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EdTech Show Daily 2 1 Thursday, January 26, 2017 Robotics in the Classroom In elementary school, students learn with their eyes and hands – drawing, molding and manipulating objects. They are start- ing the tough transition to learning by reading, and robots make it possible for them to work through problems visually and experiment with concepts they are learning. Ms. Dweck's students have designed mazes, produced geometric shapes, cal- culated perimeter, tested probability, composed music, recorded dialogue and even retraced the voyage of the Mayflower with Dash. "Millennials have been raised on technology," Dweck says. "They have no fear of it and are eager to jump right in and create. They are natural innovators who relish and need this creative plat- form." Many teachers who focus on inquiry-based learning try to integrate robotics into as many subject areas as possible. Robotics Competitions Last year, more than 1,000 teams coded in the first ever nationwide robotics com- petition for elementary schools. The Wonder League Robotics Competition provides an in-depth and structured way Wonder Workshop (Cont'd. from p. 1) to teach coding concepts while also edu- cating the whole child. Students deeply engage in robotics and coding, work in teams and gain confidence and resilience. The competition missions tie back to real-world applications – in Fall 2016, the theme will be Saving the Environment. "I learned to always include all of my teammates, because it isn't fair if nobody else gets a chance to do things, and we can finish anything on time if we just work together," says one eight-year- old student on the Wonder Dash team that finished third in the nation. "This opportunity helps students develop a respect for their own abilities. As students develop strategies to facili- tate the learning process, they experi- enced growth in their meta-cognitive skills, too. Introduction to coding and robotics is as relevant to our world as learning to write. Today's learner should experience opportunities to practice coding and robotics in the classroom from an early age. This foun- dation will serve them as learners, digi- tal citizens and world leaders," Ms. Dweck remarks. Visit Wonder Workshop at booth #1445. For information on Wonder Workshop's next robotics competition, sign up at clubs.makewonder.com. your success and determines your fund- ing. ESSA expands accountability measures to include both achievement and growth, which can help show that even students who are not yet on grade level have improved – sometimes dra- matically – from where they started the school year. ESD: What does this mean for tradition- al, interim measures? NE: ESSA encourages multiple, com- prehensive assessments, allowing for interim measures throughout the year. This approach not only provides a more holistic, accurate picture of student ability but also allows for important data to be provided to educators throughout the year (as opposed to after the year is completed). Interim assess- ments can also be aligned more readily to a state's pacing guides to naturally assess content that is being taught, which can help avoid the "teach to the test" mentality. In addition, interim test- ing can provide a comprehensive, sum- mative result that makes it easier to adjust instruction to better serve student needs during the year. Further, ESSA supports non-traditional assessments such as student perception or school cli- mate surveys. These provide a much broader view of additional factors that lead to school success. ESD: Can't you just take all the scores you have and create an average? Scantron (Cont'd. from p. 1) NE: Intuitively you would think so, but it's a bit more complicated than that. The key is to make sure the resulting summative statistic is psychometrically sound and educationally defensible. You need to carefully consider a variety of factors, such as the test scaled score, how growth is captured versus on-grade performance, how non-traditional meas- ures such as student surveys fit in and how all of that is included in a holistic set of accountability data. In addition, you need to be able to disaggregate your data to demonstrate success across dif- ferent student populations. It's not going to be easy, but we're going to get a much better picture of student and school achievement. ESD: How is Scantron addressing this issue? NE: Carefully. We want to ensure we have a solution that is sound, defensible and useful. Just as when we launched our computer-adaptive assessment many years ago, we're making sure our new approaches are valid, fair and serve the needs of students and educators at all lev- els. We've built our reputation on sound, well-researched assessments that provide real value, and we're not going to change that now. But we have some exciting things being pilot tested as we speak, so stay tuned! Visit Scantron in booth #134 and room #230B. For more information, go to www.scantron.com, call 858.349.9488 or email bonni.graham@scantron.com. Increased Test Scores Providing connectivity to students at home with Kajeet provides them with more than just Internet. In Chicago Public Schools, it means increased math test scores for fifth graders. The final results from a three- year-long study, which evaluated the bene- fits of a 1-to-1 tablet implementation along with and home Internet through Kajeet, showed that students with Internet access at home had the highest percentage of fifth graders scoring at or above the national average RIT (Rasch Unit) in math com- pared to similar Chicago schools, accord- ing to the Northwest Evaluation Association's Measures of Academic Progress ® assessment scores. More Parent Involvement In District of Columbia Public Schools, Internet at home means parent engage- ment. Families are able to go online, check grades and communicate with teachers. With Internet access the parents know what their children are doing, so they can have informed conversations about book reports or math assignments and not wait until the report cards arrive. Kajeet (Cont'd. from p. 1) "They may not be able to explain the Pythagorean Theorem, but they can com- municate with their child's teacher and understand the learning process," said Marcia Cole, Technology Instructional Coach at DCPS. Higher Graduation Rates Better student engagement, more parent involvement and higher test scores all contribute to an increase in graduation rates. High school students who have broadband Internet at home have gradua- tion rates six to eight percentage points higher than students who don't, accord- ing to a study by the Federal Reserve. Richland School District Two is tracking all these metrics in connection with their Kajeet devices. "We are able to look at test scores, grades and graduation rates to measure the results, and we've seen some good results so far. Using Kajeet SmartSpots gave these kids avenues to complete all their homework. We even had some students who were able to bring their grades up to honor roll status from so-so grades." Visit Kajeet at booth #613. For more information, go to www.kajeet.net. their own next-read lists. Parents don't need to sign reading logs to know what their children are reading, so the logs can stay at school. The app takes care of all the busywork for you, your students and their parents, tracking how each student is reading, so that your students can read more and you can teach more. Moxie Reader is just ready for its Moxie Reader (Cont'd. from p. 1) next Beta program, and the first sign-ups at FETC get free access to scan and class library leveling tools. Students will love scanning their books – they just point the device at the ISBN on the books in your class library. It's fast, too – up to 20 books a minute can be scanned and leveled. For more information, visit Moxie Reader at the FETC Startup Pavilion in booth #2005J or online at www .moxiereader.com. WIRELESS CHARGING IS ABOUT TO GET A LOT BETTER By John Barry, Ventev Mobile, Head of Product This will be the year that wireless mobile phone charging makes it to the big leagues. I'd like to be able to say you heard it here first, but that wouldn't be true. You heard someone say the exact same thing last year, and probably a few years before that too. Consumers and phone makers have been slow to adopt wireless charging. For the last couple of years, unless you owned a Samsung, you likely had to rely on an aftermarket charging adaptor and charging mat that cost somewhere between $60 and $150. All that for a charger limited to five watts. Wireless charging, in other words, was slow and required a good amount of Do-It-Yourself to get the parts to work with your phone. How slow was it? If you used your phone to stream music while charging wirelessly, you'd often use more energy than you gained. That changes this year. New wireless charging advancements are making fast, powerful wireless charg- ing a reality. Higher power wireless charg- ing is coming to market in 2017 and will allow the phones to go from five watt charging up to 15 watt charging. The increase in power could reduce your charging times by 66 percent. These power increases and techno- logical improvements have paved the way for new accessories. Wireless car chargers, for example, weren't very use- ful. Drivers using GPS or streaming music would arrive at their destination with less juice than when they'd left, even though they were wirelessly charg- ing the entire time. Our new wirelesspro dock solves this problem. It clips to car vents to keep the screen upright and in your face – that's good for GPS, and keeping your eyes on the road. It's also compatible with PMA, Qi and fast wireless charging to supply up to 15 watts of power. That's enough to go from 0 to 60 percent in 30 minutes or to make sure that even a short drive leaves you with more power than you started with. So here's a prediction: look for more phone makers to pick up wireless charg- ing. Look for more smartphone users to jump on board, unlike the paltry rates we've seen in previous years. Look for Ventev's line of high-powered wireless chargers in the spring of 2017. For more information, visit www.ventev.com.