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.

Will, skill, & thrill: How learner agency accelerates innovation

Editor’s note: This blog post originally appeared on CoSN’s blog and is reposted here with permissions.

When it comes to students in the classroom, they want to feel ownership and control of their learning. According to the American Institutes for Research, encouraging student agency is beneficial because:

  • students who believe their knowledge can grow over time perform better on IQ tests,
  • those with a growth mindset are more likely to set academic goals focused on mastering content versus studying for a test score or course grade,
  • students who set mastery-focused goals tend to process information in a deeper and more organized fashion, and
  • the skills and behaviors that learner agency fosters are positively related to higher education and career outcomes.

During CoSN’s Driving K-12 Innovation 2022-23 cycle, our esteemed Advisory Board of about 100 educators and technologists agreed that learner agency is, indeed, one of the top three accelerators in education today. Download the 2023 Driving K-12 Innovation Report: Hurdles + Accelerators to learn more.…Read More

1 2

The Once and Future ISTE

Sometimes the most insightful interactions at events don’t come from keynotes or session panels but from random conversations in a hotel lobby or airport gate. This seems to be the case whenever I bump into Kari Stubbs. In this conversation, which was reconstructed in a Zoom recording this week, we run the gamut—from post-pandemic hybrid event models to ramifications of the ISTE-ASCD merger, to AI noise, to new ways to better balance industry involvement with instructional inspiration. Click below to listen in and scroll through some of the edited highlights. You can read and see more about her ISTE experiences on LinkedIn.

Her ISTE highlight:

All of our teams need some elevated care right now—kind of the long tail of those emotions coming out of the pandemic. We have continued teacher resignations and ed leader resignations. And then for our business partners in the education space, we also have an elevated need for team care. Our panel looked at female leadership as a potential solution for making that happen. And it was a phenomenal conversation. I don’t know that I’ve ever been a part of a panel that struck a nerve quite as deeply as this one.…Read More

3 ways to keep students reading this summer

Key points:

  • By fostering stronger educator and caregiver communication, students can be better equipped to retain learning this summer
  • In order to inspire a lifelong love reading, consider guiding students to identify reading opportunities that complement their interests in their daily lives
  • See related article: 6 ways to help reluctant readers become booklovers

It’s been great to see students’ faces back in-person collaborating with one another and their teachers, but there’s no doubt the pandemic has impacted their academic and emotional learning. Reading scores dipped considerably due to the pandemic, with fewer than half of students qualifying at their grade level standard.

Even more, we are facing a student mental health crisis, with studies showing nearly 8 million children worldwide lost a parent or primary caregiver to a pandemic-related cause. Educators continue to work hard to keep students motivated and engaged in learning to read while helping them cope with mental health challenges.…Read More

1 2

Swing Education Raises $38 Million in Series C Funding

SAN FRANCISCO  – Swing Education, an online marketplace that connects schools and substitute teachers, announced today $38 million in Series C funding. The funding round was led by funds advised by Apax Partners LLP (“Apax”), a leading global private equity advisory firm, and by edtech investment firm Reach Capital. The funding enables Swing Education to invest in its growth and better address the nation-wide substitute teacher shortage.

This financing follows a 2018 Series B funding co-led by GV (formerly Google Ventures) and Owl Ventures and a seed round from a consortium that included Social Capital, Kapor Capital, Moment Ventures, Ulu Ventures, Red House Education, and Edovate Capital.

Swing believes that every classroom deserves a teacher, and every student deserves to learn without disruption. Since its founding in 2015, Swing has worked to improve the experience of being a substitute teacher and made it easier for K-12 schools to grow and manage their substitute teacher pools. Swing currently works with over 2,800 school partners and in the 2022-23 school year has supported these schools in filling over one million instructional hours with substitute teachers. …Read More

5 to thrive: SEL resources to help students grow

Key points:

  • SEL teaches students to think and behave like healthy, mature adults
  • SEL helps students become better learners and take ownership of that learning

Every educator hopes to equip their students with the knowledge they need to thrive as a healthy adult. It’s a daunting task, especially considering there is so much to teach in such a small amount of time.

We want students to fall in love with reading while building up skills in language and grammar. We try to show them that math and science can be outlets of wonder and imagination, while also grounding them in foundations of history and social studies. And yet, out of all the knowledge at our disposal, fostering healthy social-emotional learning (SEL) may be the most important lesson that we impart to our students.   …Read More

1 2

How AI enhances personalization in education

Key points:

  • AI can provide new opportunities and allow us to see things differently
  • AI tools can help create learner profiles to give educators a more accurate impression of students

Learning now is so much more than making notes from a textbook and critiquing other people’s ideas. It is cultivating your own vision of the future and how things can be improved to better our lives and advance the next generation. AI technology is a key driver in this change and will enable students to have a deeper understanding of global events and how they can make an impact. Personalization in education is just one pillar of AI that I want to explore.

In many ways, AI is an extension of ourselves. It can help offload the typically boring tasks we have to put up with and realise our potential by accessing new information and learning at our own speed.…Read More

1 2

Gale In Context: Literature Launches to Promote Critical Thinking Skills and Better Learning Outcomes in ELA for High School Students

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. – Gale, part of Cengage Group, has added a new resource to its award-winning Gale In Context family of products. The company has launched Gale In Context: Literature, a new resource for literature instruction and learning that helps high schoolers engage and thrive in English language arts (ELA). Read our blog about why English teachers will love Gale In Context: Literature.

Designed with high school students in mind, Gale In Context: Literature provides learners with the context they need to engage and form personal connections with a wide variety of literature from traditional texts to diverse new voices. Educators can easily connect students to standards-based resources that provide the literary context necessary to ensure student understanding of the texts they’re reading in ELA lessons. This sparks greater interest in literature, enabling teachers to facilitate meaningful interactions that inspire more compelling classroom discussions that increase critical thinking skills, delivering better learning outcomes.

Download/view screenshots of Gale In Context: Literature.…Read More

3 ways to leverage tech for better student mental health

Key points:

  • Students are facing an unprecedented mental health crisis
  • Technology can be a powerful ally in positive mental health

Researchers have long speculated that the increasing use of technology and social media among teenagers contributes to worsening mental health outcomes. Now, it can be an important tool to help schools address an unprecedented mental health crisis.

In addition to traditional triggers for poor mental health, like exposure to adversity, in-process coping mechanisms, substance use, and other factors, students are grappling with novel challenges. This includes the long-tail effects of a global pandemic, and frighteningly frequent instances of violence at school and in communities, creating a perfect storm for a mental health crisis.…Read More

1 2

Are you choosing the right classroom visual displays?

Key points:

  • Size isn’t the only important part of classroom visual displays
  • Brightness, contract, interactivity, and resolution are all critical factors

The transfer of knowledge is an educator’s principal concern–one that has led them, along with researchers, to ask: “What’s the best way to help transfer that knowledge and help students learn?”

Research has shown that students learn better with visuals than words alone. Visual presentations using a projector or interactive display can help to promote a much more active learning environment and more successful outcomes. However, in the last few years, as interactive displays have become more popular, there has been a significant debate on which is the best display type–projectors or interactive flat panel displays–for the classroom.…Read More

1 2