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.

District-created app improves the home-school connection

The eBackpack was developed using Microsoft SharePoint as the content management system.

Missouri’s Rockwood School District (RSD) aims to have all district parents as involved in their children’s education as possible. Toward that end, the district has developed a unique communications application that gives parents up-to-the-minute information about school events, as well as important district news, resources, and principal blogs.

For creating this innovative application, we’ve chosen the Rockwood School District as our “eSchool of the Month” for November/December. Here, Karl Weinrich, the district’s senior webmaster, describes the project and its results.

(Editor’s note: To nominate your school or district for our “eSchool of the Month” feature, and to read about past winners, go to: http://www.eschoolnews.com/eschool-of-the-month.)…Read More

Central High makes student achievement, tech access its top priorities

Central High's best ed-tech advice? "Ensure that everything you do is student-centered."

Philadelphia’s Central High School focuses on making its technology initiatives student-centered, with an emphasis on boosting achievement—and this focus has paid off in a big way.

Administrators, teachers, students, and parents are able to able to access grades, news, and pertinent communications instantly, and students have access to a wide range of applications to advance their learning. By strengthening the home-school connection, Central High is enhancing students’ chances of success.

For these reasons, Central High was chosen as our “eSchool of the Month” for October. Here, Brian Howland, a teacher and technology committee member, describes some of the school’s accomplishments and its keys to success.…Read More

CCSC keeps the focus on teaching and learning

Student performance and motivation have increased as a result of the administration’s and staff’s commitment to integrate technology into classroom learning.

Indiana’s Crothersville Community School Corporation (CCSC) recognizes that technology is an important tool for helping students embrace learning. The district has used creative solutions to finance its ed-tech priorities, and a wireless virtual desktop solution helps keep support time to as minimum, so IT staff can focus on applications for teaching and learning.

For these reasons and more, we’ve chosen CCSC as our “eSchools of the Month” for September. Here, Assistant Principal Drew Markel describes some of the district’s accomplishments and its keys to ed-tech success.

(Editor’s note: To nominate your school or district for our “eSchool of the Month” feature, go to http://www.eschoolnews.com/eschool-of-the-month.) …Read More

Opinion: When roommates were random

Today I am a college professor, and I am sad that most of my students will not experience what I did back when Mark Zuckerberg was in diapers, says Dalton Conley, sociologist, and dean of social sciences at New York University, for the New York Times. While the internet has made it easy to reconnect with the lost [friends] of our lives, it has made it a lot more difficult to meet them in the first place, by taking a lot of randomness out of life. We tend to value order and control over randomness, but when we lose randomness, we also lose serendipity…

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