EdTech 10: Warming Up

With New England, much of the midwest and now the south experiencing a record breaking winter, this week’s EdTech news was anything but cold as stories were hot off the press as ever. From the forging of new tools from folks like Fedora, to bigs like BetterLesson boosting their offerings beyond basic boundaries, or learning platforms like PowerMyLearning providing proven programs to everyone from practitioners to policymakers… Alliteration aside, Team Getting Smart was has been staying warm this week with EdTech news that would make everyone in the ed space warm inside with excitement.

Blended Schools & Tools

1. Fueled Up. Fuel Education (FuelEd), in partnership with Getting Smart, launched How to Successfully Scale Personalized Learning: Six Key Lessons from Effective Programs. This new white paper explores how districts and schools successfully scale online and blended programs by highlighting the stories of leaders in six districts. We’re also excited to report that FuelEd announced their highly anticipated Summer School solution.

2. Learning Platform World Series. We’re honored to work with amazing advocacy partners such as Agilix, Instructure, and FuelEd. That’s why we’ve launched a new series where we are profiling these greats and their learning platforms that impact the learning and teaching of thousands of students and educators everyday.  

Digital Developments

3. I’ve Got The Powah. PowerMyLearning users from more than 35,000 schools nationwide will experience new formative assessment capabilities called Playlist Tasks and Checkpoints. Educators can now increase playlist rigor, gauge student understanding, and provide feedback through the platform.

4. Seeing Is Believing. After hearing from numerous teachers new to blended models, that what they really need is to see real-world examples of blended learning instruction, BetterLesson has released videos from 11 of their Blended Master Teachers practicing techniques in action.  

5. Skills To Pay The Bills. Digital fluency will continue to contribute to a student’s readiness for career and college. Knowing this, Learning.com’s new Project NextTech is designed with a goal to develop the tech proficiency and information and media literacy skills students need to succeed in our increasingly digital world.

Dollars & Deals

6. Far East In Reach. Pole position in education on the Apple App Store with over a million downloads is the LocoMotive Lab’s Todo Math app. The CA-based game developers have received $4 million in support as they set their sights on Asian markets and US classrooms.

Smart Parents

7. YouTube Kids. When it comes to screentime, it’s important to be choosy and chatty about the content that children consume. As we’ve explored how parents can impact their children’s learning in our recently launched series, we were elated to learn that YouTube is releasing an app for kids to support parents as they decide what their children watch.

Policy Pieces

8. Self Paced Wins The Race. Getting Smart Advocacy Partners, The Foundation for Excellence in Education and Instructure have teamed up with the release of free self paced MOOCs for policymakers dubbed EdPolicy Leaders Online.

Let’s Get Personalized

9. Caution: Roadblock Ahead. 89% of educators surveyed by KnowledgeWorks and Nellie Mae Education Foundation said they are interested in CompetencyEd implementation, but 63% said they haven’t been able to take action. A new report by the two leading orgs has identified this divide and suggests policy areas that must be addressed to increase CompetencyEd.

Teachers & Tech-ers

10. Full Control. NYC-based startup, Fedora, is offering a new platform to teachers to create online “schools” to sell courses directly to students. The platform who recently landed $2 million in seed funding empowers teachers with the capability to build, manage, and market courses however they want.

Getting Smart Staff

The Getting Smart Staff believes in learning out loud and always being an advocate for things that we are excited about. As a result, we write a lot. Do you have a story we should cover? Email [email protected]

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