As we thankfully gain distance from the past disastrous two years, some edtech companies have started to look back at how student and teacher behaviors have changed during the lurch to remote learning and now back again to whatever we want to call this “new normal.” What worked and should remain in the day-to-day school experience? What didn’t and should be pushed to the curb immediately?

I had the chance to chat with Ed Morgan, COO of DisplayNote, on some of their recent customer findings and how they have upgraded their offerings as a result. DisplayNote’s data highlights screen-sharing usage from their tool Montage. This wireless presentation software allows teachers and students to share their device's screen to the big screen in the classroom.

The findings are based on more than 1.8 million screen shares over this year and indicate a shift in education as more educators embrace technology to address unfinished learning, staffing shortages and other challenges.

Some highlights:

* Screen sharing is a core component of daily lessons – Almost 70% of users use the DisplayNote app daily.

* Students are using a variety of different devices for learning – When it comes to screen sharing Mac, Windows, Android, iOS, web and native casting all have their place.

* Web-based screen sharing is king – 53% of users shared their screen via their Chrome browser.

* Lessons are dynamic and student-driven – The average session length is 1.6 hours and tends to feature multiple people screen sharing and adding context as opposed to one static presentation sitting on screen for hours.

* Teachers need a flexible environment – Teachers like the ability to walk around the room and share their content from anywhere, so they can stay closer to their students.

Ed Morgan goes into greater detail in a blog post here

Some highlights from the conversation:

On how Broadcast is changing the classroom dynamic:

We're still finding teachers and schools want the flexibility that maybe, yeah, everyone's in the room at times, but maybe they're not. They've got schools or pupils off campus. They've got someone in the back of the room who may just wanna have their earphones in and listen again. What a lot of screen sharing does is just share, one thing out to many. We're just wanting the ability to just make it a bit more individualized. So whether that's picking up the facial expressions of the teacher when you're at the back of the room or picking up the audio, So broadcast is just adding that one to many screen share and bringing it in face and bringing in voice.

On how collaboration and the tools that enable it have changed:

I guess it begs the question, what is normal? You've probably seen it, in office spaces and classrooms. We want to go back to that in room, in person experience. We all realize the value of proximity and what I can get across to you as a class—that the ability to walk around the room, you're not just at the front. But now I guess our users are also saying, “Well now we've got a bunch of these great tools that we can use as part of that lesson.” They're not going into it saying, “We must use video, or we must use tool X, Y, and Z, but hey, we've got very familiar with these tools and we're gonna start to work them into where we think makes sense.”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganreport.substack.com

Hard data on district needs are still hard to find even now that most schools are “back to normal.” Many questions remain about where school leaders stand when it comes to the issues that came to the forefront in the past two years including cybersecurity threats, digital equity, and the effectiveness of hybrid learning.

In a recent conversation with Julia Fallon, executive director of SEDTA, I was able to glean some answers. The 2022 State EdTech Trends Report, released by the SEDTA in collaboration with Whiteboard Advisors, draws on the results of the organization’s flagship annual State EdTech Trends Survey of edtech directors, state superintendents, chiefs of staff, and other senior state officials. The report supplements the survey findings with interviews of leaders in a number of states to spotlight their efforts to support digital learning.

It’s best to hear the whole conversation by clicking above but below are some highlights:

On the purpose behind the survey:

We wanted to identify what the priorities were on edtech and education in general. This is our first year (doing the survey). We plan on at least another two years because it will help states think about how they can optimize the investments that were made, especially in the edtech space, during the pandemic. There's lots of funding that comes through regular federal channels and state channels and we wanted to get take a pulse in that space. So we were excited. We got a really great response.

On this key finding from the report—

* Seventy percent of respondents reported that the State Education Agency or at least one district in the state was the victim of a cyber attack. However, 57% of respondents report that their states provide very little funding for school cybersecurity efforts.:

I think during the pandemic we found out how vulnerable school districts really were to cyber security. One, because not everybody's in the same space, right? They're all over the place. You're connecting from offsite, which can create extra opportunities. Technology was being deployed without probably going through normal vetting. Hopefully districts have a vetting process, but it might have been shortened in order to be able to serve students and educators during the pandemic…We have a cybersecurity and data collaborative, which is currently being funded by the Gates Foundation, to help our state leaders become more aware of what's in the space in terms of policy, to help them advocate for better policy, but also to identify what states could do to actually mitigate some of the cybersecurity risks wholesale.

On pandemic silver linings:

In some ways the pandemic allowed states to be a little bit more responsive because maybe there weren't requirements that they had to completely follow, right? There were still requirements, but maybe they were streamlined. Now, they can look back and say, “Well, is that the best way we could have done that? Is that the way we're still going to keep it? Because maybe we don't. Maybe there's a better way to do this.”

Some more highlights from the report:

* Survey respondents emphasized the need for greater focus on the effective use of technology. More than half report that schools have “a lot of edtech programs or products, but we don’t always use them effectively,” while only 8 states report collecting data on edtech use and efficacy.

* States vary greatly in how they are organized to support edtech, with only 55% of states reporting that they have a dedicated office for educational technology.  Although billions of dollars are spent annually on edtech – an investment that increased significantly during the pandemic – many states still lack a dedicated edtech office. The names of these offices, their roles and functions, and positions within state education agency organizational structures vary greatly. 

* States can more intentionally connect educational priorities and technological priorities – and support the connection with investment. Only 48% of respondents agree that their State Educational Agency (SEA) have explicit conversations about the role of technology in supporting state priorities, while only 41% say that the people working on edtech at the state level are regularly included in broader planning and strategic conversations around technology.

* Many states report a disparity between edtech priorities and their activities. For instance, although cybersecurity and privacy were high technological priorities for states, only 6% of respondents said their state provides ample funding for cybersecurity, 37% said the state provides cybersecurity tools to Local Education Agencies, and 57% said their state provides very little or a small amount of funding for cybersecurity.

To read the whole report click here: 2022 State EdTech Trends survey and report

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganreport.substack.com

Twenty-five years have passed since E-Rate, the most effective government edtech program to benefit public education was launched, and yet the need for E-Rate plus other government programs to upgrade and modernize the digital infrastructure of schools has never been greater. The monies are there. The processes are in place. So where are we?

I had a chance to ask John Harrington, CEO at Funds For Learning, these questions as he announced the release of its free E-rate Manager tool for schools and libraries. E-rate Manager has been the leading E-rate data analytics tool for many years, and today the latest version is available to all E-rate applicants at no charge. The data tool will allow applicants to access their current and historical E-rate filing information to make informed decisions about their connectivity needs.

A few highlights from this episode:

On the importance of maintaining sustainable funding formulas:

One of the reasons that the E-Rate program is so successful is that applicants can plan on it. They can budget around it. Not even just plan for this year, but they can look out over the next 3, 4, 5 years and come up with a really good plan. What makes the most sense? What's going be cost-effective? How can we build towards this? There's no equivalent today for the off-campus piece, for the device piece of it. Until it's predictable and sustainable, it's not gonna be a part of the ongoing day-to-day.

On what E-Rate will be supporting the next 25 years:

Each year Funds for Learning conducts a survey of eRate applicants. We're about to publish this year’s results. One of the things we ask — what are your bandwidth needs going to be? And 84% of the respondents said that they would be increasing their bandwidth in the next three years. These are the same applicants that have tripled their bandwidth over the past five years. And it's not an exaggeration to just look at these networks and recognize that they're going to be 10-xing their bandwidth utilization. Jokes about the Metaverse aside, there are holograms in the future. There are virtual reality field trips and opportunities that are, I think, going to make what we have today look sort of outdated and silly. The Star Trek, Next Generation stuff? That's not so crazy anymore.

On offering E-Rate manager for free:

We launched this tool back in 2003, almost 20 years ago. We were in the process of retooling it, rebuilding it, from the ground up as it was starting to show its age a bit. We'd gone out to create this new system with brand new APIs etc. And, we just thought, you know what? There's no better way to give back to the community than give this to the community. So it's completely free for applicants, always will be. And it just gives them access to the information they need to finish their e-rate forms, hopefully get it all in on time and, and get their school or their library system the funds they need.

Some more details on E-Rate manager:

The new tool allows applicants to view their school or library's funding history through several filters, giving them visibility into how funds have been requested, committed and disbursed.

Details include:

* Free registration and use available to all applicants

* Funding request information available for all funding years

* Easily searchable

* Access to form 470s for product and services requests

* Leverages publicly available data from USAC

* Updated daily

Funds For Learning encourages E-rate applicants to access E-rate Manager when preparing to file during the upcoming filing window.

Register for the free E-rate Manager at https://www.fundsforlearning.com/e-rate-data/erm-for-applicants. For updates regarding upcoming E-rate filing window, please visit https://www.fundsforlearning.com/news/.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganreport.substack.com

How do squishy, esoteric topics like equity, SEL, and “educating the whole child” jibe with cold, hard data sets? Powerschool CEO Hardeep Gulati shares some ideas in conjunction with the recent release of the company’s Education Focus Report for the 2022-2023 school year. 

The report represents the findings from a national survey of more than 3,500 educators, in-depth conversations with over 75 education practitioners and leaders, and a comprehensive scan of over 25 mid-to-large U.S. school districts’ strategic plans. Seven common strategic priorities across U.S. districts emerged from the results: high-quality, tiered instruction; whole-child supports; exceptional workforce; robust family engagement; expanded early childhood learning; graduates prepared for life, college, and career; and organizational excellence and efficiency. The report also highlights two grounding concepts: data-informed decision-making and equitable student supports. These common district priorities reflect schooling both before and during the continuing pandemic. Scroll below for a few data points along with some of Hardeep’s insights:

“What we definitely clearly see is the recognition of how important it is to really get an understanding of the whole child. There is data which should tell you 90% of the districts prior to pandemic did not have a good understanding of really bringing all that together. And now we are seeing that to be one of the top initiatives across pretty much all districts and educators.”

“In fact, 58% of the educators said social emotional aspects are the key part of really supporting the whole child instruction and support. So these are really top of the mind for educators to create the right classroom culture and how to really engage the students. There is a lot of talk about achievement gaps and learning loss and unfinished learning, as well as grade inflation. You can have all kinds of intervention strategies— throwing more supplemental content, additional content tutoring and all those things—but you’re still not addressing and engaging the child properly.”

“Innovation definitely has been addressing a lot of the key demands (when it comes to) talent management. How do we bring more empowerment to the teachers? How do we make sure districts have a better view of how to retain teachers? They need a holistic view—much like we talk about whole child—a universal HR portal that gives them a whole view about the entire teacher and where they are and what their needs are, so that they can support them better as well.”

“Equity is foundational to our vision. If you look at our mission, it's really, ‘How do we personalize education for every child to make sure that every child can get the right quality of instruction and support, and to really do personalization for every child?’ One of the big aspects of our strategy has been to really go off from these fragmented silo systems and bring them all together and connect them. So we can really give that opportunity for educators and the leaders to be able to understand what every child needs and then be able to provide the right help to their child, whether that's social, emotional, whether that's being able to engage their families, to see where your gaps are.”

Click here to download the report.

Click here to read more of Hardeep’s insights into the report.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganreport.substack.com

When the most difficult part of an interview is trying to figure out how to end it, you know you’ve had a great conversation. This is usually the case with Bobbi Kurshan and Kathy Hurley (be sure to scroll their legendary bios below). But when it involves their most recent passion project, that challenge goes next level.

The pair released InnovateHERs: Why Purpose-Driven Entrepreneurial Women Rise to the Top in April and have been promoting it both in person and online since. Here’s the marketing nutshell: “Through personal interviews with 30 of today's top women leading purpose-driven organizations—ranging from those in startups and nonprofits to those in large companies across the globe—Kurshan and Hurley have created a unique, insider's view of what it takes to be a successful female leader in today's competitive world.”

My take? I concur. The book is an easy and inspiring read that divines the distinctions between genders when it comes to entrepreneurship, then details and delivers best practices and insights that can be applied by everyone. I had the pleasure to dig in a bit deeper about the creation process of InnovateHERs, which you can hear by clicking above. Below are a couple of selected highlights:

On what makes women leaders different:

BK: Women are clearly more empathetic, but what was interesting is how that manifested itself in the way they ran their organizations. They were more collaborative. Their teams stayed with them longer. And one antithesis to that is they could fire people better. Because when they would go to fire people, they would say, “You know, I don't think this is a fit for you. I'll help you think about where you should be.” Kathy and I can't tell you the number of times we both told that to people we're mentoring.

KH: Mentoring is really an interesting area. I have worked with a lot of superintendent groups, and early on, I used to say, “You should have a meeting for women.” They'd get kind of their backs up and say, “We just don't have to have a meeting for women. If they're corporate people, they could be at the corporate meeting.” But women have different issues. Women have work-life balance issues. Women like to talk to other women about how they've kind of gotten through this—tricks of the trade. What's happened during the pandemic is a lot of women's groups have really come to the fore and it's not a thing about power or anything like that. It's just sharing ideas, sharing stories.

On what it means to be an entrepreneur:

BK: That's the research I've done for the last 10 years at the University of Pennsylvania. We've studied the mindset of entrepreneurs—you don't have to be starting a business to be one. We were very clear about that. And we’re not just addressing this to educators. You could be in government, you could be in a corporation, you could be in a foundation. You have a mission that causes you to think innovatively and be entrepreneurial. I think our book has given people a way to feel comfortable that they are an entrepreneur, but they don't have to be starting a business. They can be, but they don't have to be.

KH: And I think the research that Bobby's done gives us an edge. So when we interviewed women who were all very, very different, we compared it to what the research says. And I think people were happy about that. They think, “I always thought it was an entrepreneur, but now I'm seeing that I have the passion or I see that I have that need to achieve, I really am an entrepreneur.”

More info on the authors:

Dr. Barbara “Bobbi” Kurshan, is the President of Educorp Consultants Corporation and Senior Innovation Advisor, Graduate School of Education, Education Entrepreneurship, University of Pennsylvania, and a former education industry entrepreneur. Dr. Kurshan has more than 40 years’ experience in education as a researcher, entrepreneur, developer, investor, and company executive. She developed the first children’s software products for Microsoft, as well as award-winning products for McGraw-Hill, Apple, CCC (Pearson), and others.

She is the author of several books, including Internet for Kids (Sybex); Exploring Creative Writer and Exploring Fine Artist (Addison-Wesley Longman); Understanding Computers Through Applications (Glencoe); Activities for Kids and Kids at Heart (Reston). She has received numerous awards and recognitions including the WISE Prize, the King Bahrain UNESCO Prize, 2019 Most Influential Corporate Board Directors, 100 Edtech Influencers, and Laureate Tech Awards – Technology Benefiting Humanity.

Kathy Hurley is a former senior executive for numerous educational publishing and technology companies, including IBM and Pearson. After retiring from Pearson, she was selected as a Fellow of the Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI) at Harvard University and co-founded a global nonprofit organization, Girls Thinking Global (girlsthinkingglobal.org). In 2004, Hurley was inducted into the Association of Educational Publishers’ Hall of Fame and in 2019, she received the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award in Education Technology from the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). Currently, Hurley is a senior advisor to several educational technology companies, education associations, and school superintendent networks. She is also the co-editor, with Priscilla Shumway, of Real Women, Real Leaders: Surviving and Succeeding in the Business World (Wiley).

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganreport.substack.com

After New Orleans travel delays, the July Fourth holiday, and a strident case of COVID, the Hogan Report is back to wade through the issues and insights from last month’s ISTE conference! I had the pleasure to meet Louisa in person at the show but followed up virtually this week regarding a new survey of nearly 8,000 U.S. educators Kahoot! released today.

In addition to her full-time role at the Kahoot! Group, Louisa teaches a graduate course on EdTech design at Harvard University. Her insights are obviously worth the listen but you can also scroll below for some highlights as well. The main takeaways?

Student engagement is not back to pre-pandemic levels in most classes.

LR: I think [this survey result] just really highlights what students have gone through these difficult couple of years. So many students have gone through so much trauma at home, of all different kinds. So it's not only that they've kind of forgotten how to sit still and forgotten how to tolerate things. It's that some of these pedagogies weren't the best way to support them before and now these pedagogies can't cut it at all.

I think that really looking at approaches like project-based learning and playful learning, game-based learning…I think some of these practices are really important ways to make connections between what students are doing at home in their free time and how they want to be learning.

Choice and active involvement are key to focus and knowledge retention.

LR: Research and the learning sciences have shown for a long time that [student-centered] pedagogies are better for students. The students are more motivated. The pedagogies lead to deeper learning, more transformative learning experiences. But it's just so great to see that teachers also perceive this, that teachers also have this sense that through more student-centered pedagogies and more active learning and playful learning, they can see the results of it being better for students.

It's one thing for researchers and writers to say, “Oh, this is what we should do.” But if teachers are seeing it themselves, then they're much more likely to be motivated to take those steps, to shift their practice, which is not always easy.

Technology powers student-centered learning through play

It's so important that we all recognize that ed tech and education in general is a complex ecosystem, right? Nobody is going to solve education with one tool or one platform. Kahoot! partners with a lot of different educational organizations and has integrations with other ed tech tools. It's really about how do these ed tech tools fit together to create a more meaningful experience for students.

Some details on Kahoot!:

Launched in 2013, Kahoot!’s vision is to build the leading learning platform in the world. Since launch, Kahoot! has hosted hundreds of millions of learning sessions with 8 billion participants (non-unique) in more than 200 countries and regions. The Kahoot! Group includes Clever, the leading US K-12 EdTech learning platform, together with the learning apps DragonBox, Poio, Drops, Actimo, Motimate, and Whiteboard.fi. The Kahoot! Group is headquartered in Oslo, Norway with offices in the US, the UK, France, Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Spain and Poland.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganreport.substack.com

Don’t call it learning loss. Let’s say learning recovery. That sentiment is just one of the many provocative insights Ellen brings forth in this recent conversation (9:13 min) regarding her most current work after joining MIND Research Institute’s board of directors in March. As President and CEO of IESD, she devotes much of her time to the management, implementation, and analysis of education market research. In her career, she has also served the education publishing community as chair of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) Education Section board of directors, an advisor to the National Science Foundation, and a member of the School Tech Exposition & Conference advisory board. Her thoughts are important fodder for anyone looking at the future of software-based curricula. Have a listen.

A few highlights to wet your whistle:

On how COVID may have affected math instruction:

“I don't know that the content of math education has changed because of remote learning, but certainly, approaches have changed and I think one of the things that MIND does works in that environment. They have a product called ST Math, which stands for spatial-temporal, in reference to an ability for kids to conceptualize three-dimensional relationships of objects in space. They then have to mentally manipulate those objects as they go through a bunch of transformations. These games are pretty remarkable to me. And I'm not saying that just because I'm on the Board.”

On how visual math learning can improve the digital equity issue:

“There are online tutoring operations but they cost money. And the people, the kids who are most affected? Their parents can't afford to do it. One of the things about a visual approach to math is that it doesn't involve language. So when you talk about equity and you talk about English Language Learners (ELL), for example, regardless of what somebody's language proficiency level is, if they have the ability to work with math on the visual level they don't need language. So that's not going to hold them back.”

On the idea of math learning loss:

“As I said there is learning loss, but I'm convinced that kids were still learning while they were out of school and rather than thinking of it as a loss— I hate that word—I think about learning recovery and different kids will have to recover in different ways. I think providing parents with tools to help their kids is going to be key. And I see a number of companies not only thinking about that but have already developed tools because there's no way the schools are going to be able to do it all on their own.”

And finally, the big picture:

“Math should be seen as much of a core skill as literacy. As we learn to read, we need to learn to do math and get rid of that old idea of ‘Well, you know, my mother wasn't good at math, so I'm not good at it either.’ It's not something that's genetic. It's something that everybody can succeed at. And I just want to see people go into it with a much more positive attitude.”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganreport.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganreport.substack.com

*Why online learning can become the great equalizer when it comes to credentials.

*How new curricula methods now working in community colleges are creeping into traditional higher education programs.

*How mastery-based assessment can supplement, if not replace, the college degree.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganreport.substack.com

*How standardized testing can in fact be an equitable assessment solution.

*How long is the horizon for baked-in artificial intelligence for automated testing.

*While the Metaverse is still silly, there are legitimate uses for 3-D simulation in assessment.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thehoganreport.substack.com