Oser Communications Group

EdTech Show Daily TCEA February 6 2015

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E d Te c h S h o w D a i l y 2 5 F r i d a y, F e b r u a r y 6 , 2 0 1 5 Mackin has consciously taken our roots as a provider of printed materials and blend- ed them into our new digital initiatives. Spring of 2010 gave birth to MackinVIA™, our free digital resource management system. In the fall of 2012, we launched our digital reader and apps for two separate tablet platforms, allow- ing our customers to access their Mackin digital content from our cloud. These rev- olutionary steps were taken so that Mackin could continue providing state- of-the-art resources and tools to schools and students alike. In true Mackin serv- ice-oriented form, the MackinVIA con- tent management system and MackinVIA reader app are made available at no cost. The result of our implementing these digital delights has resulted in a sizable shift in acceptance from publishers and customers alike. More and more content is being transformed and made deliver- able in digital form. Books, databases and other digital content are rapidly pop- ulating the ever-growing list of titles and offerings that Mackin serves. As a company, we know we are at the forefront of this epic revolution, and it is quite exhilarating; but more enlight- ening is the speed and sheer enthusiasm in which students, schools and libraries are making the transition. Whether it's seminars that we attend or those that we facilitate, the talk, attention and focus is all on digital, and over the course of the past several months, that attention has been trained on Mackin. With such longevity in the field of education, and a track record of multiple successes and exemplary customer satisfaction, there's no company better than Mackin to lead the way into this new frontier. To learn more about Mackin and MackinVIA, visit us online at www.mackin.com or call 800.245.9540. For more information, visit www.mackin.com, call 800.245.9540, email mackin@mackin.com or stop by booth #311. Mackin (Cont'd. from p. 1) new graphical user interface, so it's visu- ally beneficial to the user. It's user-friend- ly, and the user experience has been test- ed to be much better. Ease of use has been improved. ESD: Tell us more about the advantages of the Netsweeper software. PR: Let's start with the fact that it is soft- ware. Netsweeper is a software product. We're not out to sell schools and libraries a big piece of equipment and make money on that. It reduces their total cost of ownership. Integration is flexible and at a lower cost. In addition, while Netsweeper has always been flexible enough to set dif- ferent Internet access policies for dif- ferent user groups and by time of day, per site, it also now allows the IT administrator managing the school's network to delegate tasks to the build- ing's network administrator or even right down to the teacher. If a site that is regularly blocked needs to be accessed for a specific class, for instance, instead of calling the main administrator, a system operator can be empowered to make that change. Small tweaks and changes like this can be delegated out to the schools. ESD: How is Netsweeper different from the filtering products offered by other vendors? PR: Netsweeper's categorization process is different from most. Our software uses dynamic categorization that's granular right down to the URI, so that blogs, pic- tures, links etc. that are on a website can be filtered separately. Some of those could contain viruses that should be blocked. Others would not be able to do that; Netsweeper can. In addition, Netsweeper has enhanced scalability that offers advan- tages if you're trying to install content fil- tration into a network with more than 30,000 users. A lot of products out there are fine when you're filtering for a few users, but they don't have the bandwidth to handle requests for enterprise-level numbers of users. As traffic levels increase, other vendors require you to buy another appliance to handle the traf- fic, unlike our software application which can filter very large bandwidth using standard Intel servers. Schools are finding that they're becoming miniature Internet service Netsweeper (Cont'd. from p. 1) providers because they are demanding more and more bandwidth, which chal- lenges many of the products out there because of the amount of throughput involved. We've been in education for 15 years, but because we're coming from the enterprise side, we have the capability to handle large throughputs. ESD: What other issues or trends does Netsweeper see in the education and library sector? PR: We're seeing more schools setting up Wi-Fi access to accommodate students who are bringing their own devices. That prevents new challenges for monitoring what students and library patrons are accessing through the school's systems. Netsweeper software allows the school or library to set up a separate guest poli- cy, so that students or guests who bring their own devices either sign in so that the administrators know who they are or that simply restricts all guests to a reduced level of capabilities. When they sign in, we know who they are, and there can be a separate policy that restricts what they can do on the network. Visit Netsweeper at booth #2374. After the conference, visit www.netsweeper.com. parental rewards. Teachers engage with the students through robust real-time dashboards that provide a clear picture of individ- ual progress and skill acquisition across the class. Our dashboards serve up rich and actionable data for the teacher. Parents are brought into the process with similar views of dashboard informa- tion and real-time emails of their child's progress. Parents know their children best and understand what motivates them. Rewards can be individually cus- tomized. Community partners are engaged by providing schools, parents and students with meaningful rewards based on stu- dent effort and achievement. ESD: What is different about GPALoveMath in comparison to other educational products? CM: There is so much to talk about, but I'll mention a few of the key points. Engagement, animation, gamification and comprehensive instructional design: GPALoveMath sets itself apart from other math applications because it inte- grates all of these features and compo- nents in a fun learning environment. I highlighted engagement in the first ques- tion. Animation was very important to us to ensure we made learning fun. Dave Trejo, a teacher, said it best, "When did mastery become the enemy of fun?" We designed our application so that students are taught by our animated learning coaches based on their grade/age. The learning coaches guide students through Great Parents Academy (Cont'd. from p. 1) each lesson. To amplify the "fun factor," GPALoveMath celebrates and awards students points, badges and rewards for achievement and effort. This is all part of our dynamic incentive program that incorporates custom parental and school rewards as well as marketplace rewards. This now brings us to our compre- hensive instructional design created by our in-house state-certified teachers by grade level. They did not wanted GPALoveMath to be a drill and kill tool. Each lesson contains three components: instruction, practice problems and a quiz. In all three areas we model and practice the concrete, representational and abstract sequence of instruction to ensure the student receives a solid foundation. The curriculum they created based on Common Core meets and exceeds state and national standards. ESD: Who can purchase the application? CM: Schools, PTA/Os, and parents may purchase the product. We have school licenses where students access all grades for either remediation or to move ahead. We also have an innovative fundraising solution utilized by PTA/Os to raise money for the school by selling the appli- cation to parents. ESD: How can folks find you? CM: Come by the booth #2773 during the show and tell us you Lovemath, go to our website at www.gpalearn.com, or call us at 404.507.2571. For more information, visit booth #2773, visit www.gpalearn.com or call 404.507.2571.

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