Issue link: http://osercommunicationsgroup.uberflip.com/i/455140
An interview with Ken Leonard, CEO, LearnPad Group. ESD: Tell us a little about your back- ground. KL: Over the past 20 years, I have worked with the country's foremost teaching, learning and digital media experts to partner with school customers to design solutions for the 21st century classroom. Here, I'd like to share my experience of partnering with school districts to achieve successful 1:1 tablet implementations. In many schools, tablet tech- nology fosters an enriched learning environment full of wonderful interactions between teachers and students. Unfortunately, this otherwise promising picture is rare. GETTING IT RIGHT: EFFECTIVE IMPLEMENTATION OF TABLET TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOLS You may have heard of Edmodo or Schoology. But how about Edsby? Almost 300,000 users in Hillsborough County Public Schools, centered around Tampa, Fla., use the Edsby K-12 learning management sys- tem (LMS), and see the product's dis- tinctive blue Edsby alien/robot logo on their phones and browsers all day. For its 2013/2014 school year, Hillsborough moved its 200,000 students, 270 school sites, 18,000 teachers and other staff to this modern LMS built specifically for K-12. The district uses it for its online gradebook, atten- dance, social classroom, group collaboration, student timetables, report cards and other features. Edsby allows Hillsborough to more easily connect Perry Roach, CEO of Netsweeper, discusses Netweeper's web con- tent filtering software and how it helps you ensure acceptable Internet usage in your schools. ESD: Tell us what you'll be talking about at this year's TCEA. PR: We're going to be speaking about the Netsweeper content web filtering platform that provides premium web filtering services to the education and library mar- ket. We have a new release, 4.1, that provides education- related features and benefits surrounding reporting, advanced scalability and speed and more. It's more granular on a per-user basis, and it has a An interview with Amber Prescott, South Central Region Sales Director, American Time. ESD: What does American Time do? AP: American Time manufactures and markets integrated custom timekeeping systems and accessories for education, healthcare, gov- ernment and manufacturing organizations. We are the only company that offers a master controller clock, called SiteSync IQ, which has the ability to run a pre- existing wired system concurrently with a new wireless clock system. Synchronized time is a huge benefit for schools. When all of the clocks display the same time, it helps By Randal Heise, President of Mackin Educational Resources How many times have we heard the phrase, "there's no better time than right now"? Given the amazing state of technology within the field of education, this sentiment could not ring more true. "Now" is the optimal time, for the edu- cator and the educated. We are incredibly fortunate to be living during the rapid and ever-changing formation of the digital age. As a company with more than 30 years of service providing printed books, eBooks and digital resources to PK-12 schools and students, Mackin Educational Resources rec- ognizes the magical quality of the world as we move toward this juncture. Keeping in step with this change, Continued on Page 33 An interview with the GPA Learn's Co-Founder and Chief Experience Officer Cynthia Morneweck. ESD: Why is engagement so important in K–5 educa- tion? CM: For restaurants it's location, location, location and for elementary education it's engagement, engagement, engagement. At GPA Learn™, we believe that engaging the child, parents, teachers and community partners is key to ensure the educational success of the student. Our first STEM product, GPALoveMath™, engages students with animated, fun, gamified lessons and rewards them for their efforts with community and Continued on Page 25 Continued on Page 33 HOW A LITTLE BLUE ROBOT RUNS ONE OF AMERICA'S LARGEST SCHOOL DISTRICTS NETSWEEPER CONTENT FILTRATION: SAFE, SCALABLE AND COST-EFFECTIVE MAKING THE GRADE THROUGH THE DOMINANCE OF DIGITAL AMERICAN TIME SYNCHRONIZES TIME FOR SCHOOLS WITH SITESYNC IQ AND WI-FI CLOCKS LEARNING MADE ELEMENTARY Continued on Page 25 Continued on Page 33 Continued on Page 25 O s e r C o m m u n i c a t i o n s G r o u p A u s t i n F r i d a y, F e b r u a r y 6 , 2 0 1 5