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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.

TEL Education Makes Learning Visible with Student Learning Dashboard

Students often struggle to make connections between what they learn in their college courses and the skills they need to be successful after graduation. TEL Education is launching the Student Learning Dashboard to help students clearly see and verbalize the 21st-century skills and competencies they learn across their general education courses and encourage students to take a more active role in their educational journey.

Students Lack Context and Ownership

According to TEL Education’s Executive Director, Dr. Rob Reynolds, “One of the biggest challenges in today’s education environments is that, for many students, learning has become a ‘black box’ of sorts. The purposes and processes of learning, the “why” and “what for,” are largely invisible and inaccessible to students.”

As a result, Reynolds says, students in secondary and postsecondary programs often lack a sense of context or connectedness in their learning. They are unable to answer critical, formative questions such as: What’s the big picture? Where am I on my learning journey? Why do I need to know this? How does what I’m learning today align with my interests and goals? How is what I’m learning in this course connected to what I am learning in other courses?…Read More

Gale In Context: For Educators Launches New Teacher Learning Center 

Gale, a Cengage company, is helping educators enhance skills for virtual lesson planning and online teaching. The company has launched Gale In Context: For Educators’ new Learning Center, an on-demand professional learning hub for finding, organizing and learning how to teach – virtually or in-person – using the content created within For Educators. Now teachers can take control of their own professional learning and find support as they work to use For Educators to drive student learning outcomes.

Studies show that lack of training and ongoing support around using technology for classroom instruction is a major pain point for educators, who increasingly rely on tools for teaching in remote, in-person or hybrid learning environments.[i] With the Learning Center, educators get on-demand training that provides immediate access to support and guidance, anytime, anywhere.

“In the last nine months, we have repeatedly seen educators given access to teaching tools without the support they need or the time for formal training,” said Paul Gazzolo, senior vice president and general manager at Gale. “The For Educators Learning Center enables teachers to take the lead, with on-demand training built right into their workflow to get up and running fast.”…Read More

321 Insight Offers Curated Collection of Videos to Support Parents

321 Insight, an organization empowering all school staff to meet the needs of today’s students, has curated a collection of videos from their ParaSharp Series to meet the needs of a new group of learners: parents. This series is intended to support parents and caregivers in their newfound roles of facilitating their children’s remote education, prompted by COVID-19.

Research has documented for many years the connection between parental engagement and student achievement. Nearly half of district administrators say that engaging parents in supporting student learning at home is an important tool in their arsenal to ensure that their students are well-prepared for the future. The parent-focused series aims to help parents manage stress so they’re better equipped to manage the at-home virtual learning experience.

Due to the unique school environment this year, 321 Insight gathered these videos to lend essential skills to parents, which will be available through a district-wide login. The Parent-Access account includes a video series that helps caregivers create structure in the learning environment, avoid power struggles, use interventions to support positive behavior, and teach and reinforce both academic and social emotional skills to students.…Read More

Lexia Core5 and PowerUp Helped Students and Teachers Succeed with Remote Blended Learning

The 2019-20 school year drew concern for students’ learning when the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to rapidly transition to remote learning. To understand the impact to student learning, Lexia Learning, a Rosetta Stone company (NYSE: RST), surveyed 3,500 educators and found that

during the educational disruption period brought on by school closures during the spring semester, 86% of survey respondents using Lexia® Core5® Reading (Core5) or Lexia® PowerUp Literacy® (PowerUp) with their students felt that the products helped them more efficiently support student needs and learning. Moreover, those students who were able to access Lexia Learning products during the disruption were able to spend more time using the products each week, resulting in increased progress.

“During the stress and uncertainty of COVID, teachers were able to not only provide continuity of instruction, but they were able to support students in making independent progress in these extraordinary times,” said Dr. Liz Brooke, chief learning officer of Rosetta Stone. “Districts need to remain vigilant in choosing blended learning tools that provide some method for monitoring student learning/progress and deliver results in a variety of learning environments. Providing products that are proven to drive progress in closing literacy gaps, and support educators with actionable, real-time data on student progress, whether used in the classroom or at home remains our top priority.”…Read More

Courses Designed to Address Learning Loss Due to COVID-19

While student regression during summer months is not uncommon under normal circumstances, the effects of the COVID crisis on student learning gains are expected to be even more pronounced. A recent NWEA study indicates that students may return to school in fall 2020 with only roughly 70 percent of the learning gains in reading and less than 50 percent of the learning gains in mathematics compared to a typical school year. In mathematics especially, students in some grades are expected to return to school “nearly a full year behind what we would observe in normal conditions.” Download study (pdf)

To address this disruption – and to promote readiness for the upcoming school year – Edgenuity has developed these new solutions to support students in mastering critical concepts and skills from the last school year while preparing for future courses.

  • Booster Courses focus on the critical concepts and skills students in grades 6-12 must master to be prepared for the next level course. Available for English language arts and math, these courses can also be used over the summer or at the beginning of the school year to help get students up-to-speed or simply for review.
  • Concept Recovery Modules focus on single standards coverage for recovery, remediation, and review, and are a flexible option for schools wanting students to focus on standards mastery and recovery. The modules can also be used any time of the year to support student success and address ELA standards covered in grades 6-12 and math standards covered in grades 6-11.
  • Pathblazer Courses for Summer School and On-Level Mastery for mitigating learning loss for students in grades K-6 who are working below grade level. These courses enable teachers to use Pathblazer’s instructional content to provide extra learning opportunities so students can refresh their learning and master skills and content covered during school closures.
  • Learning Loss Courses cover all standards that would have typically been addressed in the last 8-9 weeks of a school year and are an ideal option for students to complete the last quarter of their courses, especially in high school where credits may not have been earned. These shortened courses are available in each of the core subject areas in grades 6-12.

These solutions have also been designed to aid educators interested in offering remediation or review of course standards-based content in a quick and efficient format.…Read More

Renaissance is helping to support student learning outside of school

Working to support students during unexpected school closures, Renaissance is offering several free programs including myON, myON News, and Freckle that enable students to access literacy and math activities and to complete assignments remotely. To further assist educators, they’ve curated a list of additional free resources that includes implementation guides, learning activities, family letters, and the 2020 What Kids Are Reading report to make the best use of their Renaissance programs to support student learning outside of school.

Using your LMS for teaching and professional learning

Picture this: You roll out a new learning management system (LMS) for students, but all of your professional learning is either hosted on a different platform or conducted in person with notes shared via email afterward. Sound familiar?

It’s more common than you think, but separating the educator professional learning (PL) experience from the student learning experience can actually have a negative impact on both parties’ experiences in the long run.

Related: 3 reasons elementary schools should adopt an LMS…Read More

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Why combining assessments and LMS technology is essential

Assessments are more than just measuring how well students are doing in particular subjects in school, and they can actually improve student learning. In fact, frequent assessments can have a positive impact on a student’s education from kindergarten through college. While this may make some educators cringe, the reality is that test-enhanced learning, or testing as an aid to learning, has evidence of effectiveness dating back nearly 100 years (Roediger III, McDaniel, & McDermott, 2006).

Testing can help students better retain and recall what they studied, not only for the final exam, but as part of their overall educational development. This is the “testing effect,” or the phenomenon where taking a quiz can enhance later retention of studied materials, and its effectiveness has been demonstrated many times over. Students who take quizzes shortly after they study show better performance on a final test relative to students who only study without taking a practice quiz, even when no feedback is given on the quiz (Roediger III, McDaniel, & McDermott, 2006).

The testing effect, also known as retrieval practice, practice testing, or test-enhanced learning, needs a place in today’s modern learning. It can be implemented in modern learning management system (LMS) and assessment management system (AMS) technologies, like Gauge, to help improve student learning, from their first day in kindergarten to their last day of earning a university degree.…Read More

5 ways teachers can improve student learning based on current brain research

The brain is an experience-dependent organ. From our very earliest days, the brain begins to map itself to our world as we experience it through our senses. The mapping is vague and fuzzy at first, like a blurred photograph or an un-tuned piano. However, the more we interact with the world, the more well-defined our brain maps become until they are fine-tuned and differentiated. But each person’s map will vary, with some sensory experiences more distinct than others depending on the unique experiences and the clarity and frequency of the sensations he or she has experienced.

Educators can positively influence students’ learning by understanding how the brain is shaped by their early experiences—and how it can be rewired and reorganized to work more quickly and efficiently.

The Plastic Brain and the Critical Period…Read More

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Submit your boldest, biggest ideas for reimagining education

NewSchools Venture Fund is looking for educators, creators and visionaries who believe in the power and potential of reimagining learning.

NewSchools finds, funds and supports teams of educators and entrepreneurs whose bold ideas have the potential to achieve outstanding results for students. Nearly 18 months into a refreshed strategy, the organization is focused on investments and support in three specific areas:
Creating innovative schools
Building technology tools to better support student learning
Cultivating pipelines of diverse senior leaders in education

“Every young person deserves a school that meets them where they are and helps them develop and reach big goals,” said Stacey Childress, CEO, NewSchools Venture Fund. “Some in education believe our existing school models can do this if we all just try a little harder. We don’t see it that way. That’s why we support teams that are reimagining the learning experience to help students develop everything they need for long-term success.”…Read More