EdTech
Marketing to School Librarians: Influence the Influencer
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, there are roughly 114,000 K-12 schools in this country with a library staffed by a school librarian.1 And while for decades they have been plagued with the stereotype of being women who check out books and tell children to “shush,” librarians have much more influential roles in […]
Read Now »Communicating the Ways AI Can Safely Support Learning
By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe Since its launch late last year, ChatGPT has been busy—passing medical exams, taking state bar exams, writing short stories—the list goes on and on. It has also been a writing assistant and idea generator for many in the business, consumer, and education worlds. The debate about its value versus danger, […]
Read Now »Want to Know ChatGPT’s Potential for Education? Ask It!
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 […]
Read Now »K-12 Edtech Dominates Education Market Activity: Q3 K-12 Market Highlights
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 […]
Read Now »4 Reasons to Try Augmented Reality in Your Classroom
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 […]
Read Now »Reframing Our Industry’s Relationship with “Personalized Learning”
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 […]
Read Now »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 […]
Read Now »Students Deserve an Answer When They Ask, “When Will I Ever Use This?” In Math Class
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 […]
Read Now »How States Plan to Use Federal Pandemic Relief Funds, Part 4
The U.S. Department of Education has approved the final state and territory plans for using their American Rescue Plan (ARP) Elementary and Secondary Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds to support the safe and sustained return to in-person learning for U.S. K-12 students. Other states and territories had their ARP ESSER plans approved in 2021. All 52 […]
Read Now »The Role of EdTech Providers in a Post-Pandemic K-12 Landscape
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. […]
Read Now »Still Facing a Digital Divide? The FCC Can Help.
Educators couldn’t miss the headlines about the additional $122 billion allocated for ESSER in the American Rescue Plan (ARP), signed into law in March. But there was another boon for education in the ARP that you may not have heard about: the Emergency Connectivity Fund (ECF). Administered through the Universal Service Administrative Company of the FCC, […]
Read Now »By Guest Contributor Caroline Gilchrist, Skyward, Inc. In a world of connectivity, pockets of darkness remain. Twelve million children in the U.S. lack the internet access or devices they need to participate in remote learning. This disparity has only become more apparent—and devastating—amid the pandemic. Are you looking to light up the dark? Here are […]
Read Now »By Guest Contributor Lisa Wolfe Now that the second half of the school year is underway, let’s take a look at the hot topics in education for 2021. Although COVID-19 has put added pressure on the education system, many of this year’s topics are the same ones that the community has dealt with for ages. […]
Read Now »How 2020 Shifted Perceptions of Technology in the Classroom
That’s what MDR learned after surveying nearly 1,000 K-12 teachers in October 2020 after this far from ordinary year in education. There are some silver linings to be found in education’s pandemic response, and we explored teachers’ experiences and attitudes. Educators are highly positive towards technology in the classroom, with 54% indicating it was very […]
Read Now »Is this EdTech’s big moment? Hear from teachers
A Gallup report from fall 2019, Education Technology Use in Schools, found that slightly over half of teachers (53%) said they would like to use digital learning tools more often in teaching. Teachers are getting that opportunity now with EdTech (i.e., educational technology) adoption on fast forward, and MDR wanted to know how they were […]
Read Now »By Gina Faulk – General Manager, EdGate Correlation Services Like many busy working moms I was recently last-minute Googling birthday ideas for my 10-year-old son. One particular item popped up that caught me by surprise. Not because it involved slime (always popular) or Nerf (If I find one more stray Nerf bullet!), but because it was […]
Read Now »If you weren’t able to make it to Philly for ISTE this June, or if you went but feel like you couldn’t see EVERYTHING, never fear! MDR was there and we’ve prepared this Top 10 list of the big takeaways from this meeting of the minds between educators and EdTech. #1: AI and the Good […]
Read Now »Google for Education has recently compiled a list of the hottest trends relating to technology in the classroom. The information was so compelling that we thought you should know what they had to say. The following eight topics have become a top priority for educators and parents around the world. 1. Digital Responsibility Like it […]
Read Now »Social and Emotional Learning + Technology Education
This Compatible Combo hits Classrooms Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and Technology Education? Traditionally these are not two subjects that we would lump together. However, as SEL is increasingly becoming mandatory curriculum in schools, educators must determine where to fit SEL in. We know that SEL is already being integrated into core subjects so why […]
Read Now »How Publishers are Making Videos “Teacher-Ready” By Gina Faulk – General Manager, EdGate Correlation Services What adult is not amazed (and sometimes exasperated) with the modern student’s prolific video watching? Students are downloading Netflix videos to their handhelds so they can fill time on the school bus. From their laptops they watch gamers stream that […]
Read Now »What are the top education apps in the classroom today?
With all of the applications and websites to supplement the curriculum out there for teachers to choose from, it can make an education marketers head spin. What platforms rise to the top in terms of use and popularity? Regardless of their specific purpose, content or feature-wise, the top education applications do share some similarities. The […]
Read Now »Help Teachers Navigate Open Education Resources
Teachers are short on time and it’s up to us, with the products and services we create, to give them back more time in their days. Companies in the education industry emerge and rise to the top because of their ability to give educators what they want – and traditionally that has included high quality […]
Read Now »Are you in the final phases of your education app development and want to make sure you’ve got a robust product that’s ready for the market? Or, are you in the development period and want to ensure your idea has the best chances for success? Doing your homework is critical not only for student outcomes, […]
Read Now »Understanding the Industry – Interview with Ergonomic Furniture Manufacturer Ergotron
In this article series, we look at businesses who are focused in the education industry and have a compelling story to share. These companies have established themselves by helping educators, and have wisdom to offer new and existing providers that will encourage innovation and effective problem solving for the education market. For this post, we’re […]
Read Now »Can you Solve the Parent-Teacher Communication Dilemma?
My daughter’s first-grade teacher sent home a letter welcoming us to the new year and helping pave the way for her expectations. One of the main take-aways from the letter is how important a parent’s involvement is in their child’s academic success. She explained how parents are part of the team that helps build a […]
Read Now »By Britten Follett – Senior Vice President of Marketing and Classroom Initiatives, Follett School Solutions Five years into my career as a television journalist, I was on live television and suffered every reporter’s biggest fear: I completely forgot my next line. With no prompter or script nearby, I paused and repeated my last line, hoping it […]
Read Now »Charles Blaschke – a personal remembrance by Anne Wujcik
I’d been thinking that I might want to write a short column for MDR marking the start of the 2018-19 school year. I never expected that instead I would be writing to mourn the death of a dear friend – and industry icon – Charles Blaschke. On August 3, Charles had a terrible fall at […]
Read Now »Six Non-Profits and Associations That Aim to Fill the Gaps in School Internet Access
According to survey results in Teachers Talk Technology, MDR’s second publication in the State of the K-12 Market 2018 series, seventy-seven percent of the nearly 4,400 teachers queried indicated their school provides wireless Internet access for both faculty and students in most places on campus. In regards to the speed of that wireless internet access, […]
Read Now »Blockchain is a new way of thinking about how we organize and utilize student (and even faculty) data online, providing them with a sense of ownership, ease of access, and immutability – and it just may take over the way we store education data in the future. What is Blockchain? Blockchain is a newer innovation […]
Read Now »Teachers are Looking for Ways to Bring Computational Thinking into the Classroom
You may be familiar with the phrase “computational thinking,” as it is one of the biggest trends in educational technology. ISTE listed the topic as one of the trends to watch, and we briefly covered what it means in our post about hot topics at the ISTE 2018 conference. What is Computational Thinking? The idea behind […]
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