several years in the industry as an engineer and several more as a math and science teacher in Philadelphia-area schools, I jumped at the opportunity to pioneer a new program as an Upper School (grades 9-12) teacher.

At the same time, Shipley was making great strides to build out its STEAM program, which is similar to a STEM program. It includes science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses, but also has an added focus on the arts. A STEAM program offers a more holistic approach to education than STEM, marrying subjects that traditionally have been separate–like arts and engineering.

From formalizing plans to create a “MakerSpace” outfitted with 3-D printers to incorporating STEAM projects in classrooms across disciplines, these initiatives underscored Shipley’s mission of developing a love of learning in each student and preparing them for whatever may come beyond the confines of the classroom after high school and college.…Read More

Erased answers on tests in Philadelphia lead to a three-year cheating scandal

The first sign that something was wrong appeared more than two years ago when a company grading student tests from Philadelphia noticed that erasures from wrong to right answers showed what investigators delicately called “statistical evidence of improbable results,” The New York Times reports. Pennsylvania began an investigation, eventually instructing the school district to look into improprieties at 19 schools. Over the course of a year, the district found disturbing patterns in parts of the system that resulted in three principals being fired last week for test cheating in one of the largest such scandals in the country…

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