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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.

How student-created VR can enhance SEL and special ed

Quality social-emotional learning (SEL) and effective special education (SpEd) programming look remarkably similar. Each relies on a positive, safe learning environment and touts activities geared toward student strengths and weaknesses. Both types of programming facilitate a group experience where individual outcomes are designed to be disparate, be recorded, and used to track growth. Because these two types of programming are similar in philosophy, it should come as no surprise that both SEL and SpEd can be enhanced and expanded by innovative edtech solutions—most notably, student-created virtual reality (360 VR videos).

The benefits of VR

VR is proving to be an effective engagement tool in diverse ways: visiting museums around the world, blasting off into space, etc. But VR does not have to be limited to geography and science classrooms. By using student-created, perspective-taking videos, VR can be a powerful experiential tool that aligns with and augments both SEL and SpEd outcomes.

When students put on a headset to view these types of videos, they are stepping into another life, another story. They will find connection in the familiar and discover meaning in what they perceive to be different. Students then begin to develop perspective-taking skills, resulting in newfound levels of relationship skills (communication), self-management (emotional control in response to a story), and social awareness (empathizing with the storyteller). As a bonus, viewing VR films is an incredibly immersive experience, making student engagement—often a legitimate challenge—easier to achieve.…Read More

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Empower students to be future ready with these top 5 tools

Educators are constantly looking for resources and tools to get students engaged and excited about the content they are teaching. Take it a step further by empowering your students with designing and creating, and that engagement will automatically happen.

Empowerment means you are providing your students with the future-ready skills and experiences they can take with them into the future. They can take what they have learned and apply it to other experiences such as their own passions, interests, and share them with an authentic audience. Empowered students can change the world!

Related: 10 things teachers can do today to prepare students for the future…Read More

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5 ways to use AR and VR in the classroom

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are the new hot trends in education. But what does that mean and how is it going to benefit our students? AR superimposes information on our world through the use of a device; VR—a computer-generated environment in which we can interact and be immersed—is typically done with VR goggles and allows you to see a different world or space with 360-degree vision. These new tools may seem futuristic, but we are already living in the world of AR and VR.

Sometimes, technology is a cool factor. This is not a bad thing if the cool factor encourages students to follow their passion for learning or leads a student to a more innovative environment, but we need to keep technology’s instructional benefits at the forefront of our searches. Educators need to look at both AR and VR with a critical eye. We need to discover how this technology can help educate our students. We need to examine the use of this tech and know that we are not just endorsing a cool tool, but rather we are discovering new and innovative means to support our students’ learning.

The benefits of AR & VR are …?

Let’s consider some benefits of these trends. For starters, VR can totally immerse you in another location, another reality. What if we could place the students inside a cell for a science class, or on the road in ancient Rome while reading Julius Caesar? What if we could have students working in a virtual science lab using virtual chemicals that would react according to their natural elements? Talk about an experience like no other!…Read More

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10 K12 education trends to look for this year

We may technically be in the middle of a school year, but starting a new calendar year has us looking at and forecasting the new K12 education trends we expect to see in 2019.

In the first half of this school year, we’ve seen some of these ideas start to emerge, and we suspect that as we close out the academic calendar, they will become more prominent. In fact, we’re excited to see what role these trends will play going forward and into the 2019-2020 school year.

K12 trends in education

1. Increased use of immersive technologies

Virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR) have been creating new opportunities in teaching and learning. As the technologies become more affordable and available, we expect to see their usage increase dramatically in K-12 education. It gives teachers the ability to show their students aspects of history, travel, and STEM subjects in an immersive experience. Students will be able to take “field trips” across the world and gain hands-on vocational training through VR simulations without ever leaving the classroom. See how a district in Pennsylvania is investing in VR and AR.…Read More

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Lockhart Ed Tech

David Lockhart started teaching high school history in 2004. He had to find that thing that made his lessons stand out, and he saw it with technology. For the last four years, he has been an instructional technologist who coaches, trains, and speaks full time. Today, he teaches students to program, and his blog, Lockhart Ed Tech – The Big Guy in a Bow Tie Blog, covers all the important edtech topics: STEM, coding, makerspaces, G Suite, virtual reality….

If you’re looking for ways to introduce coding into your classroom, Google Docs add-ons, or tips for helping your students make videos, Lockhart has you covered. As a long-time instructor, his posts offer clear advice and helpful how-to details.…Read More

10 of the best websites for bringing history & social studies to life

History and social studies bad reputations for being boring. To many students, these subjects mean reading long-winded textbooks and memorizing incessant facts. They don’t necessarily see the importance of studying something that happened hundreds or thousands of years ago.

Getting students to really care about what they’re learning involves bringing the subject to life for them. Thanks to the internet, there are so many ways for students to experience the past. History and social studies feel more real as students participate in these interactive and immersive activities. The resources are endless, but here are our online charter school’s 10 favorite websites.

1. Google Earth
Much of history involves understanding the geography and settings for key events, and with Google Earth, students can explore those places. The free software lets them view the globe from a high altitude or zoom in on countries, towns, and even street corners. The overlay feature allows students to drop a map over a historical site, which gives more context to its significance. With Google Earth, students can also view 3D models of various sites and create “flyovers,” where they can use placemarks to “fly” from one point to another over a specific route.…Read More

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Why our district is investing in AI, AR, VR, and MR

For most of our students, it’s hard to imagine communicating without email or text message. The number of ways our students learn, share, and communicate has grown exponentially in the last few years. Each generation has sought to make the transfer of information faster and more efficient than the generation before them, but the world today is changing at a faster and more immediate pace than at any time in our history.

New technologies like Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Expeditions and Pioneer programs will be the next generation’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Voice technology allows for screen-free interactions and gives students much-needed life-skills practice in the areas of forming questions and focused listening. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) enables students to learn by doing, which increases student engagement, helps with retention, and enhances learning outcomes.

The power of Artificial intelligence (AI)
AI-powered, voice-controlled digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa have made their way into millions of living rooms but are just now being used in some classrooms. Unfortunately, a steady supply of misinformation and misunderstanding in the news media has made school leaders turn their backs on what may be the most cost-effective classroom technology of the last half-century.…Read More

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Immersive technology: Asset to the classroom or another tech fad?

Augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality—can immersive technology really benefit students and their learning, or are these just tech fads? In their recent edWebinar, Jaime Donally, author, speaker, and edtech consultant, and Michelle Luhtala, library department chair at New Canaan High School in Connecticut, explained that although these technologies aren’t the answer to everything, they are transforming learning and will continue to do so going forward. In addition, while the thought of using these tools can be exciting, schools need to first plan for successful integration into the classroom and curriculum.

First, Donally and Luhtala started by distinguishing the three types of immersive technology. AR takes a view of the real world and enhances it with something digital, while VR is a completely digital experience with no views of the real world. Donally added that having a viewer isn’t always necessary to experience virtual reality; a device on its own can be used too. Last, mixed reality combines augmented and virtual reality, having digital objects interact with objects in a view of the real world. When it comes down to it, Donally noted, it’s not as important to know which experience equals which kind of immersive technology, just that immersive technology is taking strides to be more functional for learning.

Students are using immersive technology to collaborate with each other in ways that are no longer limited by geographic areas or language barriers. In addition to improved collaboration, these tools can help build empathy. Students can experience anything from being in the position of an individual with autism or right in the middle of a hurricane. Schools can even use immersive technology for enhanced safety training and emergency preparedness. And looking toward the future, immersive technology is paving the way for learning in completely virtual classrooms. “360 environments are our future,” said Donally. “The way that we want to interact with people should be the way we interact normally without that technology. We’re seeing a transition into something that feels more realistic in that way.”…Read More

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How wearables, AR, and VR help students to develop SEL skills (part 2)

In my previous post, “How wearables, AR, and VR help students develop SEL skills (part 1),” I explored the ways in which wearables, augmented reality (AR), and virtual reality (VR) show promise in helping to cultivate social-emotional skills. All three technologies have been greeted with excitement by both the consumer market and many education stakeholders. While these technologies have great potential to support learning in new and novel ways, it is not a given that they will live up to the anticipation surrounding them. As expectations continue to build, educators can begin thinking through the various ways that they might be employed most effectively for learning.

KnowledgeWorks’ strategic foresight publication, Leveraging Digital Depth for Responsive Learning Environments: Future Prospects for Wearables, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality, explores how wearables, AR, and VR might be used to create responsive learning environments that can help with the cultivation of social-emotional skills. The publication proposes that educators think about possible uses of wearables, AR, and VR by first considering the types of environments these technologies can create and how they might support student learning. To help educators think about possibilities for these technologies in learning the paper presents a framework called the digital depth spectrum which consists of three kinds of spaces:

  • Enhanced physical spaces alter the physical world by applying a thin layer digital information capture, sharing, and feedback.
  • Hybrid spaces use multiple digital layers and more extensive computer-generated content, connectivity, and experiences to enable experiences that have a higher degree of digital immersion but which are still anchored in physical space.
  • Fully digital spaces provide full immersion in digitally created environments with little reference to physical space.
…Read More

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4 ways AR/VR can transform your lesson plan

The post-1990’s generation, Gen Z, doesn’t remember a world without digital technology. In fact, the children of millennials, born after 2010, are sometimes described as Generation Alpha. They are poised to be the most tech-savvy demographic to date, with a pathway to success that is largely shaped by video, e-books, podcasts, voice command, and the advent of virtual reality (VR) headsets and augmented reality (AR).

As our business and personal lives increasingly merge with the digital environment, the progression to a more technologically focused model in the classroom is gaining momentum. This trend is reflected in the growing demand for VR and AR applications as equipment becomes cheaper and easier to use while proving its value as an educational tool.

Even though technology has allowed knowledge to be more easily attained for more people, there are roadblocks to learning that must be surmounted. Traditional teaching methods too often focus on providing facts and delivering large amounts of information. The result? A bored, disengaged room of students who are not sure about what they are learning and why.…Read More

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