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New K-12 educational approaches that encourage personalized and blended learning—the latter replacing a portion of traditional face-to-face instruction with web-based learning—are running afoul of the typical one-teacher-one-classroom structure. The new models pile additional tasks onto teachers already burdened by an overwhelming workload, in most cases handled solo. Effectively implementing these new learning strategies will require adopting equally new staffing strategies, according to a new report, Innovative Staffing to Personalize Learning , compiled by the Clayton Christensen Institute and Public Impact. The report’s authors examined how eight district, private, and charter schools and school networks used a variety of new arrangements to better support personalized and blended learning. They identified a number of elements key to the success of these endeavors: •  New roles for educators, including teacher-leaders heading small instructional teams, collaborative teams of te...

Proponents say computer-based standardized tests are more secure than traditional paper-and-pencil testing, can be scored faster, and allow questions to be designed more innovatively. They also see online testing as good preparation for students facing a job market that more and more emphasizes tech capabilities. However, some educators say that moving to computerized testing is actually increasing an achievement gap they’ve worked for years to shrink. Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data in 2015 found that about five million households with school-aged children didn’t have a high-speed Internet connection at home; many of those were low-income black or Hispanic households. A March 2017 Pew post indicated that the divide persists, with nearly half of households with an annual income below $30,000 not having broadband service or a desktop or laptop computer at home. Researchers report that the majority of teachers in poor districts claim their students aren’t prepared...

While open educational resources (OER) are often touted as an important step in keeping the cost of course materials in line, finding quality materials can be a problem , especially for K-12 instruction. Teachers surfing the web for individual lesson plans is not really an ideal way to deliver excellent content. “There’s more bad OER out there than good; that’s a fact,” Rebecca Kockler, assistant superintendent of academic instruction for Louisiana, said during a panel discussion at the recent SXSWedu conference. “We need to find the quality stuff and elevate it for everyone.” The Louisiana Department of Education has taken a positive step in the right direction by making integrated curriculum available on its website. The content is aligned with the state’s core standards and adaptable to the needs of individual students, providing teachers with more time to just teach. The Louisiana approach also couples professional development for teachers with the sharing of best practices and cur...

Many grade- and high-school teachers remain hesitant to use social media as a learning tool. Just 16% of the 1,000 K-12 teachers who responded to a survey from the University of Phoenix said they use social media in the classroom, while 56% said they don’t use it at all and have no plans to start. Most teachers in the survey (83%) worry about conflicts from social media interaction and 35% said they had experienced issues with either students or their parents through social media. At the same time, some see the classroom as the right place to discuss social media. “In the classroom is the perfect opportunity to talk about how we behave, what is ethical inside and outside our classroom, and what that entails,” said Pam Roggeman, academic dean at the institution’s College of Education. “Its fun and it’s interesting, but it brings with it a large responsibility.” The survey also found that 63% of teachers said they use technology every day and another 25% use it at least once a week. At ...

Just over two-thirds of K-3 teachers reported that on at least one occasion they’d refrained from assigning homework because they didn’t think all their students had access to the technology or digital media needed to complete the work. That percentage was even higher for schools serving a greater number of low-income students. In the same online survey of educators and parents, conducted last year by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s Center for Early Learning, 40% of parents said that challenges with home technology access hampered their children’s ability to stay on pace with their peers. Based on the survey and in-person conversations with parents, the foundation suggested five strategies for how instructors can help bridge the school/home “device gap”: 1. Inform parents about how their children are using technology and which digital media are being used in the classroom. 2. Recommend specific programs and apps students can use at home to complement what’s being used at sch...

Despite all the anxiety over Twitter’s impact on civil discourse and society in general, more and more educators are finding the social platform a valuable tool for sharing assignments, increasing student engagement, and archiving classroom resources. In intermediate and high-school grades, Twitter can be used to connect with students where they already are. One New Jersey high-school teacher found that students checked her classroom Twitter account more often than they read school emails. Some school systems or individual instructors may be dubious of Twitter’s value or uncertain about what sorts of content they should tweet. In a blog post , Steve Williams, co-founder of Campus Suite, a provider of cloud-based communications solutions for schools, set out four areas where Twitter can and should be used by educators: 1. Enhancing student engagement—Any additional channel for communicating with students is a plus. In addition to tweeting project due dates and reminders about quizzes a...

Recorded human communication began with cave paintings and then grew into murals and hieroglyphs before developing into written alphabets. In some ways, digital technologies and social platforms are taking communication back toward its visual origins. In a commentary in T.H.E. Journal earlier this year, Cathie Norris, a professor and chair in the School of Information at the University of North Texas, and Elliot Soloway, a professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan, noted that K-12 students spend far more time with text-based materials in school and far more time with image-based materials outside the classroom. With an average of about 2.5 billion daily Snaps on Snapchat, and more than 400 million daily users partaking of Instagram’s shared photos and videos, it’s no surprise that today’s digitally savvy students are gravitating toward “picting,” the use of images instead of words to convey information and ideas. Picting is an emergent form of literacy, bu...

While more k-12 instructors are employing education technology on a daily basis in their classrooms—63% this year, a bump up from 55% last year—a quarter of them still report being intimidated by their students’ use and knowledge of edtech, according to an annual survey from the College of Education at the University of Phoenix. Just over a third of the more than 1,000 respondents blamed inadequate funding for not making greater use of edtech, with 23% citing concerns that technology is too distracting. Even though two-thirds acknowledged that using classroom tech helps their students remain more engaged, more than 70% said that use of personal devices is a distraction in group settings, a rise from 65% in the 2016 survey. When it comes to their own edtech skills, 40% of K-12 teachers said they'd give themselves a grade of "C" or failing, while only 16% gave themselves an "A."

Huge gains have been made in classroom connectivity, but work still remains to be done, according to the 2017 State of the States report from EducationSuperHighway, a nonprofit headquartered in San Francisco that serves as an advocate and consultant for states and school districts to obtain high-speed Internet access for all classrooms. In 2013, 40 million students were unable to meet the Federal Communications Commission’s 100 kilobits-per-second minimum connectivity goal for digital learning. As of this year, that number has been reduced to 6.5 million students, with 748 districts still requiring upgrades to effectively use the Internet in their classrooms. EducationSuperHighway’s goal is to have every student in the country connected by 2020. Responding to a Funds For Learning survey , almost 80% of school districts and libraries credited the federal E-rate program for their faster Internet connections. E-rate is shorthand for the Schools and Libraries Program of the Universal Serv...

As electronic devices have become ubiquitous for children of almost any age, and many districts either provide devices or implement bring-your-own-device programs, schools are now being tasked with teaching digital citizenship, a catch-all phrase for safe, responsible, and appropriate use of online resources. One major initiative in which they can participate is Google’s Be Internet Awesome campaign. This month, Google expanded that program to educators with its free Digital Citizenship and Safety Course . The aim is to provide instructors with the basic skills needed to ensure their students remain safe and have a positive online experience. The course comprises 12 lessons divided among six units, with topics that include savvy searching, maintaining your online reputation, setting strong passwords, evaluating the credibility of digital sources, and avoiding scams and phishing attacks. Teachers can then incorporate what they learn into their own curricula.

Despite the proliferation of electronic devices in classrooms today, the vast majority of college students (93%) and seventh- through 12th-graders (87%) still see paper as an essential component for reaching their educational goals. While these numbers come from an understandably print-biased source—the Paper and Packaging Board’s Paper and Productive Learning: The Third Annual Back-to-School Report —they jibe with many other recent studies. In the report, almost 95% of parents said they see their children do well on homework completed on paper, while more than 72% noted having seen their child have difficulty staying focused when working on homework on a tablet or computer. More than 88% said their child remembered assignments better when he or she wrote them down on paper. The youngest students surveyed, seventh- and eighth-graders, agreed that they learn information best when they write it down by hand. Slightly more than half of college-age students still gave the same answer, and ...

XYZprinting Inc. is rolling out an advance in 3-D printing: the da Vinci Color , which turns out full-color 3-D objects using a proprietary inkjet process during the build. Available now for preorder, schools can get a 10% education discount off the pricetag. The company also offers K-12 Steam, a collection of 3-D project curricula that can be incorporated into the classroom.