By Dian Schaffhauser
04/09/21
Identity and
belonging, the truth about vaping and the potential of nuclear
science are the topics of three free virtual fieldtrips
that have been introduced by Discovery
Education working with various partners. The point of
the curriculum is to provide lessons to help students explore aspects
of the world they might not otherwise have exposure to. Each field
trip comes with educator guides, student activities and other
resources.
The lessons include: Identity, Belonging, and Legacy: How Testimony Makes Us Stronger Than Hate, produced with USC Shoah Foundation, which maintains a library of audio-visual testimonies with people who have experienced genocide.
By Dian Schaffhauser
04/09/21
New
Century Education Foundation is embedding lessons into
its adaptive, online tutoring system, to address the needs of
dyslexic students of any age. New Century, a nonprofit that focuses
on helping teachers and parents improve the learning of students with
specific needs, is working with Noah Text to add its stories into the
organization s Intelligent Tutoring System.
The online reading
program was developed with Sarah Blodgett, the developer of Noah
Text, as well as researchers at Michigan State University and
Orton-Gillingham
Academy-trained reading specialists.
Noah Text uses an
approach in its specialized books designed to guide the reader toward
By Dian Schaffhauser
04/09/21
Parents
overwhelmingly opposed going ahead with standardized testing this
spring, according to a survey done by a parent advocates group. In a
survey of more than 1,200 respondents, the assessment nays beat the
yays by a margin of two to one. The polling also found that parents overwhelmingly opposed testing being used at all in ways
that penalize students (81%) or teachers (73%). Two-thirds of parents
also reported that any testing done this year should be shortened and
used mainly to measure the impact of remote school on student
learning.
The random sampling
was done by ParentsTogether
Action, a national advocacy that focuses on family
By Dian Schaffhauser
04/09/21
A new survey has
found that a one in three high schoolers (33%) would like to keep
online learning as an ingredient in their education. The remaining
67% – almost all of whom shifted to virtual education to some
degree amid the pandemic – prefer learning completely in-person,
while 29 percent favored a hybrid arrangement with up to half of
their time in a virtual learning environment. Four percent said they
would be happy learning virtually full time or much of the time.
However, most
students found benefits to virtual learning, including time savings
from not having to travel or change classrooms (76%), gaining a more
By Dian Schaffhauser
04/09/21
Education technology
company Renaissance
has acquired Lalilo,
an early literacy company that was started in Paris in 2016 by three
graduates of École Polytechnique with a goal of ending illiteracy.
Terms of the deal were not made public.
Lalilo produces a
web-based literacy app for K-2 teachers and students. The program
offers visually engaging activities to help students
develop their phonological and phonemic awareness, letter and word
recognition, comprehension and fluency, vocabulary, writing and
social literacy. Teachers get data tracking and planning tools. The
basic service is free for teachers; a premium edition adds extra
features, including additional data reporting functionality.