Looking to illustrate an abstract concept from a novel she'd read, an Oklahoma high school student turned to her building-level school librarian. Then, with the school librarian's encouragement to tinker in the makerspace, the girl sculpted a clay model of a kneeling woman balancing a 3D-printed replica of the earth on her back. "She was […]
Digital book platforms now provide more than just reading materials. Today, students can listen to audio recordings, highlight text and watch accompanying videos. Meanwhile, teachers can monitor student progress through assessment tools. Some content even caters specifically to educators for use in professional learning communities. e-Books on Gale Virtual Reference Library platform Gale, a Cengage […]
Certifications in the technology sector are ever-evolving, as new education tools, apps and platforms become available on a nearly continuous basis. In fact, several new training courses debuted after the recent school year ended, offering technology certificates focused on tool-agnostic and open-resource curricula. Professional and regional education technology groups develop and host these certifications, while […]
School libraries increasingly use "genrefication"—the reorganization of collections by genre as opposed to the traditional Dewey Decimal System—to boost circulation and to encourage students to help themselves in finding books. Genrefication emulates bookstores, allowing users to find titles easily by browsing by general subject rather than using card catalogues and numeric codes. "Historically, libraries were […]
The Pennsbury School District in Pennsylvania has embarked on a wide ranging Future Ready initiative, seeking to provide ubiquitous access to technology for its 10,500 students while creating a culture of digital, personalized teaching and learning. The initiative included replacing outdated desktops and shared laptop carts with 1:1 Chromebooks and updating the district's technology infrastructure. […]
For most school districts, internet filters are crucial for complying with the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA), which requires restricting students from accessing inappropriate online content. Filtering also allows districts to manage limited bandwidth. At West Rusk County Consolidated ISD in East Texas, for example, too many people running too many applications at once was […]
A custom-made mobile tech lab brings tech and internet access to the neighborhoods of low-income students in La Joya ISD (7,000 students) on Texas' Mexican border. "In our predominantly low socioeconomic level area, parents don't have access to basic educational support at home" says Clemencia Garza, the district's instructional resources and technology director. "They don't […]
Steven Yates has a message for would-be school librarians. "If you're coming to this because you like to read and you want to manage a collection of books, then you showed up about 30 years too late to the profession" says Yates, a former high school librarian who teaches in the school library media certification […]
Rockford Public Schools is the third-largest school district in Illinois, educating more than 28,500 students. Last year, Cory Nilsen and David Allen, the respective deans of social studies and science curricula for Rockford PS, learned that a local organization that had provided dictionaries to every third-grade student was disbanding, and it wanted to give Rockford […]
