Both superintendents and board members have a role to play in elevating different voices, say school board members. District leaders can’t pick candidates, but they can create “leadership academies” to teach interested community members about the workings of their school systems. They can also create committees and other advisory boards that allow parents an entry point into getting more involved in their school district, if they choose.
A 2017 study that examined middle and high schools in Florida found that districts with diverse school boards have lower rates of school suspensions for all students, and that disparities in suspension rates between minority and white students are reduced overall.
Katie Kelly, Program Owner at AltspaceVR. “I did a rough estimate and factoring in the travel time and CO2e estimates that would have been spent. This summit took about 9 thousand cars off the road for the week of the summit and saved attendees around 5 million miles of travel. So whether we’re combating a global outbreak, climate change or remote work – there’s a lot that AltspaceVR and other VR platforms can do to help.”
HTC is moving its annual Vive Ecosystem Conference (VEC) in China to a virtual world built by Engage, a product of Immersive VR Education.
The crisis has put new wind in the sails of the first virtual world, Second Life, which continues to thrive. “We are seeing increased interest in Second Life as it is a safe place for people and organizations to socialize and work during this time of great anxiety and social distancing,” said Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, which created and operates Second Life.
VictoryXR is an AR & VR school curriculum provider that also uses the Engage platform. They are now in the process of becoming accredited in Iowa and California to become an online virtual reality school (as opposed to a virtual school on a platform like Second Life, which is PC based).
Exp Realty is a virtual, cloud-based real estate brokerage founded nearly a decade ago, similar to Second Life. It is also optimized for PCs and laptops. The virtual real estate company has more than 27,000 agents who they log on to “eXp World.” The technology is provided by VirBELA, which also builds virtual tools for universities and virtual classes like Coursera.
Glue, based in Helsinki, Finland, today introduced significant upgrades to its virtual world platform, Glue Team Space. Team Space is immersive 3D environments optimized for teams of up to twenty people.
Spatial.io, a new remote conferencing system that works with every device and creates convincing avatars who can collaborate in the virtual space where participants can share whiteboards, post-its, videos and 3D models.
Although school security has grown into a $2.7 billion market — an estimate that does not account for the billions more spent on armed campus police officers — little research has been done on which safety measures do and do not protect students from gun violence. Earlier this fall, The Washington Post sent surveys to every school in its database that had endured a shooting of some kind since the 2012 killings of 20 first-graders in Newtown, Conn., which prompted a surge of security spending by districts across the country.
In 2016, Utah’s Union Middle School had a surveillance system, external doors that could be accessed only with IDs and an armed policewoman, known as a resource officer, when a 14-year-old boy shot another student twice in the head during a confrontation outside the building just after classes ended.
“Even if we would have had metal detectors, it would not have mattered,” wrote Jeffrey P. Haney, district spokesman. “If we would have had armed guards at the entrance of the school, it would not have mattered. If we would have required students to have see-through backpacks and bags, it would not have mattered.”
The survey responses are consistent with a federally funded 2016 study by Johns Hopkins University that concluded there was “limited and conflicting evidence in the literature on the short- and long-term effectiveness of school safety technology.”
Much of what can be done to prevent harm is beyond any school’s control because, in a country with more guns — nearly 400 million — than people, children are at risk of being shot no matter where they are. A 2016 study in the American Journal of Medicine found that, among high-income nations, 91 percent of children younger than 15 who were killed by gunfire lived in the United States.
The solution, Goudreau concluded, was to embed former Special Operations agents, posing as teachers, inside schools. He argued that the benefits over resource officers were obvious.
Indiana University explores that question by bringing together tech partners and university leaders to share ideas on how to design classrooms that make better use of faculty and student time.
Untether instructors from the room’s podium, allowing them control from anywhere in the room;
Streamline the start of class, including biometric login to the room’s technology, behind-the-scenes routing of course content to room displays, control of lights and automatic attendance taking;
Offer whiteboards that can be captured, routed to different displays in the room and saved for future viewing and editing;
Provide small-group collaboration displays and the ability to easily route content to and from these displays; and
Deliver these features through a simple, user-friendly and reliable room/technology interface.
Key players from Crestron, Google, Sony, Steelcase and Spectrum met with Indiana University faculty, technologists and architects to generate new ideas related to current and emerging technologies. Activities included collaborative brainstorming focusing on these questions:
What else can we do to create the classroom of the future?
What current technology exists to solve these problems?
What could be developed that doesn’t yet exist?
What’s next?
top five findings:
Screenless and biometric technology will play an important role in the evolution of classrooms in higher education. We plan to research how voice activation and other Internet of Things technologies can streamline the process for faculty and students.
The entire classroom will become a space for student activity and brainstorming; walls, windows, desks and all activities are easily captured to the cloud, allowing conversations to continue outside of class or at the next class meeting.
Technology will be leveraged to include advance automation for a variety of tasks, so the faculty member is released from duties to focus on teaching.
The technology will become invisible to the process and enhance and customize the experience for the learner.
Virtual assistants could play an important role in providing students with a supported experience throughout their entire campus career.
In September 2015, the back-then library dean (they change every 2-3 years) requested a committee of librarians to meet and discuss the remodeling of Miller Center 2018. By that time the SCSU CIO was asserting the BYOx as a new policy for SCSU. BYOx in essence means the necessity for stronger (wider) WiFI pipe. Based on that assertion, I, Plamen Miltenoff, was insisting to shift the cost of hardware (computers, laptops) to infrastructure (more WiFi nods in the room and around it) and prepare for the upcoming IoT by learning to remodel our syllabi for mobile devices and use those (students) mobile devices, rather squander University money on hardware. At least one faculty member from the committee honestly admitted she has no idea about IoT and respectively the merit of my proposal. Thus, my proposal was completely disregarded by the self-nominated chair of the committee of librarians, who pushed for her idea to replace the desktops with a cart of laptops (a very 2010 idea, which by 2015 was already passe). As per Kelly (2018) (second article above), it is obvious the failure of her proposal to the dean to choose laptops over mobile devices, considering that faculty DO see mobile devices completely replacing desktops and laptops; that faculty DO not see document cameras and overhead projectors as a tool to stay.
Here are the notes from September 2015 https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims/2015/09/25/mc218-remodel/
As are result, my IoT proposal as now reflected in the Johnston (2018) (first article above), did not make it even formally to the dean, hence the necessity to make it available through the blog.
The SCSU library thinking regarding physical remodeling of classrooms is behind its times and that costs money for the university, if that room needs to be remodeled again to be with the contemporary times.
We needed to create more study, learning, and research space in the library. Put simply, our library space was cramped. It was a nice-looking building but not terribly “user-friendly.”
Additionally, the building itself was one of the oldest on campus…
Finally, we wanted to create a more visionary learning space. We wanted to define what impactful spaces for our students would be, and examine how the academic library can support both emerging academic trends and social formation on campus.
We’ve created “living rooms” in the library: spaces with couches, softer seating, fireplaces—where students can go and plop down. That “plopping down” is important. The library has become a place where students go with some intentionality to rest, to check their phone, to read.
We’ve tried to create interesting “spots.” We have nicely appointed, contemporary-in-feel study spaces, with glass whiteboards and glassed walls. People can see in, people can see out; today’s students like to be seen, and they like to see in. This was very important in our focus groups. Also, on a practical level, students like to be able to see into study spaces to see if they’re occupied.
Special Collections used to be intimidating for a first or second-year student. We wanted an experience in which from the moment the student arrives, there are no barriers to exploration. We wanted to send the message that this is a place for inquiry and discovery, a place to learn more. There are no doors—just an open entrance to the wing.
the key with the Great Books Room is that it is glassed. Students can look in and see others deliberating about great books around an oval table, or participating in mentor-led discussions. And they see that this is a part of the experience they can have at college.
NetDragon Websoft, a publicly-traded company based in Fuzhou, China, has agreed to pay $137.5 million for Edmodo.
The deal could mark the beginning of the end for the “free” model of education technology, at least for standalone education companies without other strong revenue streams to support them.
Edmodo was started in 2008 by a teacher and IT support person as a “Facebook-like” community aimed at connecting educators with students and with one another. Also like Facebook, Edmodo grew rapidly. Currently, the company, now based in San Mateo, Calif., claims more than 90 million registered users (both teachers and students) in 400,000 schools across 192 countries.
Edmodo struggled, however, to find a business model that would support its burgeoning community. It raised close to $100 million in funding, and began seeking another round last year. The company had shifted to an advertising-based model—although one in which the company was trying to move carefully and respect its audience of teachers and students.
According to a financial statement published by NetDragon, Edmodo lost $19.5 million in 2017, based on revenue of approximately $1 million.
That seems to be an increasingly popular path. A decade ago, the big education companies were traditional textbook providers such as Pearson. Now the most powerful players are technology companies that offer devices and software. At the top of the list: Google, which supports Chromebooks as well as Google Classroom, and Apple, which sells iPads, Macs and now the Schoolwork app.
By contrast, NetDragon began in 1999 and built its initial financial muscle with games. It has, however, long identified education as one of its top areas of interest. Recently the company has begun purchasing education technology assets at a rapid clip. In 2015, NetDragon paid approximately $130 million to acquire U.K.-based interactive whiteboard maker, Promethean, which gave it a hardware-based entry into classrooms.
The company, which refers to the hardware as “interactive panels,” is equipping 13,000 classrooms in Moscow with digital whiteboards.
Last year, NetDragon also acquired JumpStart, an educational game company behind iconic titles including Math Blaster. And earlier this year, it bought Sokikom, an online game-based math program.
Active learning techniques have been shown to improve the classroom experience, leading to higher student success rates and greater student engagement.
As an increasing number of higher education faculty apply the flipped classroom model to their courses, they’re discovering that although the idea of a flip is straightforward, the model is easy to get wrong.
BENEFITS
The flipped model puts greater responsibility for learning on the students while providing them with more room to experiment in the classroom. This leads to a shift in priorities, allowing classroom time to move from merely covering material to working toward mastery of it.
As a result of this presentation, you gain a new perspective on what it means to flip the classroom, leading to revitalized teaching. This seminar not only explores concrete strategies for engaging students in the flipped classroom, but it also delves into why technology-free approaches are important. You will better understand how to do the following:
Organize student-led activities to encourage greater communication in the classroom
Create a dynamic session devoted to learning through hands-on work
Integrate unplugged methods of student engagement into flipped and active classroom learning environments
Lean on tools such as sticky notes, flip charts, whiteboards, and dice to inspire new ways of thinking
LEARNING GOALS
The flipped classroom model challenges instructors to create learning experiences in which students have the freedom to apply, analyze, and evaluate course content during class time.
The question is: How do you continue finding innovative teaching strategies and tools to engage students in this way?
Although some creativity is required to plan a flip, the process doesn’t have to be intimidating. This seminar demonstrates a number of simple strategies that motivate students to interact with the material and engage with one another. You will learn the following:
Discover a range of “unplugged” teaching strategies used to engage students
Learn to identify opportunities for unplugging devices and creating a tech-free learning experience in the classroom
Master simple ways to integrate unplugged flipped methods into your course
Understand the benefits to including unplugged teaching and learning strategies in flipped course design
TOPICS COVERED
Developing new strategies and ideas for the flipped classroom
Increasing student engagement with unplugged methods
Integrating unplugged methods into flipped and active learning classrooms
Using everyday tools to inspire higher-level thinking
Expanding the definition of the flipped classroom
AUDIENCE
This seminar is intended for faculty and instructors interested in a role change in the classroom. The flipped learning environment requires teachers to give up their front-of-class position in favor of a more collaborative and cooperative contribution to the teaching process. Are you ready to make a change?
