Edtech By Marketscale

With student screen time at all-time highs and social isolation increasingly affecting kids, the scourge of fake news is a bigger threat than ever. Nick Farrell, co-founder of Bites Media, has some ideas of how to combat it. On this episode of Remote Possibilities, Nick talks about the importance of media literacy and how schools can take direct action to empower their students to not take the bait.The idea is relatively straight forward, as described by in a recent Forbes post: “Bites takes contemporary issues in the news, sourced from reliable and reputable outlets, then shrinks the information down into smaller, faster, more consumable chucks – or, bites – for younger readers. They then take that content and build comprehension lessons around it, allowing teachers to build important issue literacy around these key topics. The content and the lessons are built and delivered online, in easy, turnkey modules for teachers or parents.”Hogan and Farrell discuss a variety of topics including the how and why they

Is it more fun to sit in front of a screen and watch a video or play an interactive game? The answer isn’t the same for everyone, but most would choose the latter. The gamification of learning is one element of eLearning that can help draw people in, as can the ability to choose their own path. Those features are just one reason Cypher Learning CEO Graham Glass feels the use of dynamic and adaptive branching in asynchronous learning is not only a perfect solution for educators during the COVID-19 pandemic, but ultimately the best way to think about education going forward. “If you’ve got a very advanced learner, there’s no point in guiding them through modules that might be boring and remedial,” he said. “Similarly, you might have a disadvantaged learner who’s getting left behind. In those cases, you can adapt to where they are and actually give them remedial materials, more examples and more careful assessments.” At times, that means feeling a bit isolated without the traditional classroom environment, but C

In the latest episode of Remote Learning, Dr. Liz Brooke, CCC-SLP, Chief Learning Officer at Lexia Learning, talks about the delicate strategies her company employed when interacting with current and new district customers, the new relationships needed with parents, the power of data to analyze the COVID slide, and ways to improve personalized learning techniques for the fall and beyond.Lexia Learning, A Rosetta Stone Company, is one of the best-known and most highly respected reading-technology companies in the world. Lexia’s instructional programs (Core5 and PowerUp) help to accelerate literacy skill development through explicit and systematic personalized learning paths, and Lexia’s assessment program (RAPID) uniquely screens key reading and language skills critical to comprehension for all students in grades K–12.Educators are expected to differentiate and adapt instruction for every student in their classroom but often lack the necessary time and resources to be successful. Incorporating a blended learni

While most of the focus is rightfully focused on students during this uncertain time, Adam Geller, CEO of Edthena, reminds us not to forget about the teachers. He talks with host Kevin Hogan about how his classroom observation platform for using videos as part of professional development is more important than ever. Edthena released a new webinar series last month to help instructional coaches provide newly-virtual teachers with timely and much-needed support. The four-part “Kitchen Table Coaching” series, launching this Thursday, will provide strategies and best practices for facilitating virtual coaching. The series is part of the #PLtogether project (PLtogether.org) which will provide a collection of free resources for instructional coaches, including tactical advice from notable thought leaders in the education industry.“Effective coaching will lead to the ultimate success of distanced teaching,” said Adam Geller, founder and CEO of Edthena. “The #PLtogether project will provide a hub for topical resource

Contrary to popular belief, the golden rule is not that the person with the gold makes the rules. And, in terms of customer service, the golden rule isn’t "treat people the way you would like to be treated." At least Brandon Knight, Vice President of Business Development at Telarus, doesn’t think so. Knight has his ideas that make for excellent customer experience and satisfaction, and he shared his insights with host Tyler Kern. “The majority of businesses with customer-centric focus models base customer interactions on treating the customers on their treatment preferences,” Knight said. “A better customer service, a better customer experience, is treating a customer the way they want to be treated.” Knight’s primary concern with treating customers how someone on the business side prefers is that a customer may have different needs and wants from the person tasked with meeting their needs. “When it comes to the customer experience, it is important for companies to have myriad ways to interact,” Knight said.

Finding a way to effectively and fairly educate all of society’s young people already was a daunting task. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic hit and added another wrinkle for educators and administrators to deal with. Arlynne Roa Awayan, Director of Customer Success and Engagement at CYPHER Learning and former president of the Philippine eLearning Society, has been thinking about how to improve education and distance learning for years. She went into overdrive during the pandemic, trying to help districts and institutions that were scrambling to figure out a way to effectively teach kids when they couldn’t be in the classroom. “I think I’ve been advocating for the integration of technology in learning and teaching for many, many years now, but with the many organizations I’ve been talking to, schools, teachers even, they always thought of technology as an option. It’s something meant to be an enhancement of what they’re already doing in the classroom,” she said. “I think a big part of what’s happening now is a lot

EdTech vendors have been good corporate citizens by offering free resources during this year’s school closures, but eventually they need revenue to keep the doors open. According to industry vendor Michael Spencer, CEO of Global Expansion Strategies, and former Senior Directorof International Business Development at K12, the opportunity is ripe to find new revenue streams around the world. In this episode of Remote Possibilities, Michael breaks down some of the ways to get started:1) Understand the market you’re looking to enter.In the United States, the decision-making on edTech purchases is fragmented. In the international space, by contrast, the decision-making is usually led by a very small team, which gives edTech providers a better chance to establish a relationship and offer a comprehensive vision of what you can offer.2) Engage schools, parents, and students.For companies that are new to a given territory, extolling the features of your product just won’t cut it. You’ve got to be ready and eager to ex

Student safety and security have never been more important during these grim times. The move to remote learning has made life much more difficult for a much larger population of students. Jeff Patterson, Founder and CEO of Gaggle, watched demand for his company’s services surge this spring. On this episode of Remote Possibilities, He shares some daunting examples of how districts can deal with issues like suicide and cyber bullying with host Kevin Hogan.The Gaggle safety solution combines artificial intelligence and trained safety experts to provide real-time analysis and review of students’ use of online collaboration platforms, such as Google’s G Suite for Education, Microsoft Office 365, and Canvas. Gaggle assists districts in proactively identifying and supporting students who are struggling as well as creating a safer school environment by building a culture for improved digital citizenship.A greater number of students are using Hangouts for project collaboration, live class discussions, peer mentoring,

Virtual classrooms and digital collaboration technologies are known quantities these days in large part due to the pandemic. And thanks to companies such as X2O media, the bridge from the physical class and workplace to the virtual one may be a little easier. Monsour Brek, President of X2O Media, stopped by the podcast to give his thoughts and perspective in the significant changes taking place in the industry. “Higher education’s adoption of virtual classroom technology accelerated like crazy because they were forced to move everything online,” Brek said. Brek does not know the long-term outcome of online education after the pandemic, but he did have one prediction. “I think the one thing that’s clear for the future is hybrid type classrooms where some people will be physically in the room, and others that will attend remotely.” One key takeaway from the pandemic Brek noted was how students choose to consume online classroom content. If higher ed students are not interested enough in the class when they

Out of every crisis comes change. Most of the time, we worry about the bad side of those changes. Will we able to high five a stranger in the stadium after a touchdown? Can we go back into our houses of worship like before, shaking the hands of guests or being blessed by a priest? But crisis also can bring forth opportunities to improve on systems that needed to grow. For Dither Balderas, Manager de Digital Network & Adoption Manager LATAM for Cypher Learning, the COVID-19 pandemic is an inflection point for the future of distance learning. “I think it’s a critical moment and really a good moment for universities and educational institutions to change and to take this big step toward innovation, taking the step of not always offering the same thing and not being happy to stay in the mode of ‘I’m going to do it, I’m going to try,’” he said. But universities have to pick a Learning Management System that goes beyond simply being an LMS. Despite that, a lack of planning means he’s seen many institutions opt

Though the official school year has finally come to an end, schools and administrations are still working hard to prepare for a fall start. What schooling will look like in a few months' time is still a mystery, but academic leaders are preparing for multiple scenarios. Guests DeAn Jeffrey and Ginger Brawley, both Strategic PD Specialists for Istation, define what adversity schools, teachers and students will face upon their return and how to confront these new challenges head on. The academic upset caused by the coronavirus pandemic is widespread. Estimates have guessed that up to 25% of key standards may not have been taught at the crucial end-of-year period, usually reserved for teaching the most rigorous standards and executing key formative assessments. But Jeffery and Brawley provided counsel on how to bridge this gap. The key? Data. By collecting data, schools can assess where each individual student is academically. This data allows teachers to design and plan lessons that meet kids where they are, ho

Elliott Levine is never one to mince words. As Distinguished Technologist and Director of Education of the Americas for HP, he influenced and advocated for innovative uses of tech in schools. Now as Chief Academic Officer for STS, he is confronting the issues of this new reality. In this conversation with host Kevin Hogan, Elliott expounds on a recent post he wrote regarding the harsh questions that need to be answered in education. These include:Value – If the college campus experience is removed from the equation, and all students are learning remotely, will students want to pay the premium of private, liberal arts schools vs. public schools? Will a student be willing to continue to spend 700%+ more in tuition annually when comparing tuition from in-state tuition rates vs. some private tuition rates?Competition – Are online universities better positioned to thrive in this market? Could institutions such as University of Phoenix, Liberty University, Southern New Hampshire, UMass Online – each with over 75,00

Want to hear about an impossible situation that gets even more difficult? Listen to host Kevin Hogan talk to PresenceLearning CEO Kate Eberle Walker to discuss how districts are utilizing tele-therapy to deliver special education-related services. The company works with hundreds of school districts across the country and since COVID-19 related school closures, hundreds more have reached out to them for help to support students at home. Kate discusses what is happening in districts as they prepare for providing these essential services for students with extra needs.

In this episode of Remote Possibilities, Sean Slade, Senior Director of Global Outreach at ASCD, details the best education practices that will now become mainstream as a result of this madness. Topics include:Learning Communities“Our learning communities can be our classrooms, whether they are in person or, as we are now, online. They can be across our school, and they can be across and amongst our physical locations. Ultimately, we will be seeing these learning communities expand into and across all our communities– physical and online – and our schools and classrooms transform into pedagogical centers where learning is guided rather than delivered.Student Agency“Students needs to develop an understanding of their own role in the learning process and be expected and encouraged to see themselves more as agents, or ideally owners, of their own learning.”Learning to LearnWe have an opportunity here to move expeditiously into a future stage, of utilizing this crisis to upend an antiquated system, and to replace

AI and machine learning have made a major impact in many industries—why not teaching? The frequent question is, will robots replace teachers? No, that’s unlikely ever to happen, but new technology can provide assistance to teachers. In this Online Learning Minute, host Brian Runo explains why these advanced technologies have the capability to reimagine learning. “In a large classroom with hundreds of students, the teacher can’t answer every question. A robot could help,” Brian said. Algorithms from machine learning can also assist in grading papers by computing thousands of pages of content to check for grammar. There are many additional applications where AI and machine learning can benefit the teaching profession. They are there to enhance the experience for all, not supplant teachers, who remain vital to the art of learning.

Not all the news coming out of this madness is bad. Sam Herring, Vice President and General Manager of Intrepid by VitalSource talks about how this current crisis can be a time of resourcefulness and innovation in the workplace learning space. He illustrated these thoughts with how one of largest not‐for‐profit, academic health systems in the United States built and deployed a remote learning system to train the army of nurses battling COVID-19 during those first weeks in March:“Within a day of selecting the Intrepid platform, the health system’s learning team created an initial course prototype, within four days learning pathways were created and audited by nursing leaders, and within eleven days the complete training solution was launched across the entire health system. The initial audience includes approximately 3000 nurses, LPNs, and hospital support staff, and may expand to additional groups.”Listen to this episode of Remote Possibilities for more insights related to the new realities of distance learni

The first data are in regarding learning loss during the pandemic and the results don’t look good. In this episode of Remote Possibilities, Kevin Hogan talks with Stuart Udell, CEO of Achieve3000, and one of the authors of a new study by the Successful Practices Network and the Center for College & Career Readiness, the first published report of the current and predicted impact of school closures using actual performance measures. Stuart breaks down the grim particulars including:76% of schools showed decreased usage after schools closedSchools differed widely in how quickly and how well they made the transition to online learning. Overall, however, the number of students logging in has declined by 43% and the number of students completing at least one lesson has declined by 44%.Students are on track to lose up to 49% of gains over the summerBased on early data, it appears that school closures as a result of the coronavirus crisis will lead to a significant loss of potential learning gains, as 28%, for ma

This episode of the MarketScale Online Learning Minute featured Ray Schroeder, professor at the University of Illinois Springfield (UIS), senior fellow of the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) and founder of the Center for Online Learning, Research, and Service. Ray has been a pioneer of the online learning field and launched the UIS’s first online course in 1997. Schroeder and host Brian Runo discussed the state of online learning for universities as the world faces the COVID-19 pandemic. With predictive models showing possible new surges of cases in the fall, some universities are going to continue online, while others will reopen for fall with safety precautions in place. “Universities had about a week to suddenly transition to online learning, which is an undertaking that would normally take years. This quick transition meant that many courses lacked engagement and interactivity, as they weren’t designed for online learning,” Schroeder said. Due to the fast shift

On this episode of the MarketScale Online Learning Minute, host Brian Runo dives into how quantum computing, the next revolutionary leap forward in computing, could apply to online education. In particular, it can be used to epitomize the connectivism theory and provide personalized learning for each individual, as its not restricted by the capacity of an individual instructor. In this way, each learner can be empowered to learn at their own pace and be presented with materials more tailored to them in real-time. In fact, quantum computing is so revolutionary that the education world likely can’t even currently dream up the innovations it will enable.

One crucial aspect of training employees is ensuring they retain the information in the courses. Companies should also seek out feedback from class takers to improve the content. Brian recommends several tactics to improve comprehension. Setting up a survey post-course for comments by participants can help a company improve their online learning. If those taking the class don’t return, it’s a good idea to send them an email reminder. “If someone stopped at the first module, give them a nudge to finish,” Brian said. Last, organizations should consider the assessment at the end of the program and how relevant it is to the topic. Workforce learning can be required for several reasons, such as practical applications or knowledge acquisition. Whatever the goal, companies should make sure that the evaluation at the end aligns with this.