EdTech Today

How do you tackle COVID response, the misnomer that is “learning loss,” artificial intelligence, digital platforms and pedagogy, plus Rodney Dangerfield in 25 minutes? In this episode of EdTech Today, Dreambox Learning CEO  Jessie Woolley-Wilson addresses all of that and more.

DreamBox Learning, the K-8 digital math company that pioneered Intelligent Adaptive Learning™ technology, recently announced new features that will help educators address the challenges they face connecting with students during virtual learning, while also providing ways to deepen engagement with students returning to in-person instruction during the 2020-21 school year. DreamBox’s new features were specifically designed to support the variety of learning environments being implemented across the country in the wake of COVID-19—including in-person, all virtual and hybrid models— and focus on meeting students’ social-emotional needs while also measuring and ensuring student growth.

DreamBox’s new capabilities address the most critical learning needs expressed by educators at the moment and provide the tools needed to keep students engaged and motivated to learn. The updates include an embedded direct messaging feature that gives teachers a tool to directly communicate with and encourage students within DreamBox, and also provides students with a simple way to ask questions privately to their teacher. In addition, brand new reports provide educators with a better understanding of their students’ daily activity, ongoing growth, and math competency, and new, innovative DreamBox lessons help to improve student understanding of key concepts.

“We’ve heard directly from teachers about the critical need for tools to better connect and engage with their students during remote and hybrid learning,” said Tim Hudson, PhD, Chief Learning Officer of DreamBox Learning. “DreamBox has always been built by teachers for teachers, which is why our new teacher-student messaging feature, interactive word problem lessons, and virtual manipulatives for 2D and 3D geometry topics will help teachers stay connected to students while helping improve their learning. Now more than ever, our goal is to support teachers with resources and tools that meet their needs regardless of the learning environment they’re returning to this fall.”

New DreamBox features released today help teachers and students with:

Meeting Students’ Social-Emotional Needs: During school closures, teacher and student communication is even more vital to engage and support students. To foster this important connection and build math confidence, DreamBox now offers an embedded messaging tool for teachers to send custom notes or pre-written messages of encouragement to an individual student or an entire class. Students can use emojis to respond to their teacher’s notes or initiate their own conversation with teachers by choosing from pre-written messages such as, “I need more time to be successful at this,” and, “I’m feeling pretty good about this.” Students who use DreamBox in Spanish will automatically see all messages in Spanish, and students with reading difficulties can hear these messages read aloud. This new capability makes it possible for teachers to attend to each student’s social and emotional learning needs outside of the classroom while fostering critical thinking, differentiation, and confidence in math.

Quick Insights into Student Usage and Growth: This school year, whether they are providing in-person or virtual instruction, a teacher’s time is more valuable than ever. DreamBox’s updated Insights Dashboard and new reporting help teachers quickly get the insights they need most about daily student usage and growth over time. The new Student Usage Report gives educators clear, daily insights into student activity and learning time in a remote setting while also monitoring math learning progress. District and school administrators will also have access to DreamBox’s new Growth Report to clearly see how students using DreamBox are growing in terms of externally calibrated grade level benchmarks. In line with the findings from independent efficacy studies, students completing at least five DreamBox lessons per week grow an average of 1.5 grade levels during a single school year, regardless of whether they start below, at, or above grade level.

Math Lessons that Promote Critical Thinking: DreamBox’s new and innovative lessons support student understanding of math concepts and build critical thinking skills in ways that no other math software program can. Using a new interactive word problems tool, students have a powerful way to engage in mathematical processes and practices in order to connect words and symbols to equations. DreamBox has also developed a new set of manipulatives and games to build student understanding of perimeter, area, and volume. DreamBox’s lessons support sense-making and strong mathematical reasoning by connecting students with these key geometric concepts in ways that can only be achieved in a digital environment.

“Partnering with DreamBox helped make remote learning possible in the spring and provided our school with a full view of our students’ math learning competency. These new tools will be necessary for continuing in our efforts to address attendance and each student’s learning needs,” said Kim Dougherty, a teacher at Crow Creek Tribal School. “After trying the new student-teacher messaging with a few of my own students, I am looking forward to being able to share feedback and motivate students that are struggling within a particular lesson or concept this new school year. The new messaging feature will help me reach out to my students when they are frustrated and encourage them to take on new math concepts together!”

Other DreamBox Features Supporting Learning Guardians and Students

These new features are just the latest capabilities DreamBox has introduced to help all learning guardians navigate this new school year. Earlier this year, DreamBox accelerated the release of DreamBox Predictive Insights in response to the cancellation of state tests due to COVID-19. As the only elementary digital math program that can predict how students would have performed on state standardized tests without the need for additional testing, DreamBox provides district administrators and educators with important insights into student learning after just a few weeks of using DreamBox.

In support of parents and guardians, DreamBox is continuing to offer access to DreamBox’s Parent Dashboard for parents and guardians of students with school accounts to create closer connections between home and school. Whether their school decides to continue with online learning or resumes school in-person, parents and guardians can view reports and data about their child’s DreamBox use, learning growth, and achievement milestones.

DreamBox is used by five million students and 200,000 educators in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada and Mexico. Through its Intelligent Adaptive Learning technology, DreamBox personalizes the learning experience for students by adapting to students’ learning both within and between math lessons, offering students the right lesson at the right time in both English and Spanish.

DreamBox continues to introduce new features and capabilities to provide a proven-effective, personalized learning experience serving the unique needs of all students and learning guardians. Independent research conducted by Harvard’s Center for Education Policy Research shows that students who use DreamBox for just one hour a week improve their math scores by nearly 60% more than expected growth norms on benchmark and state tests. DreamBox is also the only elementary online math program with the highest rating of “Strong” from Johns Hopkins’ EvidenceforESSA.org. To learn more about DreamBox, visit https://www.dreambox.com/.

Anyone else miss crowded trade show floors, hotel lobby bars, and last-minute coffee meetups? In this episode of EdTech Today, edTech industry event veteran Frank Catalano dives into “The List”—his ever-changing tally of in-person education events that suddenly disappeared one year ago this month—and divines when we may once again be brushing elbows, instead of trading Zoom waves, with colleagues.

“The tools and techniques have gotten a lot better for online conferences. I give ISTE credit for this. They built their own platform when they were forced to go virtual. They’re going that way again this year, and they realized that this can’t just be all about Zoom.” - Frank Catalano

Frank Catalano is a veteran education technology analyst, industry strategy consultant and widely published author. Frank has been a senior executive with Pearson, ProExam and the SchoolMessenger business of West (now Intrado). He also was a consulting senior analyst with MDR’s EdNET Insight market research service and the founding director of the EdSurge Intelligence service. Frank is perhaps best known for his lively technology analysis and commentary for a number of media outlets. He currently writes a regular column for the edtech news site EdSurge and previously was a long-running contributor to the tech news site GeekWire. He's active on Twitter as @FrankCatalano.

Anyone else miss crowded trade show floors, hotel lobby bars, and last-minute coffee meetups? In this episode of EdTech Today, edTech industry event veteran Frank Catalano dives into “The List”—his ever-changing tally of in-person education events that suddenly disappeared one year ago this month—and divines when we may once again be brushing elbows, instead of trading Zoom waves, with colleagues.

Frank Catalano is a veteran education technology analyst, industry strategy consultant and widely published author. Frank has been a senior executive with Pearson, ProExam and the SchoolMessenger business of West (now Intrado). He also was a consulting senior analyst with MDR’s EdNET Insight market research service and the founding director of the EdSurge Intelligence service. Frank is perhaps best known for his lively technology analysis and commentary for a number of media outlets. He currently writes a regular column for the edtech news site EdSurge and previously was a long-running contributor to the tech news site GeekWire. He's active on Twitter as @FrankCatalano.

Let’s face it. Some things aren’t going to go back to normal. That’s a good thing, according to Julio Ronchetti, CEO and Founder at NOVVA AI Technology, whose company’s platform is aiming to reinvent the college fair experience. In this episode, Julio describes how the pandemic has forced higher ed to comes to terms with its inefficiencies and how ultimately the students will come out better for it.

How the company describes their solution:

Virtual fair platform:

We created one of the most robust and innovative Virtual fair platforms that allow students, parents, high school counselors, and college recruiters to have engaging and meaningful conversations. Our live student virtual fairs and networking events help domestic recruiters achieve their recruitment goals as Gen Z gravitates with ease in the mobile world. Virtual fairs provide them with engaging and immediately beneficial experiences that they appreciate.

AI Communication Platform:

We created NOVVA’s artificial intelligence Communication Platform to provide universities and colleges a powerful tool to shape future outcomes, automate complex processes, and optimize time spent with students. The system also provides behavioral analytics in real-time, tracks the ROI for marketing campaigns, predicts which students are more likely to enroll or drop out, and connects to social media channels such as WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage, and Facebook Messenger. In short, this platform works to help universities improve their recruitment and retention results and empowers the university personnel.

Students cannot learn while in a state of trauma. Seems obvious now, but it wasn’t always when it came to school district structures. In this episode of EdTech Today, EmpowerU Founder and CEO Katie Dorn talks about how the perception of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) has been completely transformed during COVID and how if education systems are to recover and thrive, mental health treatments have to be at the forefront.

EmpowerU recently announced that the company has secured $1 million in seed funding to launch its highly personalized, tech-powered, social-emotional learning solution nationwide. The funding will fuel EmpowerU’s efforts to bring much-needed mental health support to students beyond Minnesota, where more than 1,000 students have already benefited with improved wellbeing, confidence, and hope.

This round of financing was led by Capita3, a Twin Cities venture firm with a focus on women-led organizations. Additional investment partners include ECMC and GreatNorth Labs.

A recent EdWeek survey indicated that 66% of high school principals are actively searching for effective solutions to battle the escalating levels of student anxiety, avoidance and depression. With EmpowerU, student growth happens one day at a time, one small step at a time through engaging, online skill-building lessons supported by daily 1:1 motivational coaching. This daily blend of support results in significant improvements in emotional wellbeing, school attendance, and grades, while decreasing the need for more costly interventions.

EmpowerU coaches are highly trained, empathetic therapists who help students face their obstacles and make the important connection between core concepts in online lessons and the unique challenges in their lives, fueling change.

“EmpowerU delivers transformational student support at a fraction of the cost of therapy,” said Katie Dorn, the company’s co-founder. “As a licensed school counselor and therapist, I know how desperate educators are for cost-effective tools that actually help students overcome struggle. Although most students are unable to control their barriers, EmpowerU helps them navigate obstacles and come out the other side stronger. Students build hope that despite their difficult circumstances, they can feel better and thrive, today and in the future.”

Independent evaluation of EmpowerU showed that:

More than 93% of students who complete EmpowerU make a dramatic shift from discouragement and anxiety to improved wellbeing, motivation, and hope.

More than 88% of students complete the program, compared to 5-30% completion rates with other programs.

More than 98.5% of students would recommend EmpowerU to a friend or classmate.

Students can access the EmpowerU portal on any computer or mobile device. The semester-long course can be completed online in only 20 to 30 minutes per weekday. EmpowerU’s approach is aligned with CASEL and National Health and Wellness standards, so students who complete all six units of the course can receive a semester wellness credit.

Not even one month into his new role as Chief Strategy Officer at ParentSquare and Chad Stevens has created the first and possibly most important edtech acronym for 2021. In this episode of EdTech Today, Chad drops the particulars of Parent Relationship Management (PRM) and how the present technologies that kept families connected to schools during COVID will only improve as we move past it.

Sevens joins ParentSquare from Amazon Web Services where he most recently had the title of Leader, K-12 Education, guiding the team focused on K-12 customer priorities to provide cloud infrastructure and services that support improved academic performance and operations. Stevens had been with Amazon for five years and was an inaugural employee of the AWS K-12 team.

In the new Chief Strategy Officer role, Stevens will work closely with ParentSquare’s co-founders, CEO Sohit Wadhwa and President Anupama Vaid, to expand ParentSquare’s relationships with school districts across the U.S., supplying insights and driving execution based on his extensive knowledge of K-12 institutions and the edtech industry. “We’re excited to have Chad—with his depth of experience and strong reputation in education—on the executive team at ParentSquare,” said Wadhwa. “He’s been a long-time advocate for the intelligent use of technology in schools, which aligns with ParentSquare’s drive to improve parent engagement and communications equity.”

Stevens is well known in education and edtech. He serves as a board member of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and sits on the Driving K-12 Innovation Global Advisory Board. He also recently was part of the Washington Remote Learning Taskforce that examined remote learning challenges facing students during the COVID-19 pandemic across the country, and made recommendations to best address them.

Prior to Amazon, he was Chief Education Strategist for CDW-G and, among several earlier school roles, was Chief Technology Officer and Principal for the Clear Creek Independent School District in Texas. He has a Ph.D. in Educational Administration from Texas A&M University.

“I’ve dedicated my career to improving education outcomes for all students,” Stevens said. “Becoming part of ParentSquare is a perfect fit that allows me to get back to my roots as a teacher, Principal and Chief Technology Officer while using my private and public sector experience to impact millions of students, educators and parents.”

While infrastructure may not sound like the sexiest of topics when it comes to reinventing education through IT, it remains the most essential. With the news that Clever, the most widely used digital learning platform in U.S. K-12 schools, recent partnership announcement with Identity Automation, the leader in identity management for education, that talk is about to get more frisky. In this episode of Edtech Today, CEOs Tyler Bosmeny and Jim Harold break down how that can happen.

"More than ever, district leaders are counting on education technology to work smoothly, all day, every day. Sixty-five percent of districts nationwide have adopted Clever to make learning applications work seamlessly, and increasingly they have asked if we could bring that same power and ease to managing their core identity systems like Active Directory, Microsoft 365, and Google," said Tyler Bosmeny, Chief Executive Officer of Clever.  "Now we can help districts connect both IT and curriculum systems quickly, securely, and at a fraction of the cost of alternatives with Clever IDM Enterprise."

There has been a 92% increase in use of learning applications in schools within the last year alone, according to Clever data. While Clever seamlessly manages access to learning applications, districts still face a complex problem that threatens the smooth functioning of learning and IT systems—creating and maintaining user information in core identity systems. Student, teacher and staff information is updated constantly, meaning errors can arise at any time, preventing students and staff from accessing the applications they use daily.

Now, Clever and Identity Automation have developed a comprehensive, enterprise-level identity management solution for K-12 schools that is affordable and can be implemented in days.

Clever IDM Enterprise delivers the following benefits:

Automation of repetitive manual processes: This new solution eliminates the delays and errors in account creation that are inevitable with manual processes, giving students faster access to the resources they need and reducing demands on overtaxed IT departments.

Data security and privacy:  Clever IDM Enterprise helps districts protect student data and mitigate the risk of a data breach by automatically enforcing security policies across each application, protecting sensitive data, and closing security gaps from old user credentials and access rights.

Set up takes days – not months: The implementation of technology systems can be time-consuming and costly. For school districts who are rostered with Clever, onboarding Clever IDM Enterprise is quick and easy.

Fraction of the cost of other identity management solutions in the market: Because the Clever digital learning platform (including single sign-on, rostering, messaging, and analytics) is always free for districts, they have the option to add Clever IDM Enterprise in order to cover all of their identity management needs for a much lower price than that of other solutions.

"Clever and Identity Automation provide critical services for us, and this partnership is a gamechanger.  A joint offering from these two market leaders can only provide immense benefit for all schools."  Dustin Hardin, Chief Technology Officer, Humble Independent School District in Humble, Texas.

"We have found a like-minded mission-driven partner in Clever," said Jim Harold, Chief Executive Officer of Identity Automation. "We look forward to helping more districts make technology work for them, not against—enabling them to focus their time and attention on what matters most: students. Clever IDM Enterprise will be available for implementation in June.

In this episode, Michael talks about the effects COVID-19 has had on higher education and hopefully the silver linings that can come out of it.

Michael Horn speaks and writes about the future of education and works with a portfolio of education organizations to create a world in which all individuals can build their passions and fulfill their potential. He is the author of many books, including Choosing College, and Goodnight Box, a children’s story.

Michael is a senior strategist at Guild Education, which partners with leading employers and organizations to help offer education and upskilling opportunities to America’s workforce. He is also the co-founder of and a distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a non-profit think tank.

Michael is the author and coauthor of multiple books, white papers, and articles on education, including the award-winning book Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns and the Amazon-bestseller Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools. He serves on the board and advisory boards of a range of education organizations, including the Clayton Christensen Institute, the Robin Hood Learning+Tech Fund, and the LearnLaunch Institute. He also serves as an executive editor at Education Next and is a venture partner at NextGen Venture Partners.

Michael was selected as a 2014 Eisenhower Fellow to study innovation in education in Vietnam and Korea, and Tech&Learning magazine named him to its list of the 100 most important people in the creation and advancement of the use of technology in education. Michael holds a BA in history from Yale University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

In this episode of EdTech Today, SXSW EDU executive producers Ron Reed and Greg Rosenbaum detail their pivots this past year and share valuable insights for any ed exec who creates, exhibits, or attends edtech events.

Keynote sessions convene the SXSW EDU Online community each morning, bringing together powerful voices for discourse on a topic impacting education. This year, the keynote lineup spotlights incredibly timely and important discussions for all education stakeholders.

Commencing SXSW EDU Online, as previously announced, Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry will lead the opening keynote discussion on the impact of childhood trauma on who we become, the decisions we make, and how healing must start with one question ‘what happened to you?’ Ms. Winfrey and Dr. Perry have co-authored a book on the topic, What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing, which will be released in April.

Newly announced, Kimberly Bryant, Founder and CEO of Black Girls CODE and Reshma Saujani, Founder and CEO of Girls Who Code will be in conversation for Wednesday’s keynote discussion on the gender gap in computing and programming, especially in underrepresented groups.

On the final day of SXSW EDU Online programming, author Nic Stone and Brittany Hogan, Director of Educational Equity and Diversity at Rockwood School District, will give their individual and collective thoughts and ideas about how diverse literature can change the hearts and minds of students in the keynote, Empathy in Equity: Author and Educator. Join the keynote speakers directly after their session for a live Q&A you won’t want to miss.

Join Us for SXSW EDU Online

Secure your pass for SXSW EDU Online, March 9-11, 2021 at the current rate of $139 before passes sell out. SXSW EDU Online also offers group and student discounts.

Sign up for the SXSW EDU email update for all the latest news and be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram for the latest news and updates.

In this episode, experts from the K12 Security Information Exchange (K12 SIX) – a new national non-profit dedicated solely to helping to protect public and private K-12 schools from cybersecurity threats – detail those issues and offer strategies to combat them.

You can join in further conversation next week for a free half-day of virtual presentations and panels on the evolving cybersecurity challenges facing the education sector, and the innovative strategies needed to mitigate them.

REGISTER HERE for the complimentary half-day of learning and sharing of best practices/

Sessions will include:

• An overview and analysis of recent school cybersecurity incidents, based on data from the K-12 Cyber Incident Map

• A moderated discussion on incident response, lessons learned, and best practices from education practitioners who have experienced significant cybersecurity attacks and incidents

• A panel on best practices including how to work with law enforcement, attorneys, and cyber insurance providers when school cyber attacks occur

• Roles for state and federal policymakers in mitigating school cybersecurity risks. Speaker and session details are available on www.k12six.org.

About K12 SIX

Kindergarten Through Twelfth Grade Security Information Exchange (K12 SIX) is a cyber and physical threat intelligence sharing hub for schools, to aid in preventing and mitigating attacks. This non-profit member community is a cost-effective forum for crowdsourcing security information among a vetted, trusted group of professionals with a common interest, using common technology and with supporting, independent analysis from the K12 SIX security staff. K12 SIX is currently recruiting members and sponsors. Please visit www.k12six.org to learn more and to take advantage of a free one-year membership for eligible K-12 organizations for a limited time.