In a classroom in New Hampshire, second-graders pull out iPads to film themselves discussing the characters of a book they are reading. Such video selfies increase students' understanding of the story's characters and how those characters resolve problems, says Amy Riley, who teaches at Stratham Memorial School in School Administrative Unit 16 in Exeter. "The […]
Making the transformation from traditional to online assessments can cause confusion for many districts, even when it comes to basic definitions. In Houston ISD, for example, analysts found that school leaders were using the right terminology, but their understanding of the words differed widely. Some thought an online assessment was about downloading a scoring sheet, […]
Jennifer Spring, superintendent of Cohoes City School District near Albany, New York, received a phone call from a local senior center in fall 2016 inquiring if any of her high school students could help senior citizens learn technology. Since January 2017, junior and senior honors student have spent about an hour each Tuesday afternoon helping […]
Principal preparation programs continue to place more demands on candidates, in some cases requiring a yearlong internship. When the time comes to assume the role, no amount of preparation can prepare a person for what lies ahead. The constant demands, interruptions, rules, pressure and stress can wear down even the most resilient person. In a […]
Ultimately, the answer to delivering school bandwidth might require a radical rethink in which districts scrap expensive IT infrastructure in favor of pure wireless connections. Next-generation 5G mobile-phone communications capable of moving as much as 1 Gbps directly to a device could make obsolete the school's optical data line, server rooms, miles of network cabling […]
When Hopatcong Borough Schools started a 1-to-1 project that distributed 1,450 Chromebooks to its students and staff in 2016, leaders in the northern New Jersey district wondered whether they had enough bandwidth to satisfy the expected demand. They worried the district's 300Mbps connection would slow down or crash, making the new computers about as pedagogically […]
Allowing students to explore news articles that spark their curiosity can provide a bigger literacy boost than having them read nonfiction texts about random topics far removed from a youngster's interests. At Lancaster Middle School near Buffalo, New York, students read news articles to help write stories for a classroom magazine and to prepare for […]
While the news media environment has changed, our goal as communications professionals hasn't—create a simple, accurate and relevant message for quick delivery to parents, employees, students and community. Editor's note: DA's new marketing column will appear quarterly. The news media has changed and is still changing. The internet's ability to provide free or cheap marketing […]
When beginning kindergarten, Latino students are three months behind in math literacy when compared to their white peers, says a 2017 study conducted by Child Trends, a nonprofit research organization that works to improve the lives children and families. The study, "Making Math Count More for Young Latino Children" cites poverty in Latino households as […]
Educators have offered instruction that goes beyond the rote for many years, but the concept of deeper learning has recently grown in scope as higher education and the economy demand a more complex blend of intellectual and social skills. Today's deeper learning proponents urge schools to focus on six competencies: mastering rigorous academic content; thinking […]
