Guest Contributed Posts
These articles were authored by a friend of MDR’s community. If you are interested in being a guest contributor, please submit your article ideas here.
By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe 2023 began with some uncertain forecasts about continued investment in education and edtech companies. But, looking at the first quarter, the education market appears to be growing and thriving with numerous acquisitions, investments and new individuals in leadership roles. Here are some highlights: Who knows what the rest of the […]
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By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe You’ve probably read the headlines about ChatGPT both in mainstream and education media. From the January 12, 2023, New York Times: “Don’t Ban ChatGPT in Schools. Teach With It.” or Education Week on January 4, 2023: “New York City Blocks ChatGPT at Schools. Should Other Districts Follow?” Launched in November […]
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By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe The fourth quarter of 2022 was a little bit quieter for the education marketplace than earlier in the year, but there was still a lot of activity. ISTE and ASCD Merge One of the top pieces of news from this fall was the announcement that the International Society for Technology […]
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By Guest Contributor Dr. Angelica Gonzalez, Sr. Data Scientist at McGraw Hill It’s no secret that STEM careers are in high demand, and will likely remain in high demand for some time. The road to a fruitful STEM-centric future is likely to include adversity — and for many learners, particularly underprivileged groups, the path to a rewarding career in […]
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The First “Superintendent in Residence” at McGraw Hill By Guest Contributor, McGraw Hill This interview was originally published here. Dr. Sylvia Diaz has recently joined McGraw Hill as the company’s first Superintendent in Residence. In this new role, Dr. Diaz will champion the voices of educators and district leaders, identifying and forming relationships with forward-thinking […]
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By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe While the investment bank, Berkery Noyes, reported a slight drop in investment and acquisition activity in the K-12 market in the first half of 2022,* there was a lot happening in the third quarter of the year with numerous acquisitions, rounds of funding and personnel changes being reported. And the […]
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By Guest Contributor Patrick Merchant, Senior Digital Strategist, McGraw Hill School Much like voice recognition technology and even artificial intelligence, Augmented reality (AR) is increasingly making its way into PreK-12 classrooms. With the potential to make way for learning experiences that we couldn’t have even dreamed of a decade ago, the implications of this new […]
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By Guest Contributor Dylan Arena, VP, Learning Science, McGraw Hill School Personalized learning has long floated atop the fizzy pool of education buzzwords. Education researchers have been trying to personalize learning with “teaching machines” since Sidney Pressey introduced his “Automatic Teacher” in 1924. A century later, there are some ways in which it’s working remarkably […]
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By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe Q2 K-12 Market Highlights In the second quarter of 2022, the K-12 education market saw a lot of personnel moves, with people joining the industry, being promoted to new roles and moving to new positions at other education companies. As schools and the market continue to adjust to the changes […]
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By Guest Contributor Dr. Shawn Smith, Chief Innovation Officer at McGraw Hill School As this school year draws to a close, I’ve been hearing from some teachers that this year was their hardest yet. The focus of the beginning of this year was, of course, on academic learning loss: We had to determine the severity […]
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An Interview with Katie McClarty, Chief Academic Officer, McGraw Hill School Dr. Katie McClarty, an innovative industry leader with deep expertise in psychology, assessment, and instruction, recently joined the team at McGraw Hill School Group as Chief Academic Officer. Get to know Katie and her vision for the future of education in the interview below. […]
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By Guest Contributor Saul Hafenbredl What are the major trends in business-to-education marketing that companies need to be aware of to stay one step ahead in a rapidly changing business environment? CB&A’s annual Education Marketing Trends Report provides key insights that help companies succeed in selling to schools—and during a recent Expert Series webinar, the […]
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By Guest Contributor Steve Tardrew, VP of Assessment and Research, McGraw Hill School For the past two years, online technologies have allowed students to engage in learning tasks from home, often asynchronously and without direct teacher oversight. And although schools have predominantly reopened and returned to in-person instruction, online learning is likely to continue to […]
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By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe The education market seems to have quieted down a little bit in the beginning of 2022, but there are still lots of mergers and acquisitions, funding rounds closed and big personnel changes to report, including two of the industry’s biggest companies entertaining (or not?) takeover bids. Here are the highlights: […]
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By Guest Contributors Derek Fay, Josine Verhagen, Angelica Gonzalez, and Yuning Xu, Data Scientists at McGraw Hill A User Guide While data plays a critical role in the modern education system, data literacy is not a common component of teacher education programs. This can leave educators unprepared to evaluate data quality or know what […]
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By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe When in college preparing for their careers, most of today’s school leaders likely didn’t think that they would need to know about planning for in-classroom learning during a pandemic or purchasing high quality air filtration systems. In addition to having to become armchair epidemiologists, they have also faced new challenges […]
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By Guest Contributor Margaret A. Bowman, Ph.D., Academic Designer at McGraw Hill Here’s How Technology Can Help Every math teacher has likely heard it before: “When am I ever going to use this?” While some students quickly pick up anything mathematical, others mumble through class about how they don’t like math, they aren’t good at […]
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By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe In the words of the poet Robert Burns, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Headlines from the first few weeks of 2022 show that nothing could be truer of the return to school following the holidays. Thousands of K-12 schools have experienced a disruption to […]
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By Guest Contributor Amanda Schaffer, Online Professional Learning Product Manager, McGraw Hill School Understanding and responding to other people’s feelings, actions, and words is difficult. It’s perpetually a challenge for many adults, and, of course, can be very hard for young people, who are still developing the skills necessary to comprehend experiences or viewpoints outside […]
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By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe While 2021 turned out to be a more tumultuous year than we had anticipated (and hoped for), the activity and growth in the education market was robust throughout the year. The unprecedented influx of billions of dollars in federal stimulus funds to help schools mitigate the impacts of the COVID-19 […]
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By Guest Contributor Jill McManigal, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Kids for Peace Kindness has always mattered to me. As a former elementary school teacher, I knew that creating a supportive, happy and compassionate classroom culture was essential for students’ overall success. Then, when I became a mother of two, I experienced the importance of […]
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By Guest Contributor Andy Bloom, VP, Chief Privacy Officer, McGraw Hill The K-12 privacy landscape is changing rapidly. The ways in which technology is applied to learning and the environments in which students and teachers use that technology are evolving. The sudden shift to online learning during the pandemic only accelerated that evolution and caused […]
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By Guest Contributor Dr. Shawn Smith, Chief Innovation Officer, McGraw Hill I’ve written previously in this publication on the role of EdTech providers in a post-pandemic landscape – on embracing flexible learning models, leveraging adaptive technology, and driving with student data. Today, I want to explore the role of social and emotional learning (SEL) in that same complex landscape of K-12 education. Even in […]
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By Guest Contributor Dylan Arena, VP, Learning Science, McGraw Hill School Group I’ve been fascinated by both learning and playing for my whole life, but it wasn’t until graduate school that I fully appreciated how related they are. Now I love to remind people that play is the most powerful adaptation for learning in the […]
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By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe While back-to-school 2021 may have been more uncertain than we had previously hoped, one thing that hasn’t been uncertain this year is growth, acquisition, and investment in the education market. We previously provided you with updates on top news from the first and second quarters of 2021. At the end […]
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By Guest Contributor Dr. Shawn Smith, Chief Innovation Officer, McGraw Hill School Group We’re in a transitional moment in K-12 education. As an institution, education has always had an incremental relationship with change. But within that relatively static institution, individuals – teachers, students, principals – have been making their own changes at the scale of their classrooms, schools, and learning communities. […]
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By Guest Contributor Erin Werra, Skyward Behind just about every public school district is an elected school board. Here are a few considerations to cultivate harmony. It takes a village to run a public school district. Harmony is the goal, but in turbulent times like these, tension arises quickly. As communities navigate changes and challenges, defining […]
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By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe Parents have always been involved in school and their children’s education. They’ve gone to PTA/PTO meetings, participated in parent-teacher conferences, volunteered in the classroom and, of course, helped with homework. But 2020 and the closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic took that involvement to a whole new level. […]
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By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe While there wasn’t quite as much activity as in the first quarter of 2021, the education space remained a hot bed of acquisition and investment activity in the second quarter with some significant initial public offerings (IPO) and leadership appointments. Here are highlights: McGraw Hill acquired Kidaptive, Inc., an adaptive […]
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By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe There’s been a lot of talk over the past year about the “learning loss” K-12 students may have suffered as a result of the switch to remote learning, but it is also important to shine a spotlight on the toll it may have taken on their social and emotional development […]
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