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 to teach writing skills in the ChatGPT era

Key points:

When ChatGPT appeared in November 2022, most educators felt it could become a threat and change the whole niche forever. No wonder: This language model algorithm is smart enough to produce logical and grammatically correct texts for any prompt.

Today’s digital-savvy students welcomed ChatGPT with open arms and began using it for writing assignments. According to a new study from Academic Help, 67 percent of students use AI for creating texts – the basis for their essays and other papers.…Read More

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Cybersecurity, like charity, begins at home 

Key points:

  • Cybersecurity is a risk to anyone with a device–no matter their age
  • Children are uniquely vulnerable, and strategies like password managers and open communication can help shore up strong cybersecurity practices
  • See related article: Preparing for ransomware attacks begins with education

We are living at a time when many of the most advanced, profitable, technologically-sophisticated companies in the world are barely treading water when it comes to cybersecurity. With that being the case, what chance do our children have of staving off these threats?

More than half of U.S. children now possess their own smartphone by the age of 11. And long before they have a device of their own, they’re using their parents’—to play games, to watch movies, to do their homework. That’s not to mention the panoply of devices they interact with at school, at friends’ homes, at after-school activities — on and on and on.…Read More

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Open LMS Partners With Copyleaks, Adding Advanced AI-Driven Plagiarism and AI Content Detection

Raleigh, N.C. — Open LMS, a leading global provider of open-source learning management systems (LMSs), today announces its new partnership with  Copyleaks, the leading AI-based text analysis, plagiarism identification, and AI-content detection platform. This partnership comes at a critical time when AI-generated content is becoming more prevalent in all industries, particularly academia.

Copyleaks uses advanced AI to detect AI-generated content, including outputs from cutting-edge AI tools such as ChatGPT-4. It also detects various forms of plagiarism while accounting for a wide range of common detection-evasion tactics such as hidden characters, paraphrasing, and even image-based text plagiarism. Through these methods, the tool provides institutions and organizations with a deeper understanding of the composition of submitted content while exposing attempts to deceive detection software.

Open LMS and Copyleaks’ partnership adds a powerful tool to clients’ arsenals as conversations around AI-generated content intensify.…Read More

10 powerful practices for new principals

As a principal, you have the privilege of leading a school and making a positive difference in the lives of countless students. You have the power to create an environment of education, respect, and integrity. You are also responsible for ensuring that your students receive the best possible education and that their educational and social outcomes are improved through your leadership. Leading with integrity and improving student outcomes is a task that requires dedication, hard work, and a willingness to be open-minded and creative.

The following are 10 strategies for new principals to lead with integrity and improve student outcomes:

1. Establish a Vision: Establishing a clear school vision is the first and most important step for a new principal to lead with integrity and improve student outcomes. This vision should be based on the core principles of integrity, respect, and excellence and should be shared with your school staff, students, and parents. This vision will guide the school and should serve as a rallying point for everyone to strive towards.…Read More

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Can we make STEM more accessible for girls?

Are girls really underrepresented in STEM? Yes. 

In the U.S., the workforce is pretty evenly split between men and women, but in STEM fields men make up 73 percent of the workforce to women’s 27 percent. Why?

It’s easy to want to find a well-meaning solution for this disparity, or even to brush it off as unimportant. But achieving a gender parity in STEM fields (particularly computer science, engineering, and programmers, among others) isn’t just a feel-good social justice crusade. The number of open tech jobs far outpaces the population of traditionally qualified candidates—data projections have pointed to a global shortage of 85 million tech workers by 2030.

It’s not a matter of encouraging girls to pursue STEM programs just for the heck of it, to prove they can and earn a good paycheck—it’s a matter of graduating enough highly-skilled workers to meet economic demand.

Still, the imbalanced statistics for the genders in STEM are damning. What can K-12 schools do to play their part in preparing the next generation for a talent-hungry workforce?

…Read More

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An OER curriculum brings my students’ lives into our classroom

When I was growing up, I assumed that my teachers knew everything, including all of the “right answers.” Now that I’ve been a teacher for 15 years, I know this simply isn’t true. In fact, some of the most powerful learning in my middle school science classroom has happened when I’ve pretended to NOT know the “right answer.” That’s when students take the lead and start to offer up their own ideas, share their experiences, and make powerful connections—sometimes amazing ones that I would never have thought of.

Teaching in this way requires a good deal of flexibility—including in your curriculum. A traditional science textbook doesn’t always provide educators the freedom to delve into topics that students bring up from their own lives or questions they have about the world around them. That’s why I’ve turned to open educational resources (OER).

OER are openly licensed, which means that educators can use, customize, and share these resources for free, allowing them to incorporate material that’s fresh and relevant for their students—all without having to worry about traditional copyright restrictions. I’ve been using an OER science curriculum called OpenSciEd for five years, and it has completely revolutionized the way I teach. It’s also transformed the way my students relate to and take ownership for their learning.…Read More

4 reasons we put all of our district communications on one platform

With 22 schools and 8,000 students—nearly all of whom qualify for free or reduced lunch—we have to cover a lot of area in our district. We’d been using a number of applications to maintain open lines of communications with our parents and guardians. We knew that some were working, and others weren’t, and we wanted to create a more unified school-home communications approach.

In 2020, our new superintendent brought a robust communications platform with him when he joined our district. As soon as we saw the platform’s various functionalities and how it eliminated the need for all of those disconnected communications strategies, we were hooked.

Here are four reasons why we decided to consolidate all of our district communications on a single platform:…Read More

5 ways to prep students for online learning success

Students who attend online school today range from homeschoolers, to those seeking an alternative to in-person public schools, to learners who want to mix virtual schooling with in-person learning. Also, some districts have decided to keep an online option open for students who choose that method.

And while numerous parents and students have chosen to make online learning part of their education, the transition can be challenging. As someone who’s been involved with online schools for more than eight years, here are five common areas of concern and tips for how teachers and parents can navigate these challenges successfully.

Organization and Scheduling are Vital…Read More

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