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Tuesday, June 25, 2013 Ed Tech Show Daily GOCLASS IMPROVES LEARNING EXPERIENCES IN TENNESSEE K-12 CLASSROOMS By David Freeman, Instructional Technology Coach, Hamblen County Schools, Morristown, TN Hamblen County Schools (Morristown, TN) began using GoClass during the 2012-2013 school year. Many wonderful moments happened during this time. Teachers were suddenly untethered from their whiteboards and able to move freely about the classroom. Students were interacting with text and images in entirely new ways. Sarah Young's second grade students learned about President's Day using web content, video, and text on the iPad. At first, we were uncertain how successful GoClass would be in the elementary schools, but watching the interaction and engagement happen around the GoClass platform was very exciting. The level of collaboration we saw between students was unexpected and truly an amazing sight. Students in middle school social AVER AND THE IPAD/TABLET REVOLUTION Education has seen its share of shifts in teaching pedagogy over the past three decades, but the iPad and tablet devices have started a revolution unseen since the introduction of personal computers in schools. Computers opened the door to technology in the classroom, which then spawned the migration of overhead projectors to digital projectors and document cameras, and of course the rise of the web and interactive instruction. While tablets are able to consolidate virtually any education technology tool into the palm of a teacher's hand, they open the door to a new way of curriculum delivery and how students interact with the curriculum. Teachers are able to reach each student individually, and foster whole class instruction simultaneously. The impact from these tools are not limited to the classroom, while new terms have been spawned, such as blended or flipped learning, which makes curriculum accessible from anywhere, at anytime. It's the tablets that are driving the new pedagogy. While tablets are fast becoming the center point for tools that create and deliver curriculum, some elements cannot be achieved with them alone. Tablets require supporting solutions and apps to achieve their full potential, but also require maintenance, storage and security. This is where AVer enters the picture LEARNING A-Z: CREATING CCSS READY STUDENTS LearningA-Z.com President and CoFounder Ed Holl announced that the the educational provider based in Tucson, Ariz., was dedicating itself to preparing students to meet the requirements set by Common Core State Standards for the 2014-15 school year. "All of our websites are specifically designed to help teachers prepare their students to meet the CCSS guidelines," Holl said. When asked for an example, Holl was quick to cite ReadingA-Z.com. The site is one of Learning A-Z's most popular offerings. It focuses on the importance of teaching students to read and comprehend primarily informational text. The 27 reading levels allow students to progress at their own speed and allow teachers to instruct classes with projectable and printable materials. A recent addition to Reading A-Z, Raz-Kids.com gives students access to hundreds of books and other materials anytime they feel like reading. If they're near a computer, they can read and be quizzed on what they have just learned. Other available websites include VocabularyA-Z.com, WritingA-Z.com, Reading-Tutors.com and Science AZ.com. Holl said the primary goal of EDUCATOR PERFORMANCE TOOLS FROM GLOBALSCHOLAR GlobalScholar®'s mission is to help educators use technology to make impactful data-driven decisions leveraging all the content available to schools. We have several exciting new tools as key additions to our Educator Effectiveness SaaS Solution―including two new online Professional Development (PD) products to better support administrators managing their educator effectiveness programs: GlobalScholar PD Manager™, and GlobalScholar Professional Development™. GlobalScholar PD Manager performs three main functions: defines the courses that are available for PD, includes aligning courses with state standards, defining how they are delivered, and identifying prerequisites, course costs, and logistics; schedules the courses, including whether they are recurring or one time, how long the course takes, and how many people can attend; and enrolls the teacher, either manually or automatically. studies classes compared images of different cultures and toured Ellis Island using the GoClass application on the iPad. The teachers reported an increase in their students' purposeful conversation and time on task during the lessons. The middle school teachers also enjoyed the ability to monitor students' location during a lesson. The propensity of older students to explore outside the GoClass application was quickly curbed when they learned the instructors knew they had left the lesson. In addition, we saw a noticeable change in the collaboration and planning habits of the Advanced Placement teachers in the high schools when using to fill in some gaps for tablets, to make it a true and complete solution for curriculum development and delivery, as well as furthering the new blended and flipped concepts. Beginning with the TabCam, AVer has developed a wireless streaming camera solution to push live video of physical content directly to an iPad, Android or Windows tablet. TabCam keeps your tablet mobile while delivering live content combined with interactive lesson development tools and full lesson recording. The recorded lesson can be immediately uploaded to the cloud for student review, lessons for substitute teachers, or flipped for student content development. The TabCam offers tools to support the traditional, blended or flipped classroom content creation and delivery needs. Learning A-Z is to have all students in each grade reading at or above their grade level. "We do this by providing materials that don't cater to slower readers, but rather encourages them to catch up." When a child needs help with foundational skills and academic vocabulary in order to catch up, the websites provide that material as well. As they are offered now, all Learning A-Z materials offer an 80-20 split between informational text and supporting fictional and non-informational stories and articles. All materials are presented in short documents rather than longer pieces. This allows the student to concentrate more on the general and underlying messages in the text. With the transition into 2013, Holl announced the company would be adding GlobalScholar Professional Development adds storage of PD curriculum content and assessments to the GlobalScholar PD Manager functions listed above, delivering a complete solution for managing and delivering PD to administrators and educators who need a turnkey Professional Development product. Another powerful feature upgrade to our Educator Effectiveness Solution is our unique Pinnacle Insight dashboard―offering a macro view for administrators with visibility into Educator Effectiveness analytics, district wide! Now, alignment of educator performance to teaching models, capture of student assessments, and tracking growth plans can be aggregated to make 21 GoClass. Teachers that heretofore planned and taught in isolation began working with other teachers to find and share resources that could be delivered using the GoClass platform. One teacher reported that the ease of switching from the online text of Macbeth to an image or video of a scene from the same play was unprecedented in her experience. The Hamblen County Board of Education is introducing the platform to classrooms in all its constituent schools in the next school year. For more information, and to meet the author, visit GoClass in booth 2266 at ISTE. Next is the new TabSync, AVer's solution for syncing, charging, storing and securing tablets. Combining all elements needed to properly maintain and secure tablets in the classroom, AVer has developed an all-in-one solution with a value that is unmatched by any other product. AVer has a dedicated history in supporting education through solutions that help teachers effectively create and deliver curriculum. As present and future revolutions in teaching pedagogy occur, AVer will continue to lead innovation in education technology to promote, foster and maximize curriculum effectiveness. For more information on AVer's latest solutions, visit booth 10244 at ISTE. a variety of exciting new features to all of websites throughout the year. In addition to even more books for the students on every level, Learning A-Z will be adding a variety of resources for the teachers as well. This includes new lesson plan supplements, visual devices and intertextual packets. What's more, Learning A-Z plans to add special reading materials to help students focus on various required skills. These will include close read packets, mini-books and paired books. With time closing in on the CCSS deadlines, it's going to be a very busy year for LearningA-Z.com and all of its member school districts, classrooms and teachers. For more information, visit www.LearningA-Z.com, call 866-8893729, or email sales@learninga-z.com. scalable, data-driven decisions on PD and other investments for improved efficiency. Last, our evaluation management tool now delivers integrated performance management capabilities that not only help craft educator growth plans, but can point users to recommended Professional Development resources to meet that specific growth plan. Just think of the time you'll save by efficiently selecting only the programs needed to enrich each individual teacher! GlobalScholar features the awardwinning product brands of Scantron®, Pinnacle and EXCEED. For more information call 800-473-4572 or visit www.globalscholar.com.