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.

A ‘Brilliant’ way to learn STEM

Every now and then, a new resource comes along that’s worth a second–or third, or fourth–look.

You might feel that way about Brilliant–a site that helps users learn not through lecture videos, but through hands-on, interactive learning.

Brilliant works by helping learners of all ages master content instead of simply memorizing. It also provides instant feedback so that learners can improve their knowledge through problem solving. Struggle is part of Brilliant’s instructional strategy, because the path to learning STEM isn’t necessarily 100 percent easy.…Read More

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VHS Learning Announces 2021 College Scholarship Winners

Boston — June 8, 2021 —Nonprofit VHS Learning today announced the winners of its 14th annual college scholarship program. In 2020, VHS Learning awarded a total of $5,000 in scholarships to 12 recipients. This year, the nonprofit increased its scholarship investment to $6,500 and the number of recipients to 15 students.

Two students each won $1000 scholarships, five earned $500 scholarships, and eight students were awarded $250 scholarships. All scholarship recipients created videos that answered the scholarship program’s question for this year: “Please describe the skills you have learned in your VHS Learning course that you feel will be helpful in college or your career, and why.”

One of the $1,000 scholarship winners, Selina Tran from Fontbonne The Early College of Boston, took AP Computer Science Principles, AP Computer Science A, and AP Statistics. In her video, she stated that what she learned from those courses would help her in her planned future career in artificial intelligence research as well as in life. “Not only will I be able to better analyze situations, but I can also create better predictions for myself in the real world and put my problem-solving skills to the test,” she said.…Read More

Edthena Makes it Easy to Blur Teaching Videos with New Feature

In a physical classroom, it’s easy to move the camera to hide details. It’s quite a bit harder when teaching is Zoom-style or hybrid.

The rise of teaching in virtual spaces has increased the need for teachers to be able to hide parts of their classroom videos, such as students’ names, for privacy reasons. Now, Edthena is making it easy for teachers to blur teaching videos before sharing with peers and coaches for instructional feedback on the award-winning platform.

“While sharing videos inside Edthena is always safe and secure, there are times when masking student information is important – maybe a teacher wants to share a video of teaching as an example across the district and the student name should be redacted,” said Adam Geller, founder and CEO of Edthena. “Our new platform functionality helps teachers quickly and easily blur whatever areas of their videos they need, with no extra programs or extension needed, so they can focus their time on self-reflection and collaborative PD.”…Read More

New 10,000 ANSI Lumen 3LCD Projector Expands Laser Line for Large Scale Displays

Today, Maxell Pro AV announced the expansion of its laser projector lineup with the 4K ready MP-WU8101 3LCD laser projector. The new high brightness 3LCD projector is designed to deliver stunning displays for digital signage applications as well as large lecture halls, conference rooms, auditoriums and museums. An extension of Maxell’s laser projector line, the MP-WU8101 comes backed by a generous 5-year/20,000-hour warranty.

The MP-WU8101 projector comes 4K ready— designed with 4K signal input on HDMI, HDBaseT and Display Port input terminals for HD and 4K images and videos providing an enhanced viewing experience. In addition, the 10,000 ANSI lumen brightness creates stunning displays in spaces where natural and ambient light is unavoidable.

With up to 50,000 hours light source life on Long Life 2 mode, the MP-WU8101 provides vivid, colorful projection— and with laser light source, mercury lamps and lamp replacement become obsolete, resulting in lower maintenance costs and an eco-friendlier projection investment.…Read More

Pandemic Leads to a Significant Increase in Streaming Video Usage That is Expected to Continue, Study Shows

As more people stayed at home during 2020 due to the pandemic, they were streaming a lot more videos for reasons beyond just entertainment. This trend is expected to continue over the next three years, prompting many public libraries to transition their budgets from DVDs to streaming and prepare for changes and challenges.

This finding, along with others, was revealed in a recent survey conducted by Kanopy, a company committed to streaming high-quality films that inspire, educate and entertain to libraries around the globe. More than 730 librarians, primarily in the U.S., participated, and a full report is freely available to anyone who registers here.

“Kanopy is extremely grateful to the hundreds of librarians who took the time and effort to participate in our survey,” said Kanopy CEO Kevin Sayar. “Their invaluable input will help inform our product development and allow us to better serve the public library community and the patrons they serve.”…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

5 cybersecurity life skills to teach all year

If a student from your school had someone knock on their front door, ask for personal information and offer to give them a treat in exchange for that information, what would happen? It depends on the child, but what you know for certain is that your district or school has been teaching stranger danger since that child was in kindergarten, so the odds are good that the interaction would raise a red flag for the student.

Why is it, then, that students are posting videos and photos on TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat without any concern that their school name or home address is displayed prominently in the background?

Related content: 10 cybersecurity must-dos…Read More

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The Character Tree Expands its Offering to Kindergarten

The Character Tree, an online resource that teaches character development though engaging videos and downloadable activities, has expanded to offer videos and content specifically for kindergarten-aged students. The videos are short and feature puppet characters sure to appeal to the youngest learners while they teach lessons on classroom citizenship such as hand-raising, full-body listening and other skills that are important for children who are just starting school.

A 2020/21 subscription to The Character Tree includes 36 episodes, 18 original songs, 36 sets of parent’s guides and 36 sets of useful supplemental resources. The videos are appropriate for use in classrooms, especially in live virtual classrooms, child care centers and for parents at home. To sign up, visit: https://charactertree.com/subscriptions/.

“Our first set of videos this year focused on students in grades 1 and 2 and we had such an amazing response that we are expanding to kindergarten,” said Bill Apperson, chairman of Apperson which created The Character Tree. “These lessons will help young students make that tough transition to school and teach positive character traits that will serve them well into the future.”…Read More

Aperture Education Partners with Move This World to Provide Additional Social-Emotional Learning Strategies

Social-emotional learning (SEL) companies Aperture Education and Move This World have partnered to provide Aperture’s customers with additional resources to support the development of students’ social-emotional skills. Aperture customers can now access a sampling of short videos created by Move This World that help develop and strengthen students’ social-emotional skills such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making. The videos will be added to the hundreds of social and emotional learning Growth Strategies Aperture already offers through its DESSA Comprehensive SEL System.

“Move This World’s resources to help students identify, manage, and express their emotions completely align with our work so a partnership made perfect sense,” said Jessica Adamson, CEO of Aperture Education. “We’re now able to offer additional strategies to our customers and get Move This World’s amazing videos in front of even more teachers and students.”

Aperture Education’s DESSA Comprehensive SEL System provides assessments to measure the social-emotional competence of students in grades K-12. Its Growth Strategies are research-informed social emotional learning interventions, lesson plans and activities created for teachers, by teachers for grades K-8. Once they administer the DESSA, teachers, counselors, and out-of-school-time providers can use the applicable strategies to help bolster SEL skills of students in areas in which they need additional support. The strategies can be administered at school or at home.…Read More

10 distance learning writing lessons

Editor’s note: A version of this article originally appeared on The Character Tree’s blog.

When we were just a couple weeks into distance learning, I started to really miss writing workshop time. Over the years, I’ve come to cherish this part of the school day and I know my little writers feel it’s a special time too! I became determined to find a way to bring the feel of writing workshop into the homes of my kindergartners.

As a result, I have been creating and recording writing lesson videos for my students. I have been assigning 2-3 videos a week for my students and since I have been doing this, I’ve received such positive feedback from my students and families about writing time being their favorite part of the at-home school day!…Read More

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