When the central Connecticut town of Cheshire moved to reduce power use, it upgraded six of its eight public schools with the latest internet of things technology. The plan combined energy-efficient LED fixtures with sensors and cloud-based servers that automatically turn the lights off in an empty room or adjust brightness. The district cut its […]
As in years past, this new year will bring all sorts of new technology to schools. The question for educators is: To what degree do these technologies enhance education? "Figuring out which tech belongs in education is just the start" says Kelly J. Calhoun, research director at Gartner Research, a Connecticut-based market analysis firm. "The […]
Craig Jones discovered the difficulty of providing personalized learning to a large class when he taught science at a Los Angeles USD middle school. With 10 lab stations set up across the classroom—each with its own objectives—monitoring each students' learning was virtually impossible. Jones sought to solve the problem. After leaving the district, he helped […]
Old computers may not be trendy, but as school tech budgets shrink or stagnate, many administrators try to squeeze the most life out of their aging devices. Recycling and retrofitting, and hooking up to the cloud, allow districts to delay or even abandon established schedules for buying brand-new equipment. In 2015, 8.9 million laptops and […]
A convergence of market maturity, increased availability of high-capacity bandwidth and a track record of security has more K12 districts trusting their mission-critical administrative software to the cloud. In the cloud computing model, districts contract with a provider for on-demand access to a shared pool of resources like networks, servers, storage, applications and services. Districts […]
The bad news seems to be everywhere. The School District of Philadelphia had 190 teaching vacancies in October. From New York to California, enrollment in teacher-preparation programs has fallen by double-digit percentages. The president of Nevada's Board of Education called her state's teacher shortage "horrific" according to published reports, warning that, if conditions don't improve, […]
When a classroom is sweltering, nobody is productive. More and more teaching days are being lost to hot, humid weather even though there is a way to mitigate the problem: air conditioning. The challenge is justifying the cost of installation and maintenance at a time when competition for budget money is fierce. The place to […]
Companies that collect student data would be barred from using or selling it for anything other than educational purposes, under a law proposed in January by President Barack Obama. Called the Student Digital Privacy Act, it would also prevent companies from using data to target advertising to students. The legislation is modeled on a comprehensive […]
