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.

5 reasons to set up a coding program in your district

At Everett Public Schools, we’ve always had a robotics team at the elementary and secondary levels. Last year we were up to 50 robotics teams within the FIRST organization. During the shutdown, we went into a panic over how students wouldn’t be able to physically “touch” and work on the robots on campus anymore.

I didn’t want to lose our robotics stipend, nor did we want students to miss out on that learning during the shutdown. For help, we started searching for an online platform that would augment our in-person robotics curriculum.

We found what we were looking for in CoderZ and soon after, we shifted our entire robotics curriculum over to that platform. We weren’t sure how many students would want to log in from home voluntarily, but our participation levels have actually grown since the pandemic shut down in-person learning in March 2020.…Read More

Bolstering cybersecurity with Zero Trust

Like all other sectors, the pandemic expedited digital transformation in education. School districts and universities around the globe found themselves making years’ worth of changes rapidly, as the coronavirus shutdown resulted in a mad dash to a new, fully remote “normal.” As schools continue to make sense of distance learning strategies, it is imperative that they factor long-term cybersecurity considerations into their plans.

Each day since the pandemic began, educators and administrators are forced to confront systems that have seen an overwhelming and tremendous surge in usage. The process of implementing new e-learning technologies at scale created significant gaps in security. In fact, according to one report, “the average number of weekly attacks per organization in the academic sector increased by 30 percent July through August of 2019.”

Given the number of individuals involved in, and affected by, the education system, the idea of “move fast break things” may leave those who lack a proper cybersecurity infrastructure at a particularly high risk from cyber threats. Prioritizing cybersecurity in education has never been more pertinent.…Read More

INFOGRAPHIC: Are schools worrying about the shutdown?

infographicweek10-10resizedAs part of eSchool News‘ mission to engage our readers with current hot-button topics in education, the editors at eSN are including polls in our daily stories. From what you think about the affects of the government shutdown to implementing tablets in Pre-K, we want to know your thoughts!

View the infographic below to learn more about what your peers are thinking. And be sure to click through our daily stories for more polls–we’re fascinated by the results!

(The infographic is best viewed in either Chrome or Firefox. Want a larger view? Go to the link: https://magic.piktochart.com/output/595152-week10-10)…Read More