Lightspeed Wins a T.H.E. Journal 2021 New Product Award

TUALATIN, ORE. (PRWEB) DECEMBER 09, 2021– Lightspeed, a leading provider of powerful instructional audio solutions, announces the company’s Topcat instructional audio system wins a T.H.E. Journal 2021 New Product Award, winning platinum in the “Classroom Audio Distribution/Sound Enhancement” category.

T.H.E. Journal’s  2021 New Product Awards honor the outstanding product development achievements of manufacturers and suppliers whose products or services are considered to be noteworthy in the transformation of education technology. Launched in 2020, the awards program recognizes leading product and services providers—like Lightspeed—in education. The 2021 awards program drew an impressive number of submissions.

Lightspeed’s Topcat, an all-in-one ceiling-mounted instructional audio system, produces an even distribution of sound throughout classrooms, ensuring students hear their teachers’ natural voices. The wireless audio integration makes installation simple and cost-effective for both new construction and existing classrooms. Plus, the Topcat now connects with life-safety systems ensuring building-wide communications are never missed.…Read More

ParentSquare Appoints Derick Sutton as Chief Financial Officer

Santa Barbara, CA — Dec. 6, 2021— ParentSquare Inc., provider of the premier unified school-to-home engagement platform for K-12, announced that Derick Sutton is joining the company as its Chief Financial Officer (CFO). In his new role, Sutton will lead the company’s accounting, finance, and human resources functions.

Sutton has extensive experience as a financial leader at high-growth technology companies. Before joining ParentSquare, he served as CFO for software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies such as Simplee (now part of Flywire Corporation) and SCI Solutions as well as the training solutions provider NAVEX Global (formerly Employment Law Training).

Sutton also held several executive roles at the financial software and SaaS company Intuit. As CFO of Intuit’s international division, he helped re-establish its small business accounting software market leadership. Additionally, Sutton served as the vice president of finance and investor relations for the biotechnology firm Codexis, contributing to that firm’s IPO.…Read More

Mental health is harder for everyone—practical solutions are critical

Schools are facing an enormous task in delivering mental health services to a growing number of students with urgent needs. Even before the pandemic, the gap in achievement levels due to mental health struggles was widening. The pandemic did not create this challenge; it only expanded the need.

Long-established approaches to addressing student mental health continue to be relevant today, but schools are at a moment of freshly examining how, where, and who is best positioned to tackle these challenges.

Recognizing both the new and the familiar in the challenges schools are facing…Read More

How to apply the 4 pillars of opportunity in literacy instruction

Consider this: 95 percent of students have the capacity to learn to read, according to the National Institutes of Health, yet only about 34 percent of fourth and eighth grade students read proficiently, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Is this disparity an achievement gap or an opportunity gap?

How we answer this question frames our thinking about solutions. If we look at the disparity as an opportunity gap, we are saying that all students have the same ability to achieve, but not all students have had the same opportunity to achieve.

Myriad opportunity gaps exist in the modern educational system—along with a pandemic that’s only widened these gaps—and are particularly prevalent among students of different races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic classes.…Read More

Sourcewell’s Technology Division Kicks off 2021-22 School Year with Launch of SpringMath and Proliftic

ST. PAUL, MINN. (SEPTEMBER 24, 2021)—

In an effort to extend the benefits of its evidence-based solutions to more schools and districts,  Sourcewell’s technology division is revamping the brand identity for its flagship products:  SpringMath (FKA Spring Math), a K-8 math intervention solution and Proliftic (FKA edSpring), a student data integration platform. Both offerings have a new website and will retain the same functionality and support via the Sourcewell Technology Advantage, ensuring educators and students are set up for success this back-to-school season.

“Inspired by the success of our district partners, we are investing in SpringMath and Proliftic–including refreshed branding and new, product-specific websites,” said Jamie Loken, Sourcewell Technology Managing Director. “We believe in the efficacy of these evidence-based solutions–and are actively working to extend the benefits to more students and educators.”…Read More

The right tech tools make for a safer classroom return

As schools all over the nation reopen their doors this fall, technology departments are looking at how best to accommodate not a newer normal, but a healthier, more collaborative long-term normal.

Unlike last year where temporary measures were put in place to help combat the spread of COVID-19 while trying to sustain learning, this year is markedly different, because the reality is: There’s no going back to the old way of doing things. Schools now must be ready to accommodate fluctuating health concerns without disruption to learning. A safe return to the classroom goes beyond social distancing, masks, and cleaning policies and leverages the latest classroom solutions to further support health measures–as well as new levels of immersive learning.

The best technology for doing this isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, tech managers and IT staff must balance budget, infrastructure, and capabilities requirements. An affordable starting point for almost every classroom is a wireless presentation system (WPS). These systems improve upon the traditional HDMI video matrix systems, which require an expensive infrastructure upgrade and cables that must be shared and cleaned.…Read More

EnviroKlenz Air Purifiers Create Safer Air Quality within Bergman Academy’s Classrooms

BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. (Sept. 14, 2021) –  EnviroKlenz, a leading innovator for indoor air quality solutions, is aiding in the safe return of Bergman Academy, an independent school located in Des Moines, Iowa, by installing its air purifiers in the school’s classrooms, activity rooms and common areas. 

Bergman Academy has provided quality education to students for the past 30 years, with a current enrollment of 300 children for the returning Fall semester. Ventilation is a top priority within mitigation strategies of schools nationwide, and Bergman Academy is no exception; the school’s immense dedication to delivering the upmost quality environment to its students and teachers has led the Head of School, Christie Stover, to search for the best technology for providing clean air amidst risks of airborne illness transmission.

“Our environment is one of the most significant things that we can control, and we know that we need to use a layered strategy for enhanced air quality,” said Stover, expressing how grateful she was for adding the investment of EnviroKlenz Air System Pluses to the school’s ventilation standards for classrooms and common areas. “Knowing that the EnviroKlenz technology is so powerful gives me a great deal of confidence that our environment is as safe and healthy as is can be.”…Read More

Nureva XT Classroom Solutions Extend In-room Experience to Remote Students

Calgary, Alberta — September 15, 2021 — Nureva Inc., an innovator in advanced audio conferencing solutions, announces Nureva® XT classroom solutions, a unique and highly integrated combination of audio, video, device management and product services designed specifically for educators who want the flexibility to extend the in-classroom experience to remote students. Easily combined with existing classroom technology products (such as projectors and displays), the solutions enable live participation of remote students, while also supporting full-classroom audio pickup – all via a single USB connection to the instructor’s computer. There are four Nureva XT solutions for standard-sized and large classrooms. Each combines a Nureva audio system (HDL300 for standard, Dual HDL300 for large) with the new Nureva CV30 classroom camera kit and a three- or five-year subscription to Nureva Pro, which includes advanced device management features in Nureva Console, 24/7 technical support, extended product warranty and advance replacement. Refer to the additional product details section below for more information on each solution component.

Nureva XT solutions support a variety of in-room and remote classroom scenarios and use cases, such as hybrid and HyFlex learning, and remote participation of guest speakers or students. They can be deployed and managed by a small IT team and are focused on ease of use and simplicity for instructors as they move from room to room – with a quick start-up experience and no lost class time. Each solution delivers a unique combination of full-room microphone pickup, in-room voice amplification, playback of audio content and front-of-room video coverage with auto tracking, camera presets and digital pan/tilt/zoom, allowing teachers to move around freely. Unlike complex, one-off solutions that are often not purpose-built for classrooms, have limited functionality, and require time consuming installation and maintenance, Nureva XT solutions bring together all this capability in an affordable package that is easy to install, set up, manage and scale. The solutions also overcome the limitations associated with webcams and all-in-one systems that were designed for small meeting spaces and have insufficient microphone pickup range for classroom environments. Each Nureva XT component has been thoughtfully designed and rigorously tested to work as an integrated classroom solution that is flexible, adaptive, future proofed and responsive to evolving needs. Using breakthrough Microphone™ Mist technology, Nureva’s unique approach to audio conferencing provides the flexibility to support multiple classroom layouts (including on-the-fly changes), various teaching approaches and learning styles, along with changing health and safety guidelines. In-room students can spread out, face any direction and move around the space as they talk. The first microphone and speaker bar to be certified for large Microsoft® Teams Rooms, the HDL300 system’s patented continuous autocalibration automatically adjusts to changes to in-room configurations, reducing the need for IT staff or technicians to visit learning spaces. In addition to Microsoft Teams, Nureva solutions integrate with other leading UC&C platforms like Zoom, Cisco Webex®, Lifesize® and many others to give students an exceptional remote learning experience.

“Today’s classrooms require the flexibility to support a wide variety of scenarios that involve the need for people outside the classroom to participate in learning sessions, whether they be guest speakers participating remotely or students joining the class from home, other classrooms or elsewhere,” said Nancy Knowlton, Nureva’s CEO. “We are excited to announce a full-featured classroom solution that is future proofed and offers the simplicity, flexibility and reliability that have become so critical in today’s education environments.”…Read More

6 ways to foster a growth mindset in your school community

The COVID-19 pandemic unfolded last year, slowly necessitating the need to bring about unprecedented social isolation and safety measures, in all aspects of daily life. One area that saw the maximum change in mindset was the education sector.

Overnight, all schools and universities closed the school buildings for their learners.

The educators began stretching their existing abilities, thriving on challenges and seeing failures as a heartening springboard for growth and getting back to find solutions. Slowly realizing that this was the ‘new normal’ to stay, the most imperative aspect for all schools was to build socio-emotional wellbeing and a growth mindset.…Read More

How to ensure classroom air safety during COVID-19

Ensuring classroom air safety is more critical than ever this year–and every school year in the foreseeable future. As we prepare for a return to in-person learning for the 2021-2022 school year, discussions continue to focus on how schools will keep students and faculty safe from airborne COVID-19 and other viruses and pathogens.

The COVID-19 Delta variant and other numerous variants have the potential to cause localized outbreaks beyond student and faculty, infecting both vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. This is a permanent challenge for school districts–one that requires proven, long-term, cost-effective solutions. Just cracking the classroom window or increasing the HVAC airflow in schools won’t cut it.

There are three primary air purifying solutions on the market today, each with many options within their categories: HVAC system upgrades, HEPA filtration systems, and UVC germicidal lighting systems. Understanding the pros and cons of each technology can be overwhelming for educators and administrators looking for the best choice to protect their staff and students.…Read More