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.

ParentSquare Releases Back-to-School Resources, Including Updated Checklist for Successful Home-School Communications

Santa Barbara, CA — The summer break gives district and school administrators time to evaluate the efficacy of the approaches they used in the previous academic year and create new strategies as needed. To help educators increase the support that both students and teachers receive from family engagement, ParentSquare, the award-winning unified school-home engagement platform for K12 education, has compiled resources for improving school-home communications in the upcoming school year.

The primary resource is the company’s updated “Back-to-School Checklist For Successful School-Home Communications,” a comprehensive list for organizing and implementing critical tasks. Based on ParentSquare’s experience of working with thousands of schools and districts for more than a decade, the checklist includes:

  • 4 steps to help readers take stock of what’s working and where to improve
  • 5 ways to benchmark your processes and plans against K12 best practices
  • 6 items to include in your annual communications plan
  • 6 set-up or administrative tasks
  • 7 key launch activities to start your year off right

The checklist also includes a “Other Back-to-School Tasks” section where users can add items that are specific to their school or district.…Read More

3 ways to improve access to speech-language therapy

Schools today are facing a harsh reality: there is a chronic shortage of qualified speech-language pathologists (SLPs). As an SLP and clinical director who has worked with school districts across the country, I’ve watched this problem grow over the years. This, compounded with large amounts of paperwork and high caseloads, makes it difficult for SLPs to manage their workload, contributing to many students not getting the services they need.

Despite long-term efforts made by school administrators to help students and SLPs surmount service barriers, it’s clear that in-school speech-language therapy initiatives could still use a boost.

Here are three things administrators can do to improve student access to speech-language therapy.…Read More

From the classroom to the office: What we can learn from educators entering the edtech workforce

Many educators have left the school environment to join edtech companies, seeking new ways to serve students while solving for the shortcomings they felt in the school-based workplace. How has it worked out, and what have we learned?

The experience has shifted the equilibrium in the corporate world, as edtech companies tap into a larger talent pool and it has been eye-opening for former educators as they bring their expertise to the table in new ways. It has also provided valuable insights for school administrators seeking to improve their retention of teachers.

Insights for school administrators…Read More

4 key ways schools can strengthen and advance cybersecurity strategies

In a 2022 survey, 72 percent of the participating school administrators responded that cybersecurity was either a priority or high priority for their district leadership and local school boards. However, only 14 percent of the respondents said their district was very prepared for a cyberattack event.

This alarming disparity between prioritization and preparedness is indicative of the challenges school districts are facing pertaining to cybersecurity. As the Director of Technology at Maconaquah School Corporation located in north-central Indiana, I know firsthand that implementing a proactive cybersecurity posture is a difficult and time-consuming–yet necessary–process. School districts are prime targets for hackers; therefore, we must be prepared.

In our own school corporation, we have adopted four key practices that enable us to continuously strengthen and advance our cybersecurity mitigation and prevention strategies.…Read More

Track It Forward Announces New Community Service Directory Feature

OAKLAND, Calif. – Track it Forward, a leader in volunteer time tracking software, is excited to announce the launch of its newest school-focused feature, the Community Service Directory. The Community Service Directory is designed for schools and school clubs and allows administrators to help match students with verified volunteer opportunities in the community.

Students can browse their school’s custom directory to find verified volunteer
opportunities and contact the organizer, all through their Track it Forward account!
School administrators and club advisers can build this custom directory by sharing a link with community organizations. The community organizers can then submit opportunities to the directory with all the necessary information and prerequisites.

Administrators can review each opportunity before it is posted to the Community
Service Directory, which means students will only have access to approved
opportunities for their school. This can improve the student volunteer experience
because students can easily find verified opportunities, which can increase volunteer hours while decreasing inaccurate reporting. …Read More

Cook Center for Human Connection Offers up to $100,000 in Matching Grants for School Calm Rooms

Salt Lake City — The Cook Center for Human Connection, a nonprofit dedicated to mental health and suicide prevention, launched today at the Mental Health Summit, co-hosted with the America Association of School Administrators, the Calm Room Grant to enable schools to create an in-school safe space for students to reset when they feel anxious, stressed, overwhelmed, angry, or frustrated.

The Cook Center is offering a nationwide matching grant of up to $5,000 per school for up to 20 schools to create a Calm Room in their building. A calm room is a supportive therapeutic environment for students to go where they can focus on self-calming efforts and learn to self-regulate their bodies and their emotions. An important component of an overall mental health approach, calm rooms feature quiet spaces with low-stimulation decor and fixtures, soft furniture and carpet, and other materials that reduce stress and foster positive coping techniques.

“More and more schools are developing calm rooms as part of a strategy to improve student well-being based on new psychological research,” said Cook Center CEO Anne Brown. “We are thrilled to offer the grant program to expand these efforts to more schools across the country and help them address student mental health, which has become one of the most critical issues of our time.”…Read More

Vector Solutions Adds Cybersecurity Awareness Courses to its Suite of Online Training Programs for Schools

Tampa, FL – More than 100 school districts are victimized by cyber criminals each year. To help school administrators and staff members protect their school networks and reduce the likelihood of sensitive data falling into the wrong hands, Vector Solutions, the leading provider of training and software solutions to help schools make their operations and communities safer, smarter, and better, has created a set of online cybersecurity awareness training courses. The courses address topics such as creating a cybersecurity culture, preventing social engineering attacks, laws and compliance, best practices, and more. The courses will be available starting Oct. 1, 2022.

“School districts, like many other institutions, are moving more of their operations online – everything from student records management, to administrative functions, to curriculum and instruction. This can help improve efficiency, but it can also increase the risk of cybercrime,” said Rob Buelow, head of product for education at Vector Solutions. “Our goal is to help keep schools safe and operational, and our new courses will help school leaders and employees understand these risks and how to protect their systems and their data.”

The cybersecurity courses are:…Read More

One way to address student mental health? Bring the clinic to school

This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters.

Many Michigan school administrators say they’ve often served as stand-in public health officials during the pandemic. So it’s no surprise that districts across the state are eager to get some backup from a program that opens clinics in school buildings.

School-based health centers make it convenient for students to leave class and walk down the hall for therapy, a medical checkup, or a dental appointment. While the first centers in Michigan opened decades ago, policymakers have renewed interest in them in the wake of COVID and the ongoing student mental health crisis.…Read More

Introducing a new State and District Data Validation Tool for SKYWARD® Users

KALAMAZOO, Michigan – APRIL 6, 2022 – Level Data, Inc. announces a new suite of data validation tools for districts using the Skyward brand Student Information System (SIS). Level Data is a privately-held SaaS Company working with over 1,200 school districts and more than 5 million students using their data validation, data integration and reporting products.

Public School Administrators and student data specialists everywhere understand that submitting accurate data to federal and state agencies is absolutely essential for their district to receive all the funding they are entitled to from many government sources. State submission specialists at school districts are under significant pressure to secure all the funding they possibly can to bolster their local budgets.

Also of critical importance, data-driven decision-making has proven to be key in providing the highest quality of education to students. These decisions that can positively affect curriculum and other strategies are only as good as the quality of the underlying data. Simply put, districts that do not actively focus on maintaining the highest quality data face a substantial performance and economic disadvantage.…Read More

Extron NAV & Streaming Systems Serve the Chef for St. Helena High’s Culinary Program

Anaheim, California (December 22, 2021) – St. Helena High School is a top-ranked institute of learning in California’s Napa Valley wine region. The county is filled with luxury hotels and Michelin-starred restaurants, such as The French Laundry. Because of this wealth of fine dining and high-end accommodations, the high school’s culinary classroom received a new AV system that enhances instruction on-site as well as for students attending from home. The school administrators brought in E.R.I.C. Low Voltage Services to design and program and Consolidated Networks Corporation to integrate a NAV Pro AV over IP system, along with the SMP 111 streaming media processor and other products from Extron. “Integration of Extron’s NAV Pro AV over IP system and the SMP 111 streaming processor lets the students at home be on the same page as those in the classroom,” says Brian Baesler, Program Manager at Consolidated Networks Corporation. “This makes the AV system just what the chef ordered.” St. Helena High’s culinary classroom includes six full commercial kitchens, and the instructor is Chef Karl Turner III. Originally, the students gathered around the outside of one kitchen to watch the professional chef prepare and plate the gourmet dishes. Now, a NAV Pro AVoIP system ties three broadcast-quality 4K HDMI PTZ cameras to the existing 55” displays, as well as provides content to the streaming system. An Extron NAV E 101 encoder mounted with each camera shares video from the chef’s grill/range station and the two food preparation stations. A fourth camera and encoder are being installed for a heads-on view of the chef at work. The chef’s PC and a TLP Pro 1225TG 12″ Tabletop TouchLink Pro Touchpanel are installed on a shelf beneath one of the prep tables, protecting them from heat and splashes. The PC is connected to an Extron NAV E 201 D wallplate HDMI encoder. To support the PC’s USB signals, an Extron MediaPort 200 HDMI and Audio to USB Scaling Bridge converts USB to HDMI. The bridge enhances the computer-sourced content for the students attending class from home.  The SMP 111 streaming media processor captures and distributes the camera feeds and other resources for selectable live streaming. Five Extron transmitters stream AV signals over the 1 Gbps Ethernet network. An Extron NetPA U 1004 power amplifier with Dante and DSP 100 watts per channel drives the 70 V distributed audio system. From concept to commissioning, the entire project was completed in two weeks. CNC credits this in part to Extron’s well-designed products and the support engineers. The administration is quite pleased with the success of the AV system upgrade in the culinary classroom, and Chef Turner III is happy with how easy it is to use. To read the full St. Helena High School Culinary Classroom case study, click here. Extron – The AV Technology Leader Every day, millions of people around the world are having their experiences enhanced by Extron audiovisual signal processing, distribution, and control solutions. We design advanced technologies to create better looking images, higher quality sound, systems that are easier to control and work more reliably. Our powerful asset management tools are helping technology professionals efficiently manage large numbers of audiovisual systems deployed throughout their enterprises and institutions. Extron AV technology solutions serve the diverse needs of organizations around the world and are deployed in a wide variety of corporate, educational, government, healthcare, retail, and entertainment applications. To learn more about Extron, click here. Extron®, NAV®, MediaPort®, and TouchLink® are registered trademarks of Extron. Dante® is a registered trademark of Audinate Pty Ltd.