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.

Edsby Introduces ‘Perspective Analyze’ to Help Teachers Make Evidence-Based Instructional Decisions

ANDOVER, MASS (June 2, 2022) –  Edsby®, the award-winning social learning environment designed for K–12 education, today introduced  Perspective Analyze, helping teachers make informed decisions based on multi-dimensional assessment data. The new tool offers teachers visibility into several types of student assessments, integrating both learning evidence and gradebook scores within one place in the Edsby platform.

Edsby’s new Analyze view enables teachers to visualize student performance through a new lens to spot trends, patterns and areas of concern—helping teachers act on instructional decisions for individual students or groups of students. This new extension within Edsby classes gives teachers broader access to classroom-level analytics at no additional cost.

“I’m excited about this new feature as it will help teachers visualize data in new and powerful ways,” said Joe McRae, Math and Computer Science Program Area Leader at Lakefield College School. “It will help me assess students against course learning goals throughout the year and identify opportunities where students can improve. I look forward to building my assessments with this in mind next year.”…Read More

Tutoring marketplace offers on-demand learning

The social learning marketplace MindSpree is revamping the tutoring landscape by offering on-demand services nationwide.

The Arizona-based education technology company was founded in 2015 by Keith Rezendes after noticing the tutoring industry was not fulfilling the needs of many. As a former professor and veteran tutor, Rezendez wanted to create a place where students could receive the highest quality tutors for the best value.

“MindSpree is committed to education and student success,” said Rezendes. “By utilizing the sharing economy, MindSpree can utilize tutors across the United States to share their knowledge and expertise with all types of students who are eager to learn.”…Read More

How social networking in school can drive innovation

When students connect globally through social networking in school, they develop important skills, ed-tech advocates say.

Countries around the world are leveraging the power of social networking in school to prepare students for highly competitive workplace environments, and the U.S. education system could learn from some of those best practices, ed-tech experts say.

A conversation between two nationally recognized ed-tech advocates reveals that the United States, often ranked near the bottom of industrialized nations in terms of teacher preparation, can take more steps to “globalize” K-12 education. And that, in turn, could help with workforce development and innovation, they say.…Read More

Education in a social world

jigsawresized-150x150Prior to the industrialization of education, the education model was centered around a single-room school house consisting of one teacher with many students throughout many grades. The teacher was a facilitator of an instructional design that had students teaching each other. The younger students benefited from the knowledge of the older students and the older students benefited by reinforcing what they had learned, encouraging their mastery of a subject.

As populations moved from rural to urban communities during the Industrial Revolution, the education system also became industrialized–which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Schools were turned into factories and teachers began disseminating the knowledge. In fact, the new instructional design was purposely modeled after the factory to streamline learning. In the new factory model, students moved along from grade to grade and were imprinted with the required learning from the books and teacher of that grade. Let’s fast forward 100 years to today.

Today’s educational landscape…Read More