BOULDER, Colo. — Becoming homeless is oftentimes not a choice.
“I was in the Marine Corps for a minute, I worked at AT&T for 33 years,” said Edward Eganhouse. “I just happened to be homeless and had nowhere to go.”
In an effort to keep others just like Eganhouse off the streets, the City of Boulder launched its first strategy to address homelessness.
“When we started the strategy in 2017, we housed 25 people that first year. We’ve moved since then to housing and helping individuals exit homelessness by about 300 individuals per year. It’s been a drastic increase,” said Kurt Firnhaber, director of Housing and Human Services for the City of Boulder.
The results of the efforts so far were recently published in an update report, which you can explore below.
The city went from using 161 housing vouchers in 2016 to 3,539 in 2024.
“We’ve also realized that it’s actually a difficult transition for many individuals to move from living outside to having their own place,” Kirnhaber said.
The city then invested in supportive housing. The inventory of permanent supportive housing units grew 10 times over, from 41 units in 2016 to 469 units in 2024.
Eganhouse said he makes the most of the fresh start he received through subsidized housing.
“You got to put one foot forward and don’t stop. You got to go,” he said.
According to the city, for the last two years, there has been a reduction in the Point in Time Count: Since 2023, the Point in Time Count decreased by 18%.
City officials are clear: they could not have reached this point without serious investments in solutions.
“We were spending about $250,000 a year supporting homelessness as a city of Boulder. Now, we’re spending about $10 million a year supporting the services and programs around homelessness,” said Kirnhaber.
He recommends that communities start thinking about affordable housing the same way they do any other critical infrastructure.
“Communities have to start investing further in affordable housing. That’s the only way we can actually address not just homelessness, but families who are at risk of becoming homeless,” he said.
Denver7 | Your Voice: Get in touch with Danielle Kreutter
Denver7’s Danielle Kreutter covers stories that have an impact in all of Colorado’s communities, but specializes in reporting on affordable housing and issues surrounding the unhoused community. If you’d like to get in touch with Danielle, fill out the form below to send her an email.
Dear Eric: I started a new job a year ago. I took over as a supervisor at a municipal agency and from an individual who was retiring and who is a friend of mine.
The position that I took over for had a number of employees who were retired and had part-time jobs. They were very loyal to him, and he let them do what they wanted as long as it got done. There was no structure at the workplace.
I tried to implement small things while starting out and, each time, I would get the response that that’s not how we have done it before.
I didn’t want to make it like it was my way only, but things needed to change. If I complained to my supervisors, then they would think I was doing the complaining and that I could not get along with anyone. They wouldn’t listen to me at all.
It’s to the point where every time I walk in the door and ask to get something done, the employees do the exact opposite. It’s embarrassing to work there. I have no support on either end. I enjoy the job, but my staff does not respect me.
I am at a loss for what I should do. I don’t know who is in charge there because I don’t feel like I am.
Do you have any suggestions or ideas about what I can do?
— Disrespected Supervisor
Dear Supervisor: It can be very difficult to inherit someone else’s workplace culture. And, when you’re in a supervisory role, a lot of the negotiation becomes about what you need to adjust to and what you need to change. That’s a dance that goes on for a while. Respect from the employees you supervise is important here and I don’t want to dismiss that, but it’s also crucial to think about the expectations that are being placed on you, the expectations that you’re placing on yourself and the expectations you have for the workplace.
To that end, see if you can get clarity from your supervisors about what success looks like for you, how they measure it and what systems are in place to encourage growth. These systems may not exist — many workplaces are imperfect. But this information could help you to modify your expectations of yourself and, in turn, take some of the frustration out of the working relationships you have with the employees you supervise.
You also might want to talk to your friend. He created this imperfect system and, while you clearly don’t want to perpetuate it, he might be able to give insight or cheat codes. Ask him, “how do I deal with these people?”
Shifting a culture is more akin to turning a cruise ship than a speed boat. Smaller steps are going to be necessary and the first should be finding one thing about your job performance that you feel good about and pouring your energy into that.
Dear Eric: My best friend and I, both females and in our 60s, used to do everything together. Last year, she met a nice man and after a brief courtship, they married. I even performed the wedding ceremony.
Now, we barely see each other, and maybe text or call once a week, if that.
I knew and understood that our friendship was going to change once she married and I expected that, but I never thought it would be so drastic. Her husband gets upset if she wants “girl time” with me and even other friends. I feel really hurt and discarded. I’m not sure if I should talk to her about it or leave it be. I don’t want to cause a rift between us or make it awkward.
— Fractured Friendship
Dear Friendship: Talk to her. Her new husband’s behavior is concerning and controlling. Isolation is a form of emotional abuse, and it can escalate and put her in danger. He shouldn’t have a negative emotional response to her spending time with friends, particularly her best friend. She (and you) can find resources at the National Domestic Violence Hotline (TheHotline.org). But help can start with a conversation between you and her that’s rooted in your love for her and your desire to see her healthy and happy.
It may be helpful to enlist other friends, as well. You don’t want to gang up on her, but you can ask them if they’re seeing the same things you’re seeing. If she hears this perspective from multiple people, it may take root more effectively. As you go about this, try to put your hurt to the side for the moment. There will be time to address it, but first you’ll want to make sure she sees the issues in her relationship clearly.
(Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at eric@askingeric.com or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.)
Haworth and MiEN are announcing a partnership to grow both companies’ presence in the education market. MiEN will join Haworth as a partner brand, offering specialized solutions that build on Haworth’s comprehensive suite of products for higher education and K-12 learning environments.
“Both Haworth and MiEN understand the landscape of innovative education spaces, how to support schools and how to create environments to drive more success for students. At our core, MiEN specializes in K-12 with products that seamlessly transition into higher education. With the Haworth partnership, we now have a stronger trajectory for those higher education environments.” Remco Bergsma, MiEN Founder and CEO.
“Haworth and our dealership network are already serving the higher education market and having access to MiEN products will allow us to expand our solution set for those clients. We can now provide more robust solutions that meet the needs of the ever-changing K-12 market,” said Jack Cottrell, Haworth’s Vice President of Channel & Dealer Development. “It’s a mutually beneficial relationship based on a similar go-to-market position and organizational cultures.”
This partnership allows each company, individually and collectively, to provide more complete solutions for students, faculty and staff. As Haworth continues to sharpen its focus on providing great spaces for learning, wherever they may be, expanding its presence especially within the K-12 segment is an obvious next step.
Haworth and MiEN culturally align through core values – solving customer needs to create more effective spaces. Both partners have a deep desire to study and understand how to create learning environments that make a difference to students and faculty. It is also beneficial that Haworth and MiEN are both located in West Michigan, allowing for joint developments and operational efficiencies.
About Haworth
Haworthbelieves great spaces empower people to thrive and work their best. As a leading global furniture maker, the company partners with customers, dealers and influencers to create spaces that result in effective people and efficient real estate. Haworth’s customer-first approach comes from an entrepreneurial spirit, design-forward thinking and multicultural perspectives. Founded in 1948, Haworth is a privately-owned company operating in more than 150 countries through a global network of 400 dealers and 8,000 employees. Headquartered in Holland, Michigan, U.S.A., the company has sales of $2.57 billion USD.
About MiEN
MiEN is a global company serving the education industry with innovative furniture products and services that promote and support active and interactive learning environments in engaging and functional ways. An American company with a strong European influence, its products and services represent the ideas and collaborative efforts of an expert team of suppliers, designers and engineers. Built strong and durable using eco-friendly, sustainable materials, its products rank high in the industry in meeting the demands of creating dynamic and collaborative learning environments.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
SAN FRANCISCO –Edthena is transforming the video coaching process for educators with the launch of VC3, the next evolution of the company’s award-winning video coaching platform. VC3 features new coaching tools that empower teachers and instructional coaches to collaborate more efficiently, gain deeper insights into instructional practice, and engage in more meaningful professional learning.
“Educators have one of the hardest jobs in the world and they deserve access to the most innovative solutions possible to support their work,” said Adam Geller, founder and CEO of Edthena. “With VC3, educators can more effectively reflect on their practice and access the high-quality coaching needed to ensure their success—and, ultimately, the success of their students—in the classroom.”
The reimagined video coaching platform draws upon Edthena’s 14 years of experience helping educators add more than two million comments to nearly seven million minutes of classroom video.
The core of the coaching experience happens within the video conversation page. This is where educators add timestamped feedback to videos of classroom teaching. Not only does the updated conversation page in VC3 make it easier to leave comments, but it also encourages teachers and coaches to deepen their reflections. One example of this emphasis is the Insights tab which helps jumpstart the video analysis process for both coaches and teachers.
The Insights tab includes several tools: open-ended questions that help inspire the observer for what to look for in the video; a student-to-teacher talk time graph to support a deep-dive into student engagement, language development, and confidence; and, a visual representation of the most frequently used words within the lesson to get a sense for the presence of academic language.
“With the help of Edthena, we are harnessing the power of video and innovative AI tools to level up our coaching practices,” said Amanda Maceo, professional development implementation strategist for Alief Independent School District. “We love the automatic summaries and closed captioning—they provide us with valuable insights. Plus, the talk time graph makes it easy to set clear and measurable goals for improvement.”
The VC3 experience is available to all new and existing users. This includes schools, districts, and teacher education programs from more than 20 states and multiple countries that use Edthena to make video observation an integral part of teacher induction, teacher mentoring, professional learning communities (PLCs), and peer observation.
“Video reflection and facilitative coaching play a pivotal role in the professional development process for teacher residents,” said Halley Maza, an instructor in the University at Buffalo Teacher Residency program. “By leveraging Edthena’s VC3 platform, our program empowers teacher residents to analyze and refine their instructional strategies, fostering self-efficacy through critical reflection and collaborative learning. This approach aligns with our goal of improving student outcomes and preparing educators to meet the diverse needs of their students.”
Edthena provides innovative technologies to support educator professional learning by streamlining feedback to teachers. The companyoffers the AI Coach platform, an artificial intelligence-driven solution to guide teachers through coaching cycles; VC3, the classroom observation and collaboration platform for video coaching; and Edthena Organization Libraries, a platform for schools and districts to curate and share best-practice teaching videos. Edthena is the recipient of numerous awards from organizations such as SIIA, District Administration, and Tech & Learning. For more information, visit www.edthena.com. For more news about Edthena, visit www.edthena.com/blog/.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
Earth City, MO. —ORIGO Education, a leading provider of elementary math solutions from Pre-K to Grade 6, is thrilled to announce the launch of ORIGO Intervention Essentials, an innovative program designed to enhance math fluency for Tier 2 and Tier 3 intervention students in Grades 3-8. By merging effective math strategies with robust professional learning, ORIGO Intervention Essentials offers a transformative approach to tackle math anxiety and build student confidence.
Many students in Grades 3-8 experience significant math anxiety, leading to a detrimental cycle of avoidance and declining skills. ORIGO Intervention Essentials equips students not only with the tools to “do” math but also to truly understand it. This holistic approach empowers students to tackle challenges with confidence and develop essential problem-solving skills.
Case studies reveal remarkable outcomes: more than 80% of Tier 3 students utilizing ORIGO Intervention Essentials demonstrated improved fluency, with nearly 50% achieving full mastery. These results underline the effectiveness of ORIGO’s evidence-based strategies.
ORIGO Intervention Essentials is designed for easy integration into existing schedules. It can be effectively implemented in just 15 minutes daily or divided into two sessions of 30-40 minutes. This flexibility allows schools to tailor the program to fit their specific needs without disrupting existing instructional time. And that flexibility extends to implementation as well; the product can be implemented by teachers, coaches, and paraeducators, eliminating the need for additional staffing or pulling someone from their current duties. This streamlined approach maximizes resources while maintaining the educational continuity so important in intervention.
With built-in progress monitoring tools, educators can ensure that students are consistently advancing, allowing for timely interventions when needed. Dr. Sara Delano Moore, vice president of content & research at ORIGO Education, said, “ORIGO Intervention Essentials not only addresses the immediate needs of struggling students but also fosters a long-term love for math. Our program is designed to empower educators and students alike.”
For more information on ORIGO Intervention Essentials, reach out to s_calcott@origomath.com.
About ORIGO Education ORIGO Education is a leading provider of elementary math solutions from Pre-K to Grade 6. Created by educators for educators, the organization is committed to helping make learning mathematics meaningful, enjoyable, and accessible to all students and their teachers. ORIGO uses a unique spaced learning approach to help students retain content. Covering all facets of elementary mathematics education, from traditional printed products to digital interactive resources and professional learning throughout the world, ORIGO currently supports elementary teachers across 14 countries. To learn more, visit https://www.origoeducation.com/.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
The first two times I tried college, I didn’t finish. There was never enough time to care for my young son, work a full-time job and do my schoolwork. And there was never enough money to pay rent, tuition and child care.
On my third try, everything clicked. This time I was more motivated than ever before — to prove that I could do it, to prove the doubters wrong.
The first leg of my college journey came to a close this spring, after five grueling years, when I earned my associate degree in criminal justice from Howard Community College — a school that supports student parents like myself.
I now consider myself proof that motivated and supported student parents can beat the odds and earn a college degree, even though the deck is stacked against us.
One of every five college undergraduates in this country is caring for a dependent child. Student parents are usually women, at least 30 years old, raising children on their own. A third are Black, and a fifth are Latino. In addition, the largest share of student parents attend community colleges. There used to be a lot more of us, but a strong job market and the rising cost of tuition, housing and child care needs meant that many had to put their college dreams on hold.
The financial and time pressures on student learners are immense. Fewer than 40 percent of student parents earn their degrees within six years.
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After I graduated from high school in 2019, I thought my road to a college degree would be relatively straightforward. I enrolled that fall but quit soon after I got pregnant. I returned to college in the fall of 2020, but caring for a newborn and trying to navigate online classes during the pandemic was simply too much.
The college experience on offer did not match my reality of being a student and a parent. I had dropped out of school once already. It was much too easy to do it again.
Leaving college for a second time shattered my confidence and my belief in myself.
I was raised by a single mom who didn’t go to college. I saw how hard she worked at a low-paying job and how much she struggled but could never get ahead.
I wanted to break that cycle. I was determined to provide a better life for me and especially for my son. I wanted to make sure he had everything he needed to grow up strong, healthy and smart.
I was going to be the one who made it — the one who was able to look back and say to all who had doubted me that I had done this for me and my little boy.
Student parents are usually women, at least 30 years old, raising children on their own. Credit: Image provided by Abby Bediako
In the fall of 2022, I tried again, this time at Howard Community College (HCC). The experience turned out to be completely different because HCC acknowledges and values parents like me and had assembled a plan and a program to support us.
HCC offered me enough scholarships and financial aid to cover my tuition and fees for two years. They even gave me an emergency grant when I had trouble making rent one time. They arranged a flexible schedule that let me take all but one of my classes online at night after I was done with my job and had put my son to bed. At my previous college, I’d had to drop in-person courses when I couldn’t find child care at night.
Howard also had a Career Links program designed specifically for single parents. It provided one-on-one academic and career counseling that helped me select my major, kept me on track to graduate and gave me the guidance I needed to figure out my future.
This tremendous amount of support made a huge difference. I renewed my faith in myself. Last fall, I made the dean’s list. This spring, I received my degree.
Today, I have big plans for my future. I’m still working full-time, but this summer I started university classes so I can earn my bachelor’s degree. My son, who turned four this spring, is getting ready to start preschool this fall.
After I earn my four-year degree, I’d like one day to start a nonprofit that encourages other student parents, specifically single parents and children with an incarcerated parent. My son’s father has been incarcerated for the majority of my child’s life, and I want to provide comprehensive support and resources to help single parents like me overcome similar barriers.
Parents like us need all the help we can get, and I want to provide the assistance that I was lacking for so long.
College is difficult enough without adding a child and a full-time job to the mix. But when colleges can remove some of the financial, scheduling and other barriers that make it so much more arduous for student parents to finish their degrees, they demonstrate their support for their current students — and for the next generation to come.
Abby Bediako graduated from Howard Community College in 2024 and is currently attending the University of Maryland Global Campus. Abby is featured in Raising Up, a documentary film series aimed at elevating the lived experiences of student parents in higher education.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Parents know they should talk and read to their young children. Dozens of nonprofit organizations have promoted the research evidence that it will help their children do better in school.
But the focus has been on improving literacy. Are there similar things that parents can do with their children to lay the foundation for success in math?
That’s important because Americans struggle with math, ranking toward the bottom on international assessments. Weak math skills impede a child’s progress later in life, preventing them from getting through college, a vocational program or even high school. Math skills, or the lack of them, can open or close the doors to lucrative science and technology fields.
A new wave of research over the past decade has looked at how much parents talk about numbers and shapes with their children, and whether these spontaneous and natural conversations help children learn the subject. Encouraging parents to talk about numbers could be a cheap and easy way to improve the nation’s dismal math performance.
A team of researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, Irvine, teamed up to summarize the evidence from 22 studies conducted between 2010 and 2022. Their meta-analysis was published in the July 2024 issue of the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.
Here are four takeaways:
There’s a link between parent math talk and higher math skills
After looking at 22 studies, researchers found that the more parents talked about math with their children, the stronger their children’s math skills. In these studies, researchers typically observed parents and children interacting in a university lab, a school, a museum or at home and kept track of how often parents mentioned numbers or shapes. Ordinary sentences that included numbers counted. An example could be: “Hand me three potato chips.” Researchers also gave children a math test and found that children who scored higher tended to have parents who talked about math more during the observation period.
The link between parents’ math talk and a child’s math skills was strongest between ages three and five. During these preschool years, parents who talked more about numbers and shapes tended to have children with higher math achievement. Parents who didn’t talk as much about numbers and shapes tended to have children with lower math achievement.
With older children, the amount of time that parents spent talking about math was not as closely related to their math achievement. Researchers speculated that this was because once children start school, their math abilities are influenced more by the instruction they receive from their teachers.
None of these studies proves that talking to your preschooler about math causes their math skills to improve. Parents who talk more about math may also have higher incomes and more education. Stronger math skills could be the result of all the other things that wealthier and more educated parents are giving their kids – nutritious meals, a good night’s sleep, visits to museums and vacations – and not the math talk per se. So far, studies haven’t been able to disentangle math talk from everything else that parents do for their children.
“What the research is showing at this point is that talking more about math tends to be associated with better outcomes for children,” said Alex Silver, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh who led the meta-analysis. “It’s an easy way to bring math concepts into your day to day life that doesn’t require buying special equipment, or setting aside time to tutor your child and try to teach them arithmetic.”
Keep it natural
The strongest link between parent talk about math and a child’s math performance was detected when researchers didn’t tell parents to do a math activity. Parents who naturally brought up numbers or shapes in a normal conversation had children who scored higher on math assessments. When researchers had parents do a math exercise with children, the amount of math-related words that a parent used wasn’t as strongly associated with better math performance for their children.
Silver, a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research & Development Center, recommends bringing math into something that the child is paying attention to, rather than doing flashcards or workbooks. It could be as simple as asking “How many?” Here’s an example Silver gave me: “Oh, look, you have a whole lot of cars. How many cars do you have? Let’s count them. You have one, two, three. There’s three cars there.”
When you’re doing a puzzle together, turn the shape in a different direction and talk about what it looks like. Setting the dinner table, grocery shopping and keeping track of money are opportunities to talk about numbers or shapes.
“The idea is to make it fun and playful,” said Silver. “As you’re cooking, say, ‘We need to add two eggs. Oh wait, we’re doubling the recipe, so we need two more eggs. How many is that all together?’ ”
I asked Silver about the many early childhood math apps and exercises on the market, and whether parents should be spending time doing them with their children. Silver said they can be helpful for parents who don’t know where to start, but she said parents shouldn’t feel guilty if they’re not doing math drills with their kids. “It’s enough to just talk about it naturally, to find ways to bring up numbers and shapes in the context of what you’re already doing.”
Quality may matter more than quantity
In the 22 studies, more math talk was associated with higher math achievement. But researchers are unable to advise parents on exactly how much or how often to talk about math during the day. Silver said 10 utterances a day about math is probably more beneficial than just one mention a day. “Right now the evidence is that more is better, but at some point it’s so much math, you need to talk about something else now,” she said. The point of diminishing returns is unknown.
Ultimately, the quantity of math talk may not be as important as how parents talk about math, Silver said. Reading a math textbook to your child probably wouldn’t be helpful, Silver said. It’s not just about saying a bunch of math words. Still, researchers don’t know if asking questions or just talking about numbers is what makes a difference. It’s also not clear how important it is to tailor the number talk to where a child is in his math development. Theseare important areas of future research.
Technology may help. The latest studies are using wearable audio recorders, enabling researchers to “listen” to hours of conversations inside homes, and analyzing these conversations with natural language processing algorithms to get a more accurate understanding of parents’ math talk. The 22 studies in this meta-analysis captured as little as three minutes and as much as almost 14 hours of parent-child interactions, and these snippets of life, often recorded in a lab setting, may not reflect how parents and children talk about math in a typical week.
Low-income kids appear to benefit as much from math talk as high-income kids
Perhaps the most inspiring conclusion from this meta-analysis is that the association between a parent’s math talk and a child’s math performance was as strong for a low-income child as it was for a high-income child.
“That’s a happy thing to see that this transcends other circumstances,” said Silver. “Targeting the amount of math input that a child receives is hopefully going to be easier, and more malleable than changing broader, systemic challenges.”
While there are many questions left to answer, Silver is already putting her research into practice with her own three-year old son. She’s asked counting questions so many times that her little one has begun to tease her. Every time he sees a group of things, he pretends to be Mommy and asks, “How many? Let’s count them!”
“It’s very funny,” Silver said. “I’m like, ‘Wow, Mommy really drilled that one into you, huh?’ Buddy knows what you’re up to.”
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Tech is a vital component of just about any modern business plan, but it’s too often implemented before it’s properly assessed. I’ve been in countless forums that include someone declaring, “If you want success, you need to be using .” But in reality, tech is an extension of your business, not someone else’s paint-by-numbers guide for you to replicate what’s already been done.
To be sure, following someone else’s guidance can help reduce some of the decision-making phases in getting started, but may not be the best strategy once an enterprise or organization is established. So, I’m not here to tell you what tech to use because I believe the process of choosing the right is at once complex and unique to each user. You can and should feel good about the systems you’ve invested in.
Here are some signs that yours are no longer supporting you the way they should.
1. Spending too much time on setup and fixes
It is all too easy to find yourself putting in late nights, skipping out on events and spending less time with people you care about, and instead having frustrating sessions at the computer during which it feels like you’re banging your head against the wall. You may, in the end, only get as far as “good enough,” then call it a wrap.
The adage that “fighting with your tech is part of the business” simply isn’t true, or shouldn’t be anyway. The odd late-night session when you’re inspired can be productive, but these should conclude with a winning feeling, not a compromise.
2. Depending on outside people to make adjustments
It’s common to get tech set-up by a friend or family member who is “really good at this.” The hitch is that’s is very easy for this to result in a situation in which someone else is running your business. Not having the confidence to dive into your own digital tools and/or having repeated stressful conversations with the help desk because your go-to person is unavailable simply won’t work.
3. Clients become aware of the problem
When you’re an entrepreneur, clients are typically pretty understanding. They know you’re wearing multiple hats and that tech can be tricky to navigate. But at the core of things, they are looking for your services, and unsupportive tools will get in the way of that — impacting your relationships. Your problems must never become their problems.
There are lots of reasons to dread opening an app. These can range from the color scheme being off to the UX not being intuitive — having to refer to help pages to do routine tasks, for example, or perhaps things glitch with frequency. This can’t happen with your digital services.
5. You’re not having fun
Not everyone loves tech like I do, but you should have a sense that yours is what I term “automagical.” That means you put in the work and reap the rewards—that tech supports you and that you feel empowered and not drained by it. The absence of such happy feelings means there’s a vital issue to be addressed.
Take note, though: Even if you’re experiencing any or all of the above, don’t simply run to invest in new software. Because the reality is that the right tech may not be built for you yet or that you’re not built for it. As any entrepreneur knows, it’s critical to know a target audience, and the same applies to technology: it isn’t designed for absolutely everyone, even if it has the most and best reviews.
Some factors to consider while contemplating your needs:
Establish goals: The first step is clarifying your business goals and intentions, which hold a lot of power when implementing supportive software and other solutions. From monthly costs to ease of use, understanding what your unique needs are is crucial before investing in tools that can truly help (and never hinder) operations.
If you want to grow and scale, you need software that can support changes in data size/complexity — can adapt to more clients in different ways. And if your budget can’t afford solutions that scale in this way, then consider tech goals that may be more in tune with understanding transition points, and how to move to new systems in response to them.
Inventory: Once you’ve got goal clarity, go through each app you’re using and write down how it is helping to achieve them. And don’t forget to include what you hate about them, along with the subscription cost and how much effort they require. This process paints a picture of individual tool value and the current state of your tech stack. It also helps to highlight any gaps and opportunities.
Alignment: Your digital tools should “spark joy,” as professional organizer and consultant Marie Kondo would say. This doesn’t mean that they need to be 100% perfect, but fundamentally, they should make your life easier, not harder. Consider whether they can be juggled, optimized or downsized, or whether it’s time to trade in for something new.
If you keep to this assessment framework, you’ll work more productively, avoid stress, increase production, return to focus and simply enjoy what you do more. The right choices will reflect your values, be easy to use, will grow with you, offer a clear ROI and work well alongside other systems.
On average, K-12 school districts access 2,739 edtech tools over the entire school year, according to Edtech Top 40, a report on the usage of digital solutions, tools, and resources in K-12 districts, schools and classrooms during the 2023-24 school year.
K-12 institutions are accessing 8 percent more tools aggregated annually from the prior academic year, with an increase in unique edtech tools accessed individually by both students and teachers.
The report, highlighting the top 40 education technology products, is published by LearnPlatform by Instructure and provides insights on trends, Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)-aligned evidence, and categorical rankings relevant to K-12 decision-makers as well as edtech product leaders.
“The evidence is clear: tech-enabled learning is here to stay,” said Melissa Loble, Chief Academic Officer at Instructure. “As districts continue to explore different tools to enhance learning, the obstacles they now face aren’t just about picking the best tool, but picking safe, effective and interoperable tools that work together to build a highly effective learning ecosystem. Districts need trusted guidance and transparent information to empower them to make efficient and effective decisions that will improve teaching and learning.”
“The increase in tools used isn’t a surprise,” said Shiren Vijiasingam, Chief Product Officer at Instructure. “On the one hand, we know districts are actively looking for opportunities to consolidate their edtech, but with the explosion of new AI-enabled tools, there has been a lot of experimentation. We expect scrutiny on how these tools are helping the teaching and learning process.”
The report also offers action items for K-12 leaders and edtech leaders.
For K-12 leaders: Understand which of your most used tools integrate with your LMS to architect a more centralized ecosystem; consider the best user experience for your teachers’ and learners’ unique needs; and prioritize LMS integration when making edtech purchasing and implementation decisions.
For edtech leaders: Identify where your users are and prioritize LMS integrations that will enhance their edtech ecosystems and help to expand your customer base; prioritize and invest in outstanding user experiences when developing LMS integrations; and ensure the highest standards of data privacy and security for your users by upgrading existing LTi integrations.
As with previous years, the top 40 tools continue to remain consistent, with only a handful of new products joining the list. The five new entrants to the EdTech Top 40 this academic year include PBS, Panorama Education, Scratch, Adobe, and Grammarly; the latter three indicating the quickly increasing prevalence of AI in schools and drawing attention to the need for best practices to guide its use.
Educators are using technology to boost student engagement, personalize learning, and save time, but how do they know what’s making a difference? The report found that 32 percent of the tools on the 2024 Edtech Top 40 have published research that meets one of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) four tiers of evidence. The ESSA framework offers an accessible model for educators to identify research-backed edtech, ranging from innovative new solutions to established tools with empirical validation. School districts are increasingly seeking ESSA-aligned research as part of their vetting processes to make evidence-based decisions.
“Year after year, the EdTech Top 40 has provided comprehensive data of K-12 education technology engagement across our nation’s districts,” Loble concludes. “Data-driven decision-making is more important than ever when assessing the role of technology in our schools. This is why the EdTech Top 40 remains more relevant than ever.”
Consistent with previous years, this report analyzed products performing specific functions to provide a deeper look at the top education technology tools within key categories. This year’s categories include Learning Management Systems (LMS), Supplemental Platforms, Courseware Platforms, Study Tools, Classroom Response & Assessment Tools, and Sites and Resources.
Laura Ascione is the Editorial Director at eSchool Media. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland’s prestigious Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
BETHESDA, Md.—EPS Learning, the leading provider of PreK-12 literacy solutions, is excited to announce that its recent SPIRE® study has earned Level 3 certification for alignment with Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) standards. SPIRE is a research-proven, comprehensive, structured literacy and multisensory reading intervention program that has supported reading success for all striving readers through an intensive and structured science-of-reading aligned curriculum for over 30 years.
LXD Research conducted a third-party study to determine the relationship between the usage of SPIRE and student reading outcomes in 13 schools in Martin County School District, Florida. The study’s positive, statistically significant findings support a relationship between SPIRE progress and improved literacy skills for special education students. The findings were robust across Grades 3, 4, and 5 after controlling for key predictors such as previous FAST (Florida’s statewide, standardized assessment) scale scores, gender, LEP status, grade level and race/ethnicity.
This study met the following criteria for ESSA Level 3 achievement:
Correlational design; students new to the program compared to students with more progress in the program
Proper design and implementation with at least two teachers and 30 students per group
Study uses a form of a program that could be replicated
Statistical controls through covariates
At least one statistically significant, positive finding
EPS Learning Chief Academic Officer Dr. Janine Walker-Caffrey spoke to the company’s recent rating, stating, “We are incredibly proud of the decades of impactful support SPIRE has provided for readers across the country and are elated about the recent ESSA rating! While this is a wonderful achievement, we are just beginning our bolstered efficacy research efforts. Upcoming research will re-demonstrate that this effective and evidence-based program for reading intervention is still positively impacting students in becoming fluent readers. We are excited to accomplish the next level of ESSA certification as studies continue to be released.”
SPIRE was developed by Orton-Gillingham (OG) Fellow, Sheila Clark-Edmands, and is based on structured literacy principles and the OG approach. The program incorporates evidence-based best practices for reading and language development. It also includes skills that are key to fluent reading acquisition: phonemic awareness, phonics, handwriting, spelling, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. Each SPIRE lesson employs 10 steps that enhance student learning and memory by engaging multisensory pathways to the brain in rapid succession, ensuring orthographic mapping and automaticity.
About EPS Learning
EPS Learning has partnered with educators for more than 70 years to advance literacy as the springboard for lifelong learning and opportunity. The 20+ literacy solutions included in the EPS Literacy Framework are based on the science of reading and support grades PreK through 12, all tiers of instruction, and every pillar of reading. EPS Learning offers evidence-based intervention and customized professional learning to help move students toward growth, mastery, and success. Visit www.epslearning.com to learn more.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
Researchers from the University of California, Irvine, and Arizona State University found that human feedback was generally a bit better than AI feedback, but AI was surprisingly good. Credit: Getty Images
This week I challenged my editor to face off against a machine. Barbara Kantrowitz gamely accepted, under one condition: “You have to file early.” Ever since ChatGPT arrived in 2022, many journalists have made a public stunt out of asking the new generation of artificial intelligence to write their stories. Those AI stories were often bland and sprinkled with errors. I wanted to understand how well ChatGPT handled a different aspect of writing: giving feedback.
My curiosity was piqued by a new study, published in the June 2024 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Learning and Instruction, that evaluated the quality of ChatGPT’s feedback on students’ writing. A team of researchers compared AI with human feedback on 200 history essays written by students in grades 6 through 12 and they determined that human feedback was generally a bit better. Humans had a particular advantage in advising students on something to work on that would be appropriate for where they are in their development as a writer.
But ChatGPT came close. On a five-point scale that the researchers used to rate feedback quality, with a 5 being the highest quality feedback, ChatGPT averaged a 3.6 compared with a 4.0 average from a team of 16 expert human evaluators. It was a tough challenge. Most of these humans had taught writing for more than 15 years or they had considerable experience in writing instruction. All received three hours of training for this exercise plus extra pay for providing the feedback.
ChatGPT even beat these experts in one aspect; it was slightly better at giving feedback on students’ reasoning, argumentation and use of evidence from source materials – the features that the researchers had wanted the writing evaluators to focus on.
“It was better than I thought it was going to be because I didn’t have a lot of hope that it was going to be that good,” said Steve Graham, a well-regarded expert on writing instruction at Arizona State University, and a member of the study’s research team. “It wasn’t always accurate. But sometimes it was right on the money. And I think we’ll learn how to make it better.”
Average ratings for the quality of ChatGPT and human feedback on 200 student essays
Researchers rated the quality of the feedback on a five-point scale across five different categories. Criteria-based refers to whether the feedback addressed the main goals of the writing assignment, in this case, to produce a well-reasoned argument about history using evidence from the reading source materials that the students were given. Clear directions mean whether the feedback included specific examples of something the student did well and clear directions for improvement. Accuracy means whether the feedback advice was correct without errors. Essential Features refer to whether the suggestion on what the student should work on next is appropriate for where the student is in his writing development and is an important element of this genre of writing. Supportive Tone refers to whether the feedback is delivered with language that is affirming, respectful and supportive, as opposed to condescending, impolite or authoritarian. (Source: Fig. 1 of Steiss et al, “Comparing the quality of human and ChatGPT feedback of students’ writing,” Learning and Instruction, June 2024.)
Exactly how ChatGPT is able to give good feedback is something of a black box even to the writing researchers who conducted this study. Artificial intelligence doesn’t comprehend things in the same way that humans do. But somehow, through the neural networks that ChatGPT’s programmers built, it is picking up on patterns from all the writing it has previously digested, and it is able to apply those patterns to a new text.
The surprising “relatively high quality” of ChatGPT’s feedback is important because it means that the new artificial intelligence of large language models, also known as generative AI, could potentially help students improve their writing. One of the biggest problems in writing instruction in U.S. schools is that teachers assign too little writing, Graham said, often because teachers feel that they don’t have the time to give personalized feedback to each student. That leaves students without sufficient practice to become good writers. In theory, teachers might be willing to assign more writing or insist on revisions for each paper if students (or teachers) could use ChatGPT to provide feedback between drafts.
Despite the potential, Graham isn’t an enthusiastic cheerleader for AI. “My biggest fear is that it becomes the writer,” he said. He worries that students will not limit their use of ChatGPT to helpful feedback, but ask it to do their thinking, analyzing and writing for them. That’s not good for learning. The research team also worries that writing instruction will suffer if teachers delegate too much feedback to ChatGPT. Seeing students’ incremental progress and common mistakes remain important for deciding what to teach next, the researchers said. For example, seeing loads of run-on sentences in your students’ papers might prompt a lesson on how to break them up. But if you don’t see them, you might not think to teach it. Another common concern among writing instructors is that AI feedback will steer everyone to write in the same homogenized way. A young writer’s unique voice could be flattened out before it even has the chance to develop.
There’s also the risk that students may not be interested in heeding AI feedback. Students often ignore the painstaking feedback that their teachers already give on their essays. Why should we think students will pay attention to feedback if they start getting more of it from a machine?
Still, Graham and his research colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, are continuing to study how AI could be used effectively and whether it ultimately improves students’ writing. “You can’t ignore it,” said Graham. “We either learn to live with it in useful ways, or we’re going to be very unhappy with it.”
Example of feedback from a human and ChatGPT on the same essay
Source: Steiss et al, “Comparing the quality of human and ChatGPT feedback of students’ writing,” Learning and Instruction, June 2024.
In the current study, the researchers didn’t track whether students understood or employed the feedback, but only sought to measure its quality. Judging the quality of feedback is a rather subjective exercise, just as feedback itself is a bundle of subjective judgment calls. Smart people can disagree on what good writing looks like and how to revise bad writing.
In this case, the research team came up with its own criteria for what constitutes good feedback on a history essay. They instructed the humans to focus on the student’s reasoning and argumentation, rather than, say, grammar and punctuation. They also told the human raters to adopt a “glow and grow strategy” for delivering the feedback by first finding something to praise, then identifying a particular area for improvement.
The human raters provided this kind of feedback on hundreds of history essays from 2021 to 2023, as part of an unrelated study of an initiative to boost writing at school. The researchers randomly grabbed 200 of these essays and fed the raw student writing – without the human feedback – to version 3.5 of ChatGPT and asked it to give feedback, too.
At first, the AI feedback was terrible, but as the researchers tinkered with the instructions, or the “prompt,” they typed into ChatGPT, the feedback improved. The researchers eventually settled upon this wording: “Pretend you are a secondary school teacher. Provide 2-3 pieces of specific, actionable feedback on each of the following essays…. Use a friendly and encouraging tone.” The researchers also fed the assignment that the students were given, for example, “Why did the Montgomery Bus Boycott succeed?” along with the reading source material that the students were provided. (More details about how the researchers prompted ChatGPT are explained in Appendix C of the study.)
The humans took about 20 to 25 minutes per essay. ChatGPT’s feedback came back instantly. The humans sometimes marked up sentences by, for example, showing a place where the student could have cited a source to buttress an argument. ChatGPT didn’t write any in-line comments and only wrote a note to the student.
Researchers then read through both sets of feedback – human and machine – for each essay, comparing and rating them. (It was supposed to be a blind comparison test and the feedback raters were not told who authored each one. However, the language and tone of ChatGPT were distinct giveaways, and the in-line comments were a tell of human feedback.)
Humans appeared to have a clear edge with the very strongest and the very weakest writers, the researchers found. They were better at pushing a strong writer a little bit further, for example, by suggesting that the student consider and address a counterargument. ChatGPT struggled to come up with ideas for a student who was already meeting the objectives of a well-argued essay with evidence from the reading source materials. ChatGPT also struggled with the weakest writers. The researchers had to drop two of the essays from the study because they were so short that ChatGPT didn’t have any feedback for the student. The human rater was able to parse out some meaning from a brief, incomplete sentence and offer a suggestion.
In one student essay about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, reprinted above, the human feedback seemed too generic to me: “Next time, I would love to see some evidence from the sources to help back up your claim.” ChatGPT, by contrast, specifically suggested that the student could have mentioned how much revenue the bus company lost during the boycott – an idea that was mentioned in the student’s essay. ChatGPT also suggested that the student could have mentioned specific actions that the NAACP and other organizations took. But the student had actually mentioned a few of these specific actions in his essay. That part of ChatGPT’s feedback was plainly inaccurate.
In another student writing example, also reprinted below, the human straightforwardly pointed out that the student had gotten an historical fact wrong. ChatGPT appeared to affirm that the student’s mistaken version of events was correct.
Another example of feedback from a human and ChatGPT on the same essay
Source: Steiss et al, “Comparing the quality of human and ChatGPT feedback of students’ writing,” Learning and Instruction, June 2024.
So how did ChatGPT’s review of my first draft stack up against my editor’s? One of the researchers on the study team suggested a prompt that I could paste into ChatGPT. After a few back and forth questions with the chatbot about my grade level and intended audience, it initially spit out some generic advice that had little connection to the ideas and words of my story. It seemed more interested in format and presentation, suggesting a summary at the top and subheads to organize the body. One suggestion would have made my piece too long-winded. Its advice to add examples of how AI feedback might be beneficial was something that I had already done. I then asked for specific things to change in my draft, and ChatGPT came back with some great subhead ideas. I plan to use them in my newsletter, which you can see if you sign up for it here. (And if you want to see my prompt and dialogue with ChatGPT, here is the link.)
My human editor, Barbara, was the clear winner in this round. She tightened up my writing, fixed style errors and helped me brainstorm this ending. Barbara’s job is safe – for now.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Lincolnshire, Ill. – Today 95 Percent Group LLC, the trusted source for comprehensive, proven literacy solutions, announced the Missouri Department of Elementary & Secondary Education approved its 95 Phonics Core Program®, 95 Literacy Intervention System™, and Sound Wall Classroom Kit™ as recommended English Language Arts Supplemental Resources. Missouri is one of more than 40 states nationwide to support evidence-based literacy instruction focused on the science of reading. The state’s Missouri Read, Lead, Exceed initiative provides a framework for action to align state, district, and local literacy efforts, with the goal of ensuring every student develops the strong literacy skills they need for the future.
“I am thrilled to see the accelerating, national momentum behind using evidence-based, science of reading aligned instruction to help young learners build literacy skills,” said Brad Lindaas, CEO, 95 Percent Group. “We have already seen our school and district clients in Missouri experience significant literacy success with their students and are excited to participate in the state’s broader goal of supporting every student in growing into a strong reader.”
After an extensive review process of submitted materials, Missouri state education officials selected 95 Percent Group’s programs for inclusion on its recommended supplemental materials list for grades K-5, determining that they meet state curriculum standards and are aligned to the science of reading.
95 Percent Group has a strong track record in Missouri. According to an independent study of 16 Missouri schools conducted over two years by LXD Research, more students were reading on grade level when they used the company’s flagship product, 95 Phonics Core Program, as compared to their peers who were learning with a different program. Based on this study, 95 Phonics Core Program earned the Strong rating on the Evidence for ESSA website for Tier 1, Whole-Class Instruction. The Strong rating confirms that the program’s research meets federal standards under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) for demonstrating the highest level of evidence. School partners call the program essential to their students’ literacy progress.
Joplin School District Assistant Superintendent of Learning Services Sarah Mwangi said, “What we have learned on our journey is that 95 Phonics Core Program is a great centerpiece for our literacy instruction. It is the program that we are dedicated to ensuring happens for our kids each day. It’s intensive, explicit and straightforward, offering exactly what you need to do with students instead of being one piece of an overwhelming ‘big box’ curriculum. If you are a district that has struggled with inconsistent foundational literacy instruction and you need to get schools back on the same page, 95 Phonics Core Program is a great, direct, explicit way to do that.”
95 Percent Group products approved by the Missouri Department of Elementary & Secondary Education are:
95 Phonics Core Program:a Tier 1 structured literacy solution that supports meaningful and effective literacy progress linked across grades, grounded in the science of reading and for the critical K-5 years. The program adds an explicit phonics strand to the daily reading block to ensure that all students receive consistent evidence-based and research-aligned phonics instruction to improve outcomes.
95 Literacy Intervention System™: a new digital platform that puts the tools for diagnosing skill gaps, digitally grouping students with similar needs, and assigning targeted reading instruction at teachers’ fingertips. Linking to 95 Phonics Core Program™ and 95 Phonics Lesson Library™, the 95 Literacy Intervention System allows teachers to ensure all students receive the targeted instruction they need to quickly graduate from intervention.
Sound Wall Classroom Kit for Grades K-2: provides teachers with everything they need to create a Sound Wall to help students build phonological and phonemic awareness. The kit includes Kid Lips® cards, a Kid Lips® teacher’s instructional guide, phoneme/grapheme cards – teacher’s instructional set, phoneme/grapheme mini cards, Student Sound Wall folder, and many other resources.
About 95 Percent Group
95 Percent Group is an education company whose mission is to build on science to empower teachers—supplying the knowledge, resources, and support they need—to develop strong readers. Using an approach that is based in structured literacy, the company’s One95™ Literacy Ecosystem™ integrates professional learning and evidence-based literacy products into one cohesive system that supports consistent instructional routines across tiers and is proven and trusted to help students close skill gaps and read fluently. 95 Percent Group is also committed to advancing research, best practices, and thought leadership on the science of reading more broadly. For more information, visit www.95percentgroup.com.
About LXD Research
LXD Research is an independent evaluation, research, and consulting division within Charles River Media Group focusing on educational programs. They design rigorous research studies, multifaceted data analytic reporting, and dynamic content to disseminate insights. Visit www.LXDResearch.com.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
Schools spend billions of dollars a year on products and services, including everything from staplers and textbooks to teacher coaching and training. Does any of it help students learn more? Some educational materials end up mothballed in closets. Much software goes unused. Yet central-office bureaucrats frequently renew their contracts with outside vendors regardless of usage or efficacy.
One idea for smarter education spending is for schools to sign smarter contracts, where part of the payment is contingent upon whether students use the services and learn more. It’s called outcomes-based contracting and is a way of sharing risk between buyer (the school) and seller (the vendor). Outcomes-based contracting is most common in healthcare. For example, a health insurer might pay a pharmaceutical company more for a drug if it actually improves people’s health, and less if it doesn’t.
Although the idea is relatively new in education, many schools tried a different version of it – evaluating and paying teachers based on how much their students’ test scores improved – in the 2010s. Teachers didn’t like it, and enthusiasm for these teacher accountability schemes waned. Then, in 2020, Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research announced that it was going to test the feasibility of paying tutoring companies by how much students’ test scores improved.
The initiative was particularly timely in the wake of the pandemic. The federal government would eventually give schools almost $190 billion to reopen and to help students who fell behind when schools were closed. Tutoring became a leading solution for academic recovery and schools contracted with outside companies to provide tutors. Many educators worried that billions could be wasted on low-quality tutors who didn’t help anyone. Could schools insist that tutoring companies make part of their payment contingent upon whether student achievement increased?
The Harvard center recruited a handful of school districts who wanted to try an outcomes-based contract. The researchers and districts shared ideas on how to set performance targets. How much should they expect student achievement to grow from a few months of tutoring? How much of the contract should be guaranteed to the vendor for delivering tutors, and how much should be contingent on student performance?
The first hurdle was whether tutoring companies would be willing to offer services without knowing exactly how much they would be paid. School districts sent out requests for proposals from online tutoring companies. Tutoring companies bid and the terms varied. One online tutoring company agreed that 40 percent of a $1.2 million contract with the Duval County Public Schools in Jacksonville, Florida, would be contingent upon student performance. Another online tutoring company signed a contract with Ector County schools in the Odessa, Texas, region that specified that the company had to accept a penalty if kids’ scores declined.
In the middle of the pilot, the outcomes-based contracting initiative moved from the Harvard center to the Southern Education Foundation, another nonprofit, and I recently learned how the first group of contracts panned out from Jasmine Walker, a senior manager there. Walker had a first-hand view because until the fall of 2023, she was the director of mathematics in Florida’s Duval County schools, where she oversaw the outcomes-based contract on tutoring.
Here are some lessons she learned:
Planning is time-consuming
Drawing up an outcomes-based contract requires analyzing years of historical testing data, and documenting how much achievement has typically grown for the students who need tutoring. Then, educators have to decide – based on the research evidence for tutoring – how much they could reasonably hope student achievement to grow after 12 weeks or more.
Incomplete data was a common problem
The first school district in the pilot group launched its outcome-based contract in the fall of 2021. In the middle of the pilot, school leadership changed, layoffs hit, and the leaders of the tutoring initiative left the district. With no one in the district’s central office left to track it, there was no data on whether tutoring helped the 1,000 students who received it. Half the students attended 70 percent of the tutoring sessions. Half didn’t. Test scores for almost two-thirds of the tutored students increased between the start and the end of the tutoring program. But these students also had regular math classes each day and they likely would have posted some achievement gains anyway.
Delays in settling contracts led to fewer tutored students
Walker said two school districts weren’t able to start tutoring children until January 2023, instead of the fall of 2022 as originally planned, because it took so long to iron out contract details and obtain approvals inside the districts. Many schools didn’t want to wait and launched other interventions to help needy students sooner. Understandably, schools didn’t want to yank these students away from those other interventions midyear.
That delay had big consequences in Duval County. Only 451 students received tutoring instead of a projected 1,200. Fewer students forced Walker to recalculate Duval’s outcomes-based contract. Instead of a $1.2 million contract with $480,000 of it contingent on student outcomes, she downsized it to $464,533 with $162,363 contingent. The tutored students hit 53 percent of the district’s growth and proficiency goals, leading to a total payout of $393,220 to the tutoring company – far less than the company had originally anticipated. But the average per-student payout of $872 was in line with the original terms of between $600 and $1,000 per student.
The bottom line is still uncertain
What we don’t know from any of these case studies is whether similar students who didn’t receive tutoring also made similar growth and proficiency gains. Maybe it’s all the other things that teachers were doing that made the difference. In Duval County, for example, proficiency rates in math rose from 28 percent of students to 46 percent of students. Walker believes that outcomes-based contracting for tutoring was “one lever” of many.
It’s unclear if outcomes-based contracting is a way for schools to save money. This kind of intensive tutoring – three times a week or more during the school day – is new and the school districts didn’t have previous pre-pandemic tutoring contracts for comparison. But generally, if all the student goals are met, companies stand to earn more in an outcomes-based contract than they would have otherwise, Walker said.
“It’s not really about saving money,” said Walker. “What we want is for students to achieve. I don’t care if I spent the whole contract amount if the students actually met the outcomes, because in the past, let’s face it, I was still paying and they were not achieving outcomes.”
The biggest change with outcomes-based contracting, Walker said, was the partnership with the provider. One contractor monitored student attendance during tutoring sessions, called her when attendance slipped and asked her to investigate. Students were given rewards for attending their tutoring sessions and the tutoring company even chipped in to pay for them. “Kids love Takis,” said Walker.
Advice for schools
Walker has two pieces of advice for schools considering outcomes-based contracts. One, she says, is to make the contingency amount at least 40 percent of the contract. Smaller incentives may not motivate the vendor. For her second outcomes-based contract in Duval County, Walker boosted the contingency amount to half the contract. To earn it, the tutoring company needs the students it is tutoring to hit growth and proficiency goals. That tutoring took place during the current 2023-24 school year. Based on mid-year results, students exceeded expectations, but full-year results are not yet in.
More importantly, Walker says the biggest lesson she learned was to include teachers, parents and students earlier in the contract negotiation process. She says “buy in” from teachers is critical because classroom teachers are actually making sure the tutoring happens. Otherwise, an outcomes-based contract can feel like yet “another thing” that the central office is adding to a teacher’s workload.
Walker also said she wished she had spent more time educating parents and students on the importance of attending school and their tutoring sessions. ”It’s important that everyone understands the mission,” said Walker.
Innovation can be rocky, especially at the beginning. Now the Southern Education Foundation is working to expand its outcomes-based contracting initiative nationwide. A second group of four school districts launched outcomes-based contracts for tutoring this 2023-24 school year. Walker says that the rate cards and recordkeeping are improving from the first pilot round, which took place during the stress and chaos of the pandemic.
The foundation is also seeking to expand the use of outcomes-based contracts beyond tutoring to education technology and software. Nine districts are slated to launch outcomes-based contracts for ed tech this fall. Her next dream is to design outcomes-based contracts around curriculum and teacher training. I’ll be watching.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Grading papers is hard work. “I hate it,” a teacher friend confessed to me. And that’s a major reason why middle and high school teachers don’t assign more writing to their students. Even an efficient high school English teacher who can read and evaluate an essay in 20 minutes would spend 3,000 minutes, or 50 hours, grading if she’s teaching six classes of 25 students each. There aren’t enough hours in the day.
Could ChatGPT relieve teachers of some of the burden of grading papers? Early research is finding that the new artificial intelligence of large language models, also known as generative AI, is approaching the accuracy of a human in scoring essays and is likely to become even better soon. But we still don’t know whether offloading essay grading to ChatGPT will ultimately improve or harm student writing.
Tamara Tate, a researcher at University California, Irvine, and an associate director of her university’s Digital Learning Lab, is studying how teachers might use ChatGPT to improve writing instruction. Most recently, Tate and her seven-member research team, which includes writing expert Steve Graham at Arizona State University, compared how ChatGPT stacked up against humans in scoring 1,800 history and English essays written by middle and high school students.
Tate said ChatGPT was “roughly speaking, probably as good as an average busy teacher” and “certainly as good as an overburdened below-average teacher.” But, she said, ChatGPT isn’t yet accurate enough to be used on a high-stakes test or on an essay that would affect a final grade in a class.
Tate presented her study on ChatGPT essay scoring at the 2024 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association in Philadelphia in April. (The paper is under peer review for publication and is still undergoing revision.)
Most remarkably, the researchers obtained these fairly decent essay scores from ChatGPT without training it first with sample essays. That means it is possible for any teacher to use it to grade any essay instantly with minimal expense and effort. “Teachers might have more bandwidth to assign more writing,” said Tate. “You have to be careful how you say that because you never want to take teachers out of the loop.”
Writing instruction could ultimately suffer, Tate warned, if teachers delegate too much grading to ChatGPT. Seeing students’ incremental progress and common mistakes remain important for deciding what to teach next, she said. For example, seeing loads of run-on sentences in your students’ papers might prompt a lesson on how to break them up. But if you don’t see them, you might not think to teach it.
In the study, Tate and her research team calculated that ChatGPT’s essay scores were in “fair” to “moderate” agreement with those of well-trained human evaluators. In one batch of 943 essays, ChatGPT was within a point of the human grader 89 percent of the time. On a six-point grading scale that researchers used in the study, ChatGPT often gave an essay a 2 when an expert human evaluator thought it was really a 1. But this level of agreement – within one point – dropped to 83 percent of the time in another batch of 344 English papers and slid even farther to 76 percent of the time in a third batch of 493 history essays. That means there were more instances where ChatGPT gave an essay a 4, for example, when a teacher marked it a 6. And that’s why Tate says these ChatGPT grades should only be used for low-stakes purposes in a classroom, such as a preliminary grade on a first draft.
ChatGPT scored an essay within one point of a human grader 89 percent of the time in one batch of essays
Corpus 3 refers to one batch of 943 essays, which represents more than half of the 1,800 essays that were scored in this study. Numbers highlighted in green show exact score matches between ChatGPT and a human. Yellow highlights scores in which ChatGPT was within one point of the human score. Source: Tamara Tate, University of California, Irvine (2024).
Still, this level of accuracy was impressive because even teachers disagree on how to score an essay and one-point discrepancies are common. Exact agreement, which only happens half the time between human raters, was worse for AI, which matched the human score exactly only about 40 percent of the time. Humans were far more likely to give a top grade of a 6 or a bottom grade of a 1. ChatGPT tended to cluster grades more in the middle, between 2 and 5.
Tate set up ChatGPT for a tough challenge, competing against teachers and experts with PhDs who had received three hours of training in how to properly evaluate essays. “Teachers generally receive very little training in secondary school writing and they’re not going to be this accurate,” said Tate. “This is a gold-standard human evaluator we have here.”
The raters had been paid to score these 1,800 essays as part of three earlier studies on student writing. Researchers fed these same student essays – ungraded – into ChatGPT and asked ChatGPT to score them cold. ChatGPT hadn’t been given any graded examples to calibrate its scores. All the researchers did was copy and paste an excerpt of the same scoring guidelines that the humans used, called a grading rubric, into ChatGPT and told it to “pretend” it was a teacher and score the essays on a scale of 1 to 6.
Older robo graders
Earlier versions of automated essay graders have had higher rates of accuracy. But they were expensive and time-consuming to create because scientists had to train the computer with hundreds of human-graded essays for each essay question. That’s economically feasible only in limited situations, such as for a standardized test, where thousands of students answer the same essay question.
Earlier robo graders could also be gamed, once a student understood the features that the computer system was grading for. In some cases, nonsense essays received high marks if fancy vocabulary words were sprinkled in them. ChatGPT isn’t grading for particular hallmarks, but is analyzing patterns in massive datasets of language. Tate says she hasn’t yet seen ChatGPT give a high score to a nonsense essay.
Tate expects ChatGPT’s grading accuracy to improve rapidly as new versions are released. Already, the research team has detected that the newer 4.0 version, which requires a paid subscription, is scoring more accurately than the free 3.5 version. Tate suspects that small tweaks to the grading instructions, or prompts, given to ChatGPT could improve existing versions. She is interested in testing whether ChatGPT’s scoring could become more reliable if a teacher trained it with just a few, perhaps five, sample essays that she has already graded. “Your average teacher might be willing to do that,” said Tate.
Many ed tech startups, and even well-known vendors of educational materials, are now marketing new AI essay robo graders to schools. Many of them are powered under the hood by ChatGPT or another large language model and I learned from this study that accuracy rates can be reported in ways that can make the new AI graders seem more accurate than they are. Tate’s team calculated that, on a population level, there was no difference between human and AI scores. ChatGPT can already reliably tell you the average essay score in a school or, say, in the state of California.
Questions for AI vendors
At this point, it is not as accurate in scoring an individual student. And a teacher wants to know exactly how each student is doing. Tate advises teachers and school leaders who are considering using an AI essay grader to ask specific questions about accuracy rates on the student level:What is the rate of exact agreement between the AI grader and a human rater on each essay? How often are they within one-point of each other?
The next step in Tate’s research is to study whether student writing improves after having an essay graded by ChatGPT. She’d like teachers to try using ChatGPT to score a first draft and then see if it encourages revisions, which are critical for improving writing. Tate thinks teachers could make it “almost like a game: how do I get my score up?”
Of course, it’s unclear if grades alone, without concrete feedback or suggestions for improvement, will motivate students to make revisions. Students may be discouraged by a low score from ChatGPT and give up. Many students might ignore a machine grade and only want to deal with a human they know. Still, Tate says some students are too scared to show their writing to a teacher until it’s in decent shape, and seeing their score improve on ChatGPT might be just the kind of positive feedback they need.
“We know that a lot of students aren’t doing any revision,” said Tate. “If we can get them to look at their paper again, that is already a win.”
That does give me hope, but I’m also worried that kids will just ask ChatGPT to write the whole essay for them in the first place.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
The debris continues to fall in Chicago where earlier this week, the city saw all 15 Foxtrot convenience stores and two Dom’s Kitchen & Market locations suddenly close. Ex-employees have filed a class-action lawsuit against Outfox Hospitality, claiming they weren’t given proper notice of mass layoffs.
Protestors assembled Friday morning outside of Foxtrot’s commissary in Pilsen, but legal experts remain divided on whether Outfox will be held legally accountable. Earlier this year, unionized ex-workers at the Signature Room won their lawsuit that accused restaurant management of violating the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, a safe measure requiring companies to file a notice of mass layoff with the government. Eater reviewed an email sent to some ex-Foxtrot workers dated 11 p.m. Tuesday, April 23, and signed by Outfox CEO Rob Twyman notifying employees that their jobs would be immediately eliminated and stating the message was following state law. The letter does not mention the 60-day notice the law stipulates and came after the stores closed.
Outfox formed after Chicago-based Dom’s and Foxtrot combined last year. Foxtrot debuted as a delivery-only app in 2016 that expanded into the convenience store space opening locations in Texas, and the D.C. area. Dom’s debuted in 2021 in Lincoln Park. Both entities had major designs on scaling. In the aftermath of the closures, a Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing — which former employees told Eater to look out for — has yet to pop up, clouding the picture of what went wrong. Outfox hasn’t responded to media inquiries and former vendors tell Eater they haven’t heard anything from them either. They now join the graveyard of Chicago grocery brands like White Hen Pantry, Dominick’s Finer Foods, and Moo & Oink.
Grabbed and gone.John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
But as the legal theater begins to play out, workers are setting up online fundraisers and scrambling for jobs. In Chicago, the 17 potential real estate vacancies (liquidation could slow things down), are creating a feeding frenzy. Independent grocers, liquor shop owners, and would-be restaurant owners are contacting their real estate agents, hoping to cut deals with landlords on some prime retail spaces on the North Side.
Fresh Market Place in Bucktown is an independent grocer that’s become a champion of local vendors, where many chefs from Chicago’s top restaurants shop.
“I would, at the very least, I would listen to an offer,” Fresh Market GM Kostas Drosos says. “I definitely will inquire — or maybe I have inquired already.”
The demand for the Foxtrot and Dom’s locations contrasts with what’s happening on the West and South sides, where residents have clamored for more investment. The city has struggled to find a tenant in Englewood to replace Whole Foods. Locals seeking an upscale retailer with a similar cachet were rendered disappointed by the pending arrival of Yellow Banana, a division of Ohio-based Save A Lot. Some Chicagoans aren’t missing Foxtrot or Dom’s. You can’t miss what you never had.
Meanwhile, Fancy Plants Cafe owner Kevin Schuder spent much of the week trying to reach Dom’s and Foxtrot, hoping to connect them with the Great Chicago Food Depository. He’s had no luck, and his frustrations spiked after a Sun-Times report saying workers were instructed to throw away food. Drosos compares that to when Stanley’s, a tiny independent market on the corner of North and Elston Avenue, was razed in anticipation of the Lincoln Yards development. He remembers handing out business cards and hiring a few Stanley’s workers in the two weeks before its closure in 2019.
“Stanley’s put in notice two weeks out and said ‘Come on in, guys!’” Drosos recalls. “They were giving away the food — come in, we’re going to be closing and we’re giving discounts.”
Foxtrot and Dom’s shared some similarities, but it wasn’t a precise fit. Both wanted to attract upscale restaurant customers. They recruited chefs for cooking demonstrations and sold gourmet items with the chefs’ names. The latter was ripped from Trader Joe’s playbook. The concerns were detailed nicely earlier this month in an article by Adam Reiner in Taste.
But as Foxtrot raced for scale, with locations in high-rent areas like Fulton Market, execs may have skipped a step in establishing community roots, something Drosos says is integral to Fresh Market’s success. In Andersonville, Foxtrot attempted to open near Andale Market, a small independent shop that stocked specialty items from the kind of vendors Foxtrot desired. Locals pushed back.
That disconnect with Foxtrot and its community might be why Palita Sriratana says her sales at Fresh Market and Here Here Market exceeded her brand’s sales at Foxtrot. In November, her company Pink Salt was selected through Foxtrot’s Up and Comer competition, recognizing vendors selling new snacks, dips, and coffees — stuff Foxtrot wanted to scale and sell nationwide. Sriratana makes a Thai chili jam, which belongs in the same genre as chile crunch, David Chang be damned.
Sriratana describes the terms of winning as restrictive. They sounded like the stringent restrictions reality TV show contestants face; to be considered, candidates couldn’t already be in “major retailers.” There were “unrealistic” deadlines as Pink Salt geared up for the holiday gift-giving season — Foxtrot wanted enough jars of jam to stock at 54 stores versus the eight stores initially ordered. Sriratana says “she held her breath” and carried on with production. She says the system feels “predatory to a very vulnerable group of small makers.” Pink Salt is currently free from any restrictions.
“I feel sad for the brands that opened [production orders] and took out loans to meet their scale,” Sriratana says.
Here Here, founded in 2021, aimed to give vendors like Sriratana more control. Disha Gulati founded the startup in 2021 to give chefs including Rick Bayless and Stephanie Izard a digital marketplace for sauces, pasta, and spices, It allowed lesser-known names a chance to establish their brands nationally. Over the past few days, Gulati and Drosos have been inundated with requests from former Foxtrot vendors wanting shelf space. Both say they’ll expedite the process to help. Gulati says she spends much of her time connecting vendors so they could better share their experiences and succeed. She feels that’s why they feel a “strong sense of community on our platform.”
Foxtrot had an eye toward upscale customers.Garrett Sweet/Eater Chicago
Gulati was careful not to villainize Outfox, saying she doesn’t know what pressures they faced: “Them going under might have been inevitable,” she says.
But when discussing how Outfox closed without warning without informing vendors, Gulati says: “One hundred percent they should have done it differently.”
Justin Doggett has sold his Kyoto Black bottled cold brew coffees at Foxtrot since 2021 when the store reps approached him saying they wanted to stock his coffee. He never worried about Foxtrot reverse engineering his Kyoto-style cold brews: “It’s fairly unique, it’s a very niche product,” he says.
Foxtrot represented his biggest wholesale customer — all 15 Chicago Foxtrots stocked Kyoto Black. The sudden loss of the marketplace has forced Doggett to launch a campaign to grow his monthly subscription base, where customers would buy coffee directly from him. He says he’s had zero contact with Foxtrot since the announcement and feels blindsided.
“Their closure represents a loss of thousands of dollars of sales per month,” Doggett wrote in a Facebook post from Tuesday, April 23. “It also devastates my brand presence. People would order from me directly all the time because they first had my coffee at Foxtrot.”
Doggett says he made $120 in coffee deliveries on Monday. If this was in June, prime cold brew season, that delivery could have been larger. He’s looking for 800 new monthly customers; basically converting his Foxtrot customers to direct customers.
Some independent coffee shops, the same ones that Foxtrot sought to compete with, are helping out. Side Practice Coffee and Drip Collective have offered to sell Kyoto Black while Doggett adjusts. He knows that he won’t make up for the loss immediately. He also stressed that the workers he interacted with treated him well and shouldn’t be conflated with the corporate business.
History has repeated itself for Sriratana who has experience with start-ups suddenly closing; Pink Salt was also the name for her Thai food stall inside Fulton Galley, a food hall in Fulton Market. It closed in 2019, without warning, after being open for five months. The space — located less than a half mile west from Outfox’s headquarters — is now a Patagonia store.
“My experience with Fulton Galley made me not trust the partnership with Foxtrot and pushed me to really value independent businesses — I cannot stress that enough,” she says.
RIDGELAND, Miss./PRNewswire/ —SchoolStatus, a leader in K-12 data-driven solutions that empower student success, announced the launch of SchoolStatus Boost, a collaborative platform for guiding and documenting equitable professional growth programs for educators, via goal-setting, coaching, and observations, to support schools in improving educators’ career growth and student success.
SchoolStatus Boost is the latest addition to the new SchoolStatus K-12 success platform, a user-friendly, fully integrated platform that includes SchoolStatus Connect for personalized communications and SchoolStatus Attend for attendance management. Together they empower families, administrators, and educators with data-driven insights for positive growth and student outcomes.
With SchoolStatus Boost, K-12 school districts can promote educator growth through customized, collaborative development platform using:
● Intuitive tools to record observation notes and provide timely, actionable feedback while saving ½ a day per week in paperwork ● Centralized observation notes and rubric data customized for the district’s needs ● Educator-driven goal-setting and documenting evidence portfolios that enable them to feel supported by their administrators ● District and school level data-views to allow leaders to identify trends and opportunities for additional development
“The most important people in a student’s educational journey are their educators. Our team wants to ensure that we are supporting educators so that they feel appreciated by their employer and are able to grow in their career,” said Russ Davis, SchoolStatus Founder and CEO. “It is critical that we invest in our educators through an educator-centric career growth platform, such as SchoolStatus Boost. We will always applaud the work of educators and continue to create ways to support them.”
“Educators today are juggling many priorities within a limited amount of time. They’re working hard to provide the best instruction they can for all students, to connect with families, and to grow in their instructional practices. The influence teachers have on students’ educational journeys can’t be overstated—so any opportunity we have to save them time directly impacts classroom instruction. SchoolStatus Boost helps us support educators’ growth based on transparent collaboration and goal tracking that also meets state requirements. And that ultimately results in better outcomes for students and our school community. Our mission statement emphasizes a commitment to lifelong learning. Our partnership with SchoolStatus Boost greatly supports that mission,” said Patrick Burns, Principal, Robert A. Van Wyck M.S. 217Q.
For more information on SchoolStatus Boost, SchoolStatus Connect, and SchoolStatus Attend, visit www.schoolstatus.com.
About SchoolStatus SchoolStatus provides a comprehensive suite of communication and attendance solutions that enhance educator-to-family connectedness and support student success. Instant insight into student information and district attendance trends gives educators and administrators full visibility into all levels of the education ecosystem. Data-informed, multi-touch communications include calling, texting, video, and print materials centered around proactive intervention that improves student outcomes and family engagement. With millions of successful school-home interactions, SchoolStatus is improving student achievement by facilitating meaningful engagement between educators, districts, and families across the U.S. For more information, visit schoolstatus.com.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
BEAVER, Pa. and SUNNYVALE, Calif./PRNewswire/ — As artificial intelligence begins its disruption of curriculum development, Lincoln Learning Solutions and Prof Jim are positioning themselves at the forefront of the emerging educational space with the announcement today of their partnership and the release of two immediately available innovations.
“Our collaboration with Prof Jim has already shown promising results, improving the pace of creation and expanding our content offerings,” said Charles Thayer, Chief Academic Officer at Lincoln Learning Solutions. “We are excited to offer these innovative tools to our partner schools, enabling teachers to create more engaging and effective learning environments.”
The partnership introduces several key offerings:
AI Slide Assistant and AI Assessment Assistant: Customizable tools designed to align with the specific preferences and requirements of school districts, facilitating the creation of personalized slide decks and assessments.
AI Video Assistant: This tool revolutionizes how educators can deliver instruction, allowing for the creation of videos featuring either an AI version of the teacher, historical figures like Ben Franklin, or other characters to enhance lesson engagement and effectiveness.
“This AI technology enables educators to bring lessons to life in ways previously unimaginable,” Pranav Mehta, CTO and Co-Founder of Prof Jim, said. “Without having to own a studio, teachers can use their own AI avatar to teach their lessons, and they can include historical cameos — from the likes of Jane Austen or Pythagoras or George Washington Carver — to teach and serve as role models.”
Integral to this initiative is the Lincoln Content Bank, an award-winning, multi-modal, educational content library that equips teachers with nearly 110,000 highly vetted learning assets they can configure and assemble to meet the needs of their students. The team intends to use this as the curricular foundation for these AI tools; so, the co-offering is based on vetted, trusted content — unlike many other AI edtech offerings.
Lincoln Learning is also working with Prof Jim to create an AI tutor product. It is in development and slated to be launched at the start of the 2024-25 school year.
“As more and more studies reveal that tutoring is essential to elevating student confidence and success — especially in the wake of the pandemic — we believe this is a tool educators will welcome with open arms,” Chief Business and Development Officer at Lincoln Learning Solutions, Dr. Rachel Book, said.
The team expects to have the first wave of AI assisted tools in classrooms before the end of the 2023-24 school year.
About Lincoln Learning Solutions
Lincoln Learning Solutions is a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to collaborating with educators and maximizing their talents to facilitate student success. Based in western Pennsylvania, it is the developer of Lincoln Empowered™, a digitally based curriculum that delivers engaging, standards-based, instruction in online and blended learning environments. Lincoln Empowered™offers a dynamic array of courses in language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, physical education, and the creative and performing arts. Lincoln Learning Solutions currently serves more than 100 school districts in 14 states, and upward of 20,000 students.
About Prof Jim
Prof Jim Inc equips organizations with AI-powered instructional tools. In the next few years, AI is set to revolutionize learning, as it boosts quality, increases personalization, and taps into easy translations – all while slashing costs. However, technical hurdles and the high cost of expertise prevent many organizations from accessing AI’s benefits. Prof Jim partners with these organizations to create dynamic teaching materials, interactive videos, and assessments using its patented AI. Research indicates that Prof Jim’s AI increases content creation efficiency 3x-15x, improves learning outcomes by up to 15%, and elevates student engagement by 25%.
SOURCE Lincoln Learning Solutions
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo./PRNewswire-PRWeb/ —TouchMath, a multisensory math program that makes learning crucial mathematical concepts accessible and clear for students who struggle to understand grade-level content, announces the launch of TouchMath Extend and Dyscalculia Extension. These groundbreaking solutions aim to bridge mathematical gaps and advance dyscalculia advocacy. Coinciding with two significant milestones, International Dyscalculia Day (March 3rd) and the 50th anniversary of the term ‘Developmental Dyscalculia,’ coined in March 1974, TouchMath reaffirms its commitment to providing essential resources and support to students experiencing mathematical barriers.
“Considering TouchMath’s unwavering commitment to educational equity over nearly five decades, the launch of TouchMath Extend and Dyscalculia Extension signifies a pivotal moment in our mission,” stated Dr. Sandra Elliott, Chief Academic Officer at TouchMath. “Recognizing that approximately 75% of students with dyscalculia also experience dyslexia, it’s clear that both conditions warrant equal recognition and support. Through these innovative solutions, we aim to not only raise awareness but also provide concrete assistance, empowering students to overcome mathematical challenges. As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ladislav Kosc’s pioneering work, it’s time to dispel misconceptions, deepen understanding, and champion inclusive education where every learner, regardless of their challenges, can thrive.”
Dyscalculia, estimated to affect 3-7% of the population, is a learning disability with profound impacts on academic performance and daily life. Challenges include struggles with basic math operations and understanding mathematical concepts. However, only about 15% of students have been screened for dyscalculia, while 40% of math teachers report students performing below grade level. Unlike dyslexia, dyscalculia lacks systematic tracking in the U.S. despite the urgent need for skilled STEM professionals. While more than 45 U.S. states have enacted dyslexia-related legislation, fewer than ten states have passed laws addressing math intervention and instruction since 2021.
“While dyslexia-related legislation has seen significant progress, there’s a notable gap in addressing math intervention and instruction,” notes Dr. Chelsi Brosh, Vice President, Product Innovation at TouchMath. “TouchMath Extend and Dyscalculia Extension fill this void, offering comprehensive solutions to support students struggling with math.”
Dyscalculia Extension Overview: Dyscalculia Extension offers tailored support through a multisensory program, providing comprehensive resources like 60 math games/tasks and 180 downloadable activity sheets. Aligned with Standards Edition curricula, it ensures adherence to educational standards and includes supporting tools such as graphic organizers and dyscalculia-specific strategies. With diverse activities catering to various learning styles, Dyscalculia Extension is versatile, aligns with DSM-5 standards, and integrates seamlessly into special and general education classrooms.
In addition to dyscalculia advocacy, TouchMath acknowledges the diverse challenges faced by students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in mathematics education and other STEM subjects. Research supports the effectiveness of multisensory approaches in enhancing mathematical learning for students with disabilities, and TouchMath Extend aligns with these findings, offering tailored solutions to address the diverse learning needs of all students.
TouchMath Extend Overview: TouchMath Extend is an innovative multisensory extended school year, summer school, and ongoing math intervention solution designed to transform math learning. It offers a tailored 12-week curriculum focusing on skill remediation and teacher support through on-demand video training. The program combines traditional workbooks with digital math games to enhance comprehension and provides long-term value through the TouchMath digital platform. TouchMath Extend prepares students for future success while embodying TouchMath’s commitment to comprehensive math education.
“Reflecting on our founding mission nearly 50 years ago, TouchMath remains dedicated to creating intentional learning experiences for students, especially those facing vulnerabilities,” said Sean Lockwood, Chief Executive Officer at TouchMath. “We will continue championing accessibility and inclusivity in mathematics education, paving the way for a brighter future for all learners.”
TouchMath’s commitment to dyscalculia advocacy goes beyond its latest product launches. In the last year, TouchMath released the free DySc screener and an extensive whitepaper to increase awareness and understanding of dyscalculia and promote efforts to ensure that all children have access to the support they need.
To learn more about TouchMath and its research-proven solutions, visit https://touchmath.com/.
About TouchMath TouchMath provides a wide range of curriculum and tools for educators and their students who struggle to understand grade-level content. TouchMath is committed to maximizing student potential through its worldwide delivery of hands-on math programs, cultivating success with individuals of all abilities. Since 1975, TouchMath has delivered the only multi-sensory math program that uses the numeral as a manipulative, bringing students along the evidence-based Concrete-Representational-Abstract continuum for mathematics. Visit touchmath.com to learn more.
eSchool Media staff cover education technology in all its aspects–from legislation and litigation, to best practices, to lessons learned and new products. First published in March of 1998 as a monthly print and digital newspaper, eSchool Media provides the news and information necessary to help K-20 decision-makers successfully use technology and innovation to transform schools and colleges and achieve their educational goals.
Four meta-analyses conclude that it’s more effective to teach phonemic awareness with letters, not as an oral-only exercise. Credit: Allison Shelley for EDU
Educators around the country have embraced the “science of reading” in their classrooms, but that doesn’t mean there’s a truce in the reading wars. In fact, controversies are emerging about an important but less understood aspect of learning to read: phonemic awareness.
That’s the technical name for showing children how to break down words into their component letter sounds and then fuse the sounds together. In a phonemic awareness lesson, a teacher might ask how many sounds are in the word cat. The answer is three: “k,” “a,” and “t.” Then the class blends the sounds back into the familiar sounding word: from “kuh-aah-tuh” to “kat.” The 26 letters of the English alphabet produce 44 phonemes, which include unique sounds made from combinations of letters, such as “ch” and “oo.”
Many schools have purchased scripted oral phonemic awareness lessons that do not include the visual display of letters. The oral lessons are popular because they are easy to teach and fun for students. And that’s the source of the current debate. Should kids in kindergarten or first grade be spending so much time on sounds without understanding how those sounds correspond to letters?
A new meta-analysis confirms that the answer is no. In January 2024, five researchers from Texas A&M University published their findings online in the journal Scientific Studies of Reading. They found that struggling readers, ages 4 to 6, no longer benefited after 10.2 hours of auditory instruction in small group or tutoring sessions, but continued to make progress if visual displays of the letters were combined with the sounds. That means that instead of just asking students to repeat sounds, a teacher might hold up cards with the letters C, A and T printed on them as students isolate and blend the sounds.
Meta-analyses sweep up all the best research on a topic and use statistics to tell us where the preponderance of the evidence lies. This newest 2024 synthesis follows three previous meta-analyses on phonemic awareness in the past 25 years. While there are sometimes shortcomings in the underlying studies, the conclusions from all the phonemic meta-analyses appear to be pointing in the same direction.
“If you teach phonemic awareness, students will learn phonemic awareness,” which isn’t the goal, said Tiffany Peltier, a learning scientist who consults on literacy training for teachers at NWEA, an assessment company. “If you teach blending and segmenting using letters, students are learning to read and spell.”
Phonemic awareness has a complicated history. In the 1970s, researchers discovered that good readers also had a good sense of the sounds that constitute words. This sound awareness helps students map the written alphabet to the sounds, an important step in learning to read and write. Researchers proved that these auditory skills could be taught and early studies showed that they could be taught as a purely oral exercise without letters.
But science evolved. In 2000, the National Reading Panel outlined the five pillars of evidence-based reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. This has come to be known as the science of reading. By then, more studies on phonemic awareness had been conducted and oral lessons alone were not as successful. The reading panel’s meta-analysis of 52 studies showed that phonemic awareness instruction was almost twice as effective when letters were presented along with the sounds.
Many schools ignored the reading panel’s recommendations and chose different approaches that didn’t systematically teach phonics or phonemic awareness. But as the science of reading grew in popularity in the past decade, phonemic awareness lessons also exploded. Teacher training programs in the science of reading emphasized the importance of phonemic awareness. Companies sold phonemic programs to schools and told teachers to teach it every day. Many of these lessons were auditory, including chants and songs without letters.
Twenty years after the reading panel’s report, a second meta-analysis came out in 2022 with even fresher studies but arrived at the same conclusion. Researchers from Baylor University analyzed over 130 studies and found twice the benefits for phonemic awareness when it was taught with letters. A third meta-analysis was presented at a poster session of the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading. It also found that instruction was more effective when sounds and letters were combined.
On the surface, adding letters to sounds might seem identical to teaching phonics. But some reading experts say phonemic awareness with letters still emphasizes the auditory skills of segmenting words into sounds and blending the sounds together. The visual display of the letter is almost like a subliminal teaching of phonics without explicitly saying, “This alphabetic symbol ‘a’ makes the sound ‘ah’.” Others explain that there isn’t a bright line between phonemic awareness and phonics and they can be taught in tandem.
The authors of the latest 2024 meta-analysis had hoped to give teachers more guidance on how much classroom time to invest on phonemic awareness. But unfortunately, the classroom studies they found didn’t keep track of the minutes. The researchers were left with only 16 high-quality studies, all of which were interventions with struggling students. These were small group or individual tutoring sessions on top of whatever phonemic awareness lessons children may also have been receiving in their regular classrooms, which was not documented. So it’s impossible to say from this meta-analysis exactly how much sound training students need.
The lead author of the 2024 meta-analysis, Florina Erbeli, an education psychologist at Texas A&M, said that the 10.2 hours number in her paper isn’t a “magic number.” It’s just an average of the results of the 16 studies that met her criteria for being included in the meta-analysis. The right amount of phonemic awareness might be more or less, depending on the child.
Erbeli said the bigger point for teachers to understand is that there are diminishing returns to auditory-only instruction and that students learn much more when auditory skills are combined with visible letters.
I corresponded with Heggerty, the market leader in phoneme awareness lessons, which says its programs are in 70 percent of U.S. school districts. The company acknowledged that the science of reading has evolved and that’s why it revised its phonemic awareness program in 2022 to incorporate letters and introduced a new program in 2023 to pair it with phonics. The company says it is working with outside researchers to keep improving the instructional materials it sells to schools. Because many schools cannot afford to buy a new instructional program, Heggerty says it also explains how teachers can modify older auditory lessons.
The company still recommends that teachers spend eight to 12 minutes a day on phonemic awareness through the end of first grade. This recommendation contrasts with the advice of many reading researchers who say the average kid doesn’t need this much. Many researchers say that phonemic awareness continues to develop automatically as the child’s reading skills improve without advanced auditory training.
NWEA literacy consultant Peltier, whom I quoted earlier, suggests that phonemic awareness can be tapered off by the fall of first grade. More phonemic awareness isn’t necessarily harmful, but there’s only so much instructional time in the day. She thinks that precious minutes currently devoted to oral phonemic awareness could be better spent on phonics, building vocabulary and content knowledge through reading books aloud, classroom discussions and writing.
Another developer of a phonemic awareness program aimed at older, struggling readers is David Kilpatrick, professor emeritus at the State University of New York at Cortland. He told me that five minutes a day might be enough for the average student in a classroom, but some struggling students need a lot more. Kilpatrick disagrees with the conclusions of the meta-analyses because they lump different types of students together. He says severely dyslexic students need more auditory training. He explained that extra time is needed for advanced auditory work that helps these students build long-term memories, he said, and the meta-analyses didn’t measure that outcome.
Another reading expert, Susan Brady, professor emerita at the University of Rhode Island, concurs that some of the more advanced manipulations can help some students. Moving a sound in and out of a word can heighten awareness of a consonant cluster, such as taking the “r” out of the word “first” to get “fist,” and then inserting it back in again. But she says this kind of sound subtraction should only be done with visible letters. Doing all the sound manipulations in your head is too taxing for young children, she said.
Brady’s concern is the misunderstanding that teachers need to teach all the phonemes before moving on to phonics. It’s not a precursor or a prerequisite to reading and writing, she says. Instead, sound training should be taught at the same time as new groups of letters are introduced. “The letters reinforce the phoneme awareness and the phoneme awareness reinforces the letters,” said Brady, speaking at a 2022 teacher training session. She said that researchers and teacher trainers need to help educators shift to integrating letters into their early reading instruction. “It’s going to take a while to penetrate the belief system that’s out there,” she said.
I once thought that the reading wars were about whether to teach phonics. But there are fierce debates even among those who support a phonics-heavy science of reading. I’ve come to understand that the research hasn’t yet answered all our questions about the best way to teach all the steps. Schools might be over-teaching phonemic awareness. And children with dyslexia might need more than other children. More importantly, the science of reading is the same as any other scientific inquiry. Every new answer may also raise new questions as we get closer to the truth.
This story aboutphonemic awareness was written by Jill Barshay and produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Proof Points newsletter.
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One of the biggest announcements out of FETC24 this year involved Lightspeed, the leading provider of instructional audio solutions that create equal access to learning, and their launch of Cascadia—a networked instructional audio platform that not only projects the teacher’s voice within the classroom but also empowers teachers to call for help and communicate outside of the classroom directly from their lanyard microphone.
I had a conversation with Tony Zeikle, Senior Vice President of Revenue at Lightspeed Technologies, Inc. about the features of the new product, its integration with existing school systems like phone networks and paging solutions, and its potential benefits for teachers and students, especially in light of challenges posed by the pandemic. We also touch upon the evolving landscape of educational technology, including the role of audio in augmented reality, virtual reality, and language learning. Have a listen:
More details about the launch:
Cascadia delivers all the benefits of instructional audio and integrates with existing life-safety and building communication systems, providing the ability to initiate mobile, silent emergency alerts and make two-way calls to the office from anywhere in the building.
“The need for teachers to communicate with resources outside of the classroom continues to grow, whether in an emergency or simply when help is needed,” said Shaun Fagan, Senior Vice President of Product and Lightspeed. “With Cascadia, schools can now meet this need by providing teachers with a communication tool that offers mobility, simplicity, and immediacy.”
Cascadia connects to a school’s network, providing centralized monitoring and control, along with key integrations to critical building-wide communications. The Cascadia platform provides:
Timely alerts from anywhere in the building
Communication to the office with two-way calling
Real-time teacher location during an active alert
Power over Ethernet Plus (PoE+) to leverage network infrastructure
Integration with classroom multimedia
Student sharing with Sharemike
“By integrating with leading life-safety and building communication providers, our solutions provide schools with the flexibility to leverage their existing investments and build the best systems to meet their needs,” said Fagan.
This networked communication system can enhance existing safety protocols and procedures, which is vital for students and parents. Students (87%), parents (96%), and educators (98%) all agree that school safety is extremely important to them, according to the 2022 State of School Safety Report by Safe and Sound Schools.
Below is a machine-generated transcript:
00:00:05 Speaker 1
OK, Tony. Thanks so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. Looking forward to off, etc in a couple weeks and I know lightspeed’s going to be down there. Maybe we could just get right into it, talk a little bit about the news and any announcements that that you guys might be promoting on the show floor.
00:00:22 Speaker 2
Absolutely. You know, we go to FTC every year. We love the opportunity to be able to interact with a lot of school districts and just across the entire industry of the Ed tech space. And you know, we are well respected and known for what we do in the classroom with instructional audio, putting a microphone on a teacher and providing a low volume, highly intelligible speech through speakers.
00:00:42 Speaker 2
So that every student in the classroom can effectively hear the instruction.
00:00:46 Speaker 2
The new product that we’re launching this month and it’s just gone on to our website this week is called Cascade, Cascadia and it’s an instructional networked platform. It’s our first foray into being a networked system, so that our our technology directors can have visibility into all of their instructional audio solutions.
00:01:05 Speaker 2
Across an entire school.
00:01:07 Speaker 2
And also adding some additional features. You know, the thing that we really realized was as we put microphones on, teachers and teachers are wearing a microphone, you know, both in their classroom and around the school is that that microphone can have some additional features and abilities beyond just that. We have an important piece of real estate.
00:01:27 Speaker 2
So to speak, by having that microphone right here at a, you know, hands distance away.
00:01:33 Speaker 2
For the teachers, So what we’re doing is adding some components of being able to integrate our microphone for safety and security purposes and that can be incorporating it in as a discrete silent alert that can notify the office that there’s something wrong in a classroom or somewhere else in the school. And we’re also integrating it with the school’s phone system so that the.
00:01:55 Speaker 2
Teacher is actually able to make a teacher initiated call to the office.
00:02:00 Speaker 2
Sometimes a little bit more information is required. You know with that discrete alert or something like that, and the teacher being able to have a quick conversation with the office and it could be something as minor as a student needs help in the hallway. It could be just instruction, maybe a teacher or a student’s heading to the office just so that quick information can provide a little bit more.
00:02:20 Speaker 2
Information for the teacher and staff to be able to communicate the thing we really realized coming out of the pandemic.
00:02:27 Speaker 2
Was that gone? Are the days that a teacher just walks into their classroom at the beginning of the day doesn’t interact with any other adults the rest of the day? And you know, they’re just with their students in that classroom. The dynamic has changed and teachers need support, whether it’s for behavioral purposes, whether it’s just standard communication across the school campus.
00:02:48 Speaker 2
And we realized that we could add some value there by adding some additional buttons and additional features onto our microphone.
00:02:56 Speaker 1
You know, it sounds like a pretty significant upgrade. And when you talk about significant, you’re also talking about sophisticated and and and complicated especially I guess when you’re tying in phone systems or IP based, if any of our readers or listeners here are responsible for those sort of IT systems. Can you give us some of the the?
00:03:16 Speaker 1
Weak speak when it comes to how those are being integrated.
00:03:19 Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. What we really desire to do is stay in our space from an instructional audio standpoint. That’s what we’re known for. That’s what we’re respected for. So we’re really staying there. But what we have done is identified that we can integrate with existing paging and intercom solutions through our network system. So that from a wireless standpoint, we use deck technology for our wireless.
00:03:41 Speaker 2
Transmission, but from the amp we’re now connected through the through the network and integrate with that paging system so that we’re integrating with what the school is already used to using.
00:03:52 Speaker 2
And being able to navigate and then those buttons can do different things based upon what the school desires it to do based upon their safety and security protocols and those kinds of things. One of the things that we really wanted to make sure that we did through this process is there can be complexity on the back end for sure, but how do we keep it simple for the teacher? How do we make it so that it’s very easy and intuitive?
00:04:14 Speaker 2
For them to use, you know, one of the things that we realized was when it comes to school wide communication, there’s different ways that teachers were interacting, whether it be, you know, maybe a walkie.
00:04:24 Speaker 2
Bucky and those are kind of bulky and they might be taking them to recess or different places across the school. They’re not very wearable, so to speak, but they serve their purpose. You think about other things that they’re using sometimes they’re using their own cell phone, which sometimes isn’t on the school’s network, isn’t a school.
00:04:45 Speaker 2
Piece of property.
00:04:47 Speaker 2
And there’s some challenges tied to apps and things like that. On their own personal device that can be challenging for a school to navigate, and then, you know, they have their phone system maybe or their, you know, in the school and it’s fixed. And it’s not a wearable technology, so to speak. So we felt like there was a little bit of a gap in terms of just communication that we can make a little bit simpler.
00:05:07 Speaker 1
Yeah. And you mentioned the pandemic in in some of the the changing behaviors.
00:05:12 Speaker 1
Is that something that that as as a company as as a technology company who’s emphasizing these technologies as being an enhancement, has there, has there been a change in terms of maybe convincing faculty members who maybe were resistant? Like why do I need a microphone? I’ve always, I’ve always taught my algebra class for for 30 years and never seem to have necessary like.
00:05:34 Speaker 1
And always felt awkward about. So maybe now that they’re more comfortable and see those benefits.
00:05:39 Speaker 2
Yeah, really kind of two purposes that the pandemic really highlighted the need for this technology. One was when teachers were wearing masks in their classroom, you know, that mask was at 10 decibel drop in their voice. And also you had the loss of the visual cues of the mouth through that mask. And so I think that necessity of audio and the challenge of communication through the pandemic.
00:06:02 Speaker 2
Just heightened teachers awareness of why this technology is important. One of the first responses we’ve gotten for years when teachers put a microphone on and they hear that low volume, highly intelligible speech coming through, is that they didn’t have to repeat their instructions nearly.
00:06:17 Speaker 2
This much students were more attentive and at the end of the day the teacher had more energy. They realized I don’t have to raise my voice all day, every day for my students to be able to hear me, you know another, you know, we talked a little bit about maybe the rise in behavioral issues in a school. You know, I I went to a lot of Superintendent conferences towards the tail end.
00:06:37 Speaker 2
Of the pandemic and.
00:06:38 Speaker 2
After the pandemic and a lot of superintendents would just say we are just seeing an A significant increase in behavioral issues tied to all of the challenges that the pandemic had for students, their home life and all the things that they were going through. And, you know, there was an increase in room clears just.
00:06:55 Speaker 2
You know things that are every day in a school that you know a lot of people maybe don’t hear about, but they’re the challenges that teachers are facing every day and they’re very aware of it. So increased communication across the school campus was one thing that we just wanted to really focus on. And, you know, one of the things that I’m sure that you’ve thought about too, and you’re hearing from other companies.
00:07:16 Speaker 2
As well.
00:07:16 Speaker 2
Well, is how technology needs to evolve. You know, we talked about AI and ChatGPT and how that’s being incorporated into the classroom. And there’s a lot of different things. And I think coming out of the pandemic and in the next few years, we’re gonna continue to see a lot of really innovative technologies that are going to change the way that the classroom is shaped and the way teaching and learning.
00:07:38 Speaker 1
Yeah, because especially we’re talking about the future of education technology conference, right. And I’m I’m looking forward to getting down there and now that we’re.
00:07:45 Speaker 1
Kind of finally free to a certain degree from the pandemic and kind of start to look forward on some of these technologies, the augmented reality, the virtual reality audio is a big part of all of those things, right? So I mean you can, are you anticipating other new kind of applications where?
00:08:06 Speaker 1
Audio will be part of that.
00:08:09 Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. You know, the other component is just making sure you have clear audio for extended learning. You know, students that are outside of the classroom. How do you make sure that audio is clear on both ends? You know, if you have a group of students that are in another classroom across the school campus or, you know, in a different part, or if you have a teacher that’s remote.
00:08:29 Speaker 2
How do you make sure audio is clear through that whole process and we continue to think through that and we have a lot of various innovative solutions that we provide to be able to make sure that that can happen. One of the things that.
00:08:42 Speaker 2
Provided during the pandemic was our T3 solution, which is basically being able to provide a student with every a microphone. Every student in the classroom, and that became really applicable for remote learning where you might have a teacher that’s remote because if a student has a question that teacher needs to be able to hear it and.
00:09:01 Speaker 2
Being able to interact that way and really making the classroom setting different than what it has been in the past, and I think we’ll continue to see that evolve and change. But audio is at the heart of a lot of.
00:09:12 Speaker 1
Things one especially too. I I’ve noticed that when you look at various AI applications, various transcription applications, I mean specifically just Microsoft Word, the character recognition.
00:09:28 Speaker 1
It’s kind of across the Rubicon, right? I mean, it used to be like it was pretty good, but you’d have to spend a lot of time kind of cleaning.
00:09:36 Speaker 1
I notice now that just I mean the the character recognition when it comes to audio transcriptions, it’s just really spectacular. But the key comes down to.
00:09:47 Speaker 1
The microphone and what that technology can capture, right? I mean, so that’s kind of like the the front lines of any of this stuff working at all.
00:09:56 Speaker 2
Yeah. And you think also even about, you know, English language learning and the way that’s evolving in in K12 right now, I think over 10% of our student population.
00:10:05 Speaker 2
And now is falling into that category. So how can we do translation services through that process as well? So there’s a lot of exciting things that are happening through all of that.
00:10:17 Speaker 1
And the one piece of the the audience here that I don’t think needs much convincing are the students themselves.
00:10:26 Speaker 1
Right. I mean this is just.
00:10:27 Speaker 1
This is the technology is not a novelty to them. I mean, of course we’re all going to be speaking into microphones.
00:10:34 Speaker 2
Absolutely. And you know, I think students, especially now with, you know, headphones and everything else, they’re used to a more immersive experience when it comes to audio. So how can we deliver that to them, whether they’re in the classroom, whether they’re at home or whatever medium that they’re doing in the learning environment? We need to be thoughtful of that and engage them where they are.
00:10:53 Speaker 1
Well, lots of exciting stuff. Uh, I look forward to seeing you in person, not just on the on the zoom platform where we can kind of go more in depth. But thanks for your time to kind of.
00:11:04 Speaker 1
Let our listeners and let our readers kind of know what’s on the on the forefront here when it comes to audio.
00:11:09 Speaker 2
Absolutely. And what you know will be on the showroom floor, but we’ll also have a demonstration room where we can show Cascadia and demonstrate it on a first hand level in an enclosed space. So we look forward to being able to meet with many people at FTC.
00:11:23 Speaker 1
Excellent, Tony. Thanks again. Appreciate it.
00:11:25 Speaker 2
Thank you.
Kevin is a forward-thinking media executive with more than 25 years of experience building brands and audiences online, in print, and face to face. He is an acclaimed writer, editor, and commentator covering the intersection of society and technology, especially education technology. You can reach Kevin at KevinHogan@eschoolnews.com
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