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eSchool News released their Fifty from ISTE: 50 new ed-tech services article which featured 8 clients from the PRP family! See what they had to say about our clients below or review the full list of top ed-tech products here!
This year’s conference from the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) was the biggest yet, with nearly 20,000 people convening in Atlanta June 28 to July 1 to learn about the latest ed-tech trends and developments.
In the ISTE exhibit hall, there were 37 rows of companies demonstrating their ed-tech products. Here’s a roundup of news that stood out from ISTE 2014 exhibitors.
Classroom instruction:
Learning Upgrade is giving every school in the nation 20 free online licenses of its Common Core-aligned lessons that help struggling students in grades K-8 succeed in reading and math using music, videos, and online gaming.
The company’s goal is to “move the needle” for struggling students—and after just one year of using its courseware, average scores on California’s state test rose from 853 to 905 at Perry Elementary School in San Diego, said CEO Vinod Lobo.
myON is expanding its personalized digital literacy platform to include tools that support close reading. The myON platform encompasses more than 7,000 digital books with embedded assessments, and now it features capabilities such as highlighting and note-taking as well.
Promethean is adding assessment and data analytics tools to its ClassFlow software, a cloud-based platform that facilitates teaching and learning with technology.
Professional development:
School Improvement Network is replacing its PD360 product with a new service, called Edivation, that uses the Amazon model to deliver more personalized professional development.
Launching July 15, Edivation will serve up targeted video content recommended by a teacher’s profile and history of searches, along with videos suggested by administrators; the new service is completely cloud-based and will work on any device with a web browser.
Mac to School said all of its refurbished MacBooks meet the standards for taking Common Core assessments—and the devices offer a cost-effective way to get technology into the hands of students as schools prepare for the exams.
For instance, California’s Academy of Arts and Sciences recently saved $245,000 by working with Mac to School rather than buying new technology directly from Apple, the company said.
Assessment:
Naiku has updated its cloud-based assessment platform that enables schools to track students’ proficiency toward state and Common Core standards. The latest version enhances support for standards-based grading, allowing users to transport students’ proficiency by standard directly to any gradebook that supports this approach.
Online learning:
Odysseyware has a major launch of new online content coming July 19, including middle school exploration courses for career and technical education, a library of more than 20 virtual labs for science classes, and more “Investigations” that help students answer the question, “Why do I need to know this?”
With its new launch coming later this month, all Odysseyware content will be HTML5-based, so the content can be used on iPads and any other mobile device—and the company also has created a “blended learning library” for schools to use its content in conjunction with traditional classroom instruction through a blended approach.
Other innovative products:
Nervanix has introduced a cutting-edge product, called Nervanix Clarity, that monitors students’ attention levels as they study and guides them to revisit concepts where they lost focus.
Using a simple headset that measures EEG brain waves, Nervanix Clarity measures the attention levels of learners as they study, then uses Bluetooth technology to stream this information to the Nervanix Clarity application; students can use this information to adapt their study habits, and teachers can use it to see where student attention might have lagged, Nervanix said.