eSchool News

[Commentary] Products that make it easier for teachers to control students’ tablet computers and leave notes within the margins of online lessons are among the latest ed-tech innovations we’re highlighting.

1. Classroom-based control of tablets. TabPilot sells a program, called Tablet Manager, that offers many of these same features for monitoring, controlling, and provisioning Android-based tablets at the classroom level. It’s a cloud-based management system that “puts teachers in control of classroom tablets,” the company says -- allowing teachers to turn specific apps on or off for individual student devices or groups of devices.
2. An identity-based alternative to managing devices. Centrify offers schools an identity-based approach to managing who has access to what resources, rather than a device-based approach. The company says its cloud-based identity management system serves as both a platform for single sign-on functionality and an alternative to mobile device management (MDM) software.
3. Enhanced ‘Notes’ feature helps personalize online/blended learning. A few months after unveiling a new user interface that let teachers leave notes in the margins of online lessons and other course content, Odysseyware has refined this feature based on user feedback to make it more useful for both educators and students.
4. Self-paced online curriculum for middle school students. Fuel Education has introduced a self-paced online curriculum designed for middle school students as they transition through the challenging “make or break” years in their education, according to the company.
5. Another cloud hosting option for schools. Cloud server provider Infinitely Virtual has introduced a few cloud-based hosting plans aimed at schools and colleges.

Research suggests that students lose two to three months of grade-level equivalency in math skills over the summer, which affects their readiness for the new school year -- and this problem is more pronounced for students from low-income families.

This summer, students will have at least two new education technology services to offset summer learning loss -- and both will be offered to students at no cost.

AASA, the nation’s largest association for school superintendents, has partnered with TenMarks (an Amazon company) to reverse summer learning loss through an initiative called the TenMarks Summer Math Program. And EverFi, which offers online instruction on topics such as financial literacy and civic engagement to fill gaps in students’ education, has announced a new program called Verano Summer Learning. The program will deliver “bit-sized booster shots” of content to students during the summer months.

The low-income students who stand to benefit the most from online summer enrichment programs from companies such as EverFi and TenMarks are also the students who are least likely to have computers and Internet access at home -- a fact that Davidson readily acknowledges.

“We understand this issue and know that it [could] be an impediment to our success,” he said. “It is one of the reasons we are focusing on deploying low-bandwidth solutions for mobile phones, where the penetration is deeper for families in high-need communities. We are also building out our network of public facilities -- libraries, community-based organizations, and others that have the infrastructure [to serve these students].”

As school increasingly incorporate digital technologies and strategies in classrooms, school libraries are changing, too, becoming hubs of communication, research, and technology-enabled teaching and learning.

Sixty percent of librarians said they recommend and/or obtain Common Core-aligned instructional and resource material, 55 percent help teach students the skills required by the Common Core, 43 percent collaborate with teachers on instructional lessons aligned with the Common Core, and 30 percent help to ensure that technology infrastructure is adequate to support the Common Core.

Sixty-three percent of librarians rated expanding instruction on the use of digital resources as a high priority in the next two years, and 53 percent said the same of increasing access to digital content. School librarians also recommend a variety of technology for purchase. Thirty-seven percent of librarians recommend apps for purchase, 34 percent recommend subscription databases, 27 percent recommend tablets, and 26 percent recommend educational games, in addition to other technology recommendations.

Susan Kelly is excited about the possibilities when her school welcomes its first class of students this fall. Kelly is the vice principal of VINCI School in Ottawa, Canada, one of a series of new early learning schools that model the approach of VINCI Education: a hands-on blend of low-tech and high-tech instruction, guided by a skilled classroom teacher.

The tablets and curriculum come from VINCI Education, whose ClassVINCI solution includes more than 70 digital games and lessons and is available for purchase by other institutions. Each activity is rooted in cognitive science and is aligned with the Common Core State Standards.

Digital games are accompanied by a robust learning management system that teachers can use to schedule and assign specific activities for their students, Kelly said. And while the children are working on these activities, the software closely tracks and analyzes their progress -- giving teachers an easy way to see if their students have grasped the material.

“Teachers can see exactly how each child is doing -- how many times the children have attempted a lesson, and whether they were successful or not,” Kelly said. This allows teachers to hone in on concepts that are giving their students problems and offer more personalized, one-on-one support.

[Commentary] In early February, President Barack Obama made a $3 billion commitment to improve Internet access in the nation’s schools to meet the new technology standards required by Common Core online testing.

While this is no doubt cause for celebration, it marks the beginning of a very long road to fully realizing the benefits for education. Implementation of wireless infrastructure to support online testing will be a significant hurdle, as 70 percent of K-12 schools currently lack the wireless network performance or wired broadband Internet connectivity needed to make this a success, according to EducationSuperhighway.org. Compounding the problem is a new wireless standard, 802.11ac, which should be considered as part of any new infrastructure upgrade. Combined, these challenges are giving many school IT personnel a serious headache.

Here are five key steps that school administrators must take when building out their wireless networks:

1. Ensure proper application performance.
2. Plan for the right density of devices.
3. Anticipate peak usage.
4. Understand the changing landscape.
5. Future-proof for new WLAN standards.

As digital content becomes more commonplace in districts across the nation, some school leaders and educators wonder: what’s involved in a digital content transition?

Creating accessibility and digital opportunity in districts is crucial, said Wanda Creel, superintendent of Barrow County Schools in Georgia. Using videoconferencing technology, Barrow County students connect with Georgia Tech professors throughout the school year to work through labs and have conversations. Those same professors work collaboratively with district teachers to create and deliver digital instructional material. While 60 percent of students met or exceeded standards in a middle school science class, now 100 percent of students meet or exceed state standards. And while 12 percent met the “exceed” standard on a state test in years past, now 85 percent meet that same standard.

Digital content is driving the creation of repositories where educators can locate resources tied to standards, content areas, and grade levels -- because wading through online content to find one perfect resource is time-consuming and exhausting.

“When the Internet first appeared, we treated it like a content system,” Joseph South, deputy director of the US Department of Education’s (ED) Office of Educational Technology, said. “When the Internet exploded, it became a communication system. We’re seeing the same thing in our schools -- as we get more comfortable with digital, it moves from a content system to a communication system.”

To that end, learningregistry.org and free.ed.gov are two places educators can turn to when they need to locate free, searchable resources. “Once you unbundle things from the textbook, you’ve done some really challenging things and some really great things,” South said.

The idea of open educational resources (OERs) is appealing, South said, “but unless they come in some sort of a package, some sort of organizational structure,” they aren’t necessarily useful to teachers. School districts, too, are organizing digital content into free and searchable repositories -- for instance, South said, Arizona’s Sunnyside School District maintains a Google Doc which teachers use to search and upload their own digital standards-aligned resources.

District educators also recognize that not every student will have a device, despite questions pertaining to how the district addresses such a dilemma. “Our greatest advantage has been not only collaboration among teachers, but also collaboration among students,” Creel said. “Students share devices, and it does not become an issue.”

Above all, digital content is the goal, and devices are simply the tool to deliver such content -- teacher support and instructional plans must be in place.

[Commentary] In the newly-released 2014 CoSN IT Leadership Survey, district technology leaders indicate that being ready for online assessments is their number one priority.

And fewer than 18 percent report their district is fully ready for the online and other digital assessments starting this fall in many states.

Clearly, school systems must take steps to prepare their districts for the onset of this new era of online testing. To help school district leaders, CoSN recently released our Raising the BAR: Becoming Assessment Ready initiative. We’re also calling on Congress to provide funding in the Fiscal Year 2015 budget to help districts fill assessment technology gaps and related professional development. Building a scalable, affordable, and reliable education network is no longer “nice to have.” It is a basic requirement for school districts today.

As President Barack Obama said: “In a country where we expect free Wi-Fi with our coffee, we should definitely demand it in our schools.” We are at a tipping point for technology in K-12 -- it is a “new normal.”

[Krueger is the CEO of the Consortium for School Networking]

One of the United States’ most successful muni Wi-Fi examples is located in a small city in northern Oklahoma Home to 25,000 residents, Ponca City is 90 miles equidistant from Wichita, Oklahoma City and Tulsa.

It has a world-class wireless network providing free Wi-Fi across its 25 square miles. The free wireless mesh service -- which is so fast and forward-looking that Kansas City, Apple and Google came calling to check it out -- has been so successful that Ponca City again is hosting delegations from Oklahoma, throughout the US and places as far away as Australia and Italy.

So what makes Ponca City’s wireless network a long-term success, and what suggestions do city officials have for other areas that want to replicate it? It all starts with fiber, said Technology Services Director Craige Baird and City Manager Craig Stephenson. But fiber’s price tag stops many local governments in their tracks, especially when they want to do it in a year instead of building a network out slowly over a number of years. Ponca City began 15 years ago, steadily adding fiber for city communications and disaster recovery. Today it has 350 miles of fiber that have opened vast opportunities to the city and its residents.

Connected classrooms have many moving parts, and each must work in sync to give students the best and most effective learning experiences possible.

1. Reliable broadband and Wi-Fi Internet access
2. One-to-one and/or bring-your-own-device
3. Teachers who give up control
4. Students and teachers learn together
5. Administrative support
6. Communication and collaboration between IT and curriculum leaders

There’s a reason many school administrators and teachers get excited when they’re talking about one-to-one computer programs. Many new learning possibilities open up when each student is equipped with his or her own device. Here are 10 of them:

1. Flipped learning. Teachers can record lectures ahead of time and assign them to students to view for homework.
2. Increased attention. Teachers can keep students interested by giving them tasks to complete on their computers that follow along with the lesson. Instead of just taking notes, students may be asked to answer questions, contribute research or work out a problem.
3. Work together. But with computers, they’re able to all work on a single document at once, share ideas and research and even take the group work home with them.
4. Instant feedback. Teachers can see what students are doing on their computers in class or, if they’re working in an online document, they can see their progress on homework. They can give feedback on the work while it’s in progress.
5. App for that. The tools students can use in class aren’t limited to what they bring with them when they have a computer at their desks. Students can download programs to help their studies as they need them.
6. Progress check. Teachers can give students questions to answer from their computers or give them interactive assignments to complete in class or at home that provide instant feedback on which topics students understand and which need more attention.
7. Individualized learning. With teachers able to track students’ homework and test results instantly, they get a better sense of each student’s strengths and weaknesses. When they give students homework or classwork to do on their computers, they can customize the questions to give each student exactly what he or she needs to work on.
8. Connect to the world. Students can contact people all over the world from their desks or from home. That means they can interact with other students who might be working on similar projects, speak with experts on a subject, and tune in to broadcast events or exchange cultures.
9. Show the class. Instead of having one student do something on the board while the rest of the class watches (or zones out), each student can perform the task on his or her computer. The teacher can then display students’ screens at the front of the room.
10. Immediate research. With each student having instant access to the Internet, looking up background related to a class topic or doing some research doesn’t require a special trip to the library. Students have the entire Internet and Web-based academic research tools at their fingertips.