Issue link: http://osercommunicationsgroup.uberflip.com/i/446930
O s e r C o m m u n i c a t i o n s G r o u p O r l a n d o T h u r s d a y, J a n u a r y 2 2 , 2 0 1 5 AN INDEPENDENT PUBLICATION NOT AFFILIATED WITH FETC Nancy Knowlton, President of Nureva, discusses Nureva™ Troove™ digital portfolio. ESD: Tell our readers why Nureva is here at the Florida Educational Technology Conference this year. NK: We're announcing a product, Nureva Troove digital portfolio. Other portfolio products are on the market, many of which are targeted at higher education. Nureva Troove is specifically targeted at K–12. Time spent with K–12 educators has helped us understand their assessment challenges, which has driv- en us to the digital portfolio space. ESD: What is your understanding of those assessment challenges? NK: Keeping students at the center of lifelong learning is a goal we all share. Work product from students needs to be tied to standards to demonstrate mastery. Students need to have the opportunity to reflect in a meaningful way on what they're learning and why, and to reflect on how they learn. Nureva Troove digital portfolio provides that, and it's an application that is primarily, but not solely, the domain of students. Students collect and demonstrate their work and ensure it is accessible by teachers and by parents. We provide an alternate form of assessment to the typical assessment schemes – the true-false and multiple choice. Nureva Troove allows for a more holistic assessment of students' progress and can be used in combination with other assessment methodologies. KEEPING K–12 STUDENTS AT THE CENTER WITH NUREVA TROOVE DIGITAL PORTFOLIO An interview with Mark Lucas, Eastern Region Sales Director, American Time. ESD: What is synchronized time and what makes American Time solu- tions unique? ML: American Time is a small-town, family-oriented company with a global reach, and our customers are part of our family. Our integrated timekeeping solutions ensure synchronized time, which means all of the clocks in a building display the same time. This helps schools with punctuality, improves safety, efficiencies with bus schedules, and provides a better flow of students throughout the building. It also saves maintenance staff the time and expense of having to manually adjust the clocks for the daylight saving time change. ESD: What makes you excited about timekeeping? ML: As the Director of Sales for the Eastern Region, I get to work with all kinds of school districts, from the one-room schoolhouse to those with over 300,000 students. I enjoy timekeeping because it's ubiquitous: It's just as critical to the smallest school as it is to the largest, and I love to help them solve their problems. ESD: What has been one of American Time's most popular products this year? ML: Our SiteSync IQ wireless controller is a hybrid system that allows a school to retain As Director of Product Marketing for ABBYY's optical character recognition (OCR) software division, Angel Brown leads marketing efforts for the FineReader and PDF Transformer product families in North America. She oversees marketing strategies to drive revenue and market share growth for the products, which enable educational institu- tions, businesses of all sizes and home users to get maximum value from their paper and digital documents. With FineReader, users can easily turn scans of paper documents, PDF files and digital photographs into searchable and editable formats. With its unmatched text recognition accuracy and document conversion capabilities, FineReader virtually eliminates the need to retype or reformat documents. With PDF Transformer+, users can quickly and affordably do anything they need to do with PDF files. The software offers an intuitive environment for viewing, creating, editing, com- menting on, protecting and converting PDF files. In her work with ABBYY, Brown has seen firsthand how FineReader and PDF Transformer+ have benefited educational institutions. "From K–12 to higher educa- tion, the vast majority of schools are tasked with delivering quality instruction and meaningful enrichment on very tight budgets," Brown said. "ABBYY's OCR products are designed to help schools do more with less. They reduce the amount of time and overhead involved in managing the thousands of paper and digital documents produced by faculty, staff, education partners, government agencies, students and their families. With FineReader and PDF Transformer+, schools can make short work of processing everything from exams, learning materials and transcripts to applications, financial paperwork, purchase orders and grant forms." An interview with Sheila Veschusio, Education Industry Manager at Ergotron. ESD: What does Ergotron see as the biggest challenges facing Florida educators today? SV: Keeping kids engaged in learning without harming their health is one challenge that faces all educators. The truth is, kids are becoming ever more sedentary. Not only during the school day, due in part to traditional sitting only desks and reduction of active time outside of the classroom, but also at home. We are seeing adult diseases in our kids; they are dealing with diabetes and obesity at alarming rates. Getting kids moving more without taking away from critical instruction and learning time is a challenge – one that Ergotron is now uniquely qualified to help schools solve. ESD: What new products will Ergotron be showcasing at FETC? SV: One exciting product is Ergotron's LearnFit Adjustable Standing Desk for stu- dents. It just won the International Interior Design Association & EDspaces Innovation Award for student furniture, and is popping up in Spotlight classrooms around the country. The desk allows students to sit and stand during their class time, giving teach- ers a new way to activate learning. The other product is our new universal charging cart. The debate continues about which platform is best— iPad versus Chromebooks versus Windows. With our new universal cart, you have a solution that will charge and Continued on Page 25 Continued on Page 25 Continued on Page 20 Continued on Page 20 SYNCHRONIZE YOUR SCHOOL WITH SOLUTIONS FROM AMERICAN TIME MEET ABBYY'S DIRECTOR OF PRODUCT MARKETING NEW KEYS TO IMPROVING ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE IN EDUCATION