Schools have no shortage of data. Learning management systems record access patterns, assignment submissions, quiz attempts, and student activity. Digital tools capture usage trends, while help desks collect reports about recurring technical problems. Surveys, attendance records, and assessment platforms add even more information.

Much of this information, which educators often describe as dark or underused data, is unused or only partially examined, and may hold important clues about teaching, learning, and student support. However, the data itself has no value until it is engaged within an instructional or leadership context.

Generative AI has increased interest in making better use of these large collections of information. School leaders, instructional coaches, and technology facilitators are beginning to ask whether AI can help process extant data more quickly and identify patterns that would otherwise remain buried. That interest is understandable as AI can review large volumes of text, sort information into categories, summarize findings, and highlight trends that deserve closer attention.

The real opportunity is not simply faster analysis, but smarter analysis guided by professional judgment. This is where educators need to be careful. AI can help schools become more data informed, but it can also tempt them into becoming overly dependent on automated conclusions.

Education has always required interpretation, context, and human understanding. That has not changed, and in fact, human judgment might be more important today than before the expansion of generative AI.

Contextualizing Data

Numbers and patterns matter, but need context. A dashboard cannot understand a student’s home responsibilities. A large language model cannot fully grasp classroom culture. A summary report cannot replace the experience of a teacher or coach who knows the learners behind the data.

A data-informed approach is more useful than a purely data-driven one. Data-driven decision-making often suggests that the numbers point directly to the answer, while data-informed decision-making treats data as one important source of evidence among several. Educators still need to ask what the information means, what it does not capture, and how local context should shape the response. That distinction matters even more now that generative AI can synthesize so much information so quickly.

AI is especially useful during the early stages of inquiry as it can help instructional leaders look across multiple sources of existing data and spot areas worth investigating. A coach might use AI to review comments from teacher surveys and identify recurring concerns about student engagement. A technology facilitator might use it to sort support tickets into categories and discover that a particular platform is creating repeated confusion. A school leader might compare patterns in assignment completion, attendance, and platform usage to identify students who may need additional support.

These are meaningful uses of AI because each helps to identify patterns at scale. It does not remove the need for human interpretation.

A spike in late-night platform activity might look like procrastination, yet it might also reflect sports schedules, work commitments, family care responsibilities, or uneven internet access at home. Low use of a digital tool might suggest weak implementation, or that the tool possibly does not align with the lesson goals, or that a teacher found a better non-digital strategy.

Limited revision activity in student writing might signal low engagement. It might also mean students are drafting in notebooks, using a different platform, or receiving verbal feedback during class.

The pattern is only the starting point. The judgment comes next.

Asking the Right Questions

Instructional coaches and technology facilitators are especially well-positioned to support leaders in this work as they often sit at the intersection of classroom practice, digital systems, and professional learning. They can help schools move beyond surface-level dashboards and ask better questions about the data they already have. They can also help teams resist the urge to treat AI output as final truth.

One of the most important roles these educators can play is framing the right inquiry question before any analysis begins. Instead of asking AI to find everything interesting in a large data set, schools should begin with questions tied to teaching and learning, such as:

• Are students using feedback to improve their work?
• Are teachers using digital tools in ways that support differentiation?
• Are families receiving communication in forms they can access and understand?
• Are accessibility features reaching the students who need it the most?

Clear questions produce more useful analysis, and human-centered ones produce more ethical analysis. Generative AI should serve as an assistant, not a decision-maker. It can surface possibilities, summarize evidence, and identify trends that deserve discussion. It cannot determine the right instructional response on its own. That work still belongs to educators who understand the curriculum, the learners, the community, and the goals of the school.

This is where leadership matters. School and district leaders need to create expectations for responsible AI use in data analysis. Staff should know what kinds of data are appropriate to analyze with AI tools, what privacy protections must be in place, and how human review will remain part of the process. Teams should be encouraged to validate AI-generated findings against direct observation, classroom artifacts, and professional conversation. Trustworthy use of AI depends on thoughtful structures, not just powerful tools.

The schools that benefit most from AI will not be the ones that automate the most decisions, it will be the ones that use it to ask sharper questions, uncover overlooked signals, and support better conversations about teaching and learning. Those schools will use extant data more effectively without forgetting that education is a human enterprise.

Human judgment is not a barrier to innovation, but what makes innovation worth using in the first place.

Schools generate enormous amounts of data every day. Most of it is never analyzed. Beyond benchmark scores and attendance dashboards lies a quieter layer of information—LMS click paths, revision histories, help desk tickets, device repair logs, app usage analytics, and formative assessment timestamps.

This unused layer is often called “dark data.” It is not secret data, just simply ignored.

For instructional coaches and technology facilitators, dark data represents one of the most practical and overlooked levers for improving instruction. The key is not collecting more information, but learning to interpret what schools already have.

What Counts as Dark Data in Schools?

Dark data includes data that has already been collected, has not been systematically analyzed, and is not currently connected to instructional improvement. Common examples include:

• LMS analytics (time-on-task, submission timestamps, revision frequency)
• Assignment resubmission patterns
• Help desk tickets by classroom or department
• Wi-Fi usage density by time of day
• Formative quiz attempt patterns
• Accessibility tool usage (text-to-speech, captioning)

Individually, these data points seem technical. Collectively, these tell an instructional story.

Why Coaches Should Care

Instructional coaching traditionally relies on classroom observations, student work artifacts, teacher self-reporting, and testing data. Additionally, building strong interpersonal relationships between teachers and coaches is essential.

Dark data adds another dimension: behavioral signals that occur between instruction and assessment. For example:

• If LMS logs show that most students access a resource only minutes before submission deadlines, pacing or clarity may need adjustment.
• If revision histories show minimal drafting activity, students may not understand the iterative writing processes.
• If help desk tickets spike during a specific unit, tool complexity may be interfering with learning goals.

These insights shift coaching conversations from abstract impressions to concrete patterns.

Step 1: Start with a Focused Question

The biggest mistake schools make is pulling reports without a hypothesis. Effective dark data analysis begins with a coaching question, such as:

• Are students engaging with feedback before submitting final drafts?
• Are digital tools supporting differentiated instruction?
• Is a new platform improving formative assessment practices?
• Are accessibility tools being used by the students who need them?

Dark data should answer instructional questions, not generate technical trivia.

Step 2: Identify the Most Actionable Data Sources

Not all dark data is equally useful. Coaches and tech facilitators should prioritize data that connects directly to classroom practice.

High-value sources include LMS logs showing time spent on resources, sequence of materials accessed, frequency of logins, and peer discussion participation. Assignment version histories can be useful to show the number of drafts, the time between revisions, and how feedback was incorporated into the final revisions.

Formative assessment data can reveal important patterns in how students engage with learning tasks, including their accuracy on first attempts, how often they retake assessments, and which questions consistently present challenges. When combined with analytics on accessibility feature usage, such as caption activation, read‑aloud tools, and translation supports, coaches can better understand how students are navigating content and whether built‑in supports are being leveraged effectively.

Support request data further enriches this picture by highlighting recurring help desk themes, patterns of app‑related confusion, and classroom‑specific technical issues that may be interfering with instruction rather than enhancing it.

These datasets often require collaboration with IT staff. Building that bridge is essential.

Step 3: Translate Technical Data into Instructional Language

Raw analytics overwhelm educators. Coaches can serve as translators.

• Instead of saying: “Students averaged 3.2 clicks per module.” Reframe as: “Most students appear to skip directly to the assignment without engaging the instructional materials.”
• Instead of: “Revision frequency is low.” Reframe as: “Students do not see drafting as part of the learning process.”

The goal is not to present dashboards, but to highlight potential instructional implications.

Step 4: Use Patterns, Not Surveillance

Dark data must never become a compliance tool.

Ethical guardrails include:

• Looking for grade-level or course-level patterns, not individual policing
• Anonymizing student identifiers during coaching analysis
• Framing findings as instructional improvement opportunities
• Avoiding punitive teacher comparisons

The purpose of dark data is insight, not enforcement. When used responsibly, it builds trust rather than eroding it.

Practical Scenarios for Instructional Improvement

Scenario 1: Feedback Isn’t Being Used

An instructional coach reviews LMS timestamps and discovers that 78% of students open teacher feedback less than five minutes before final submission deadlines.

Coaching conversation can help identify if students are taught how to apply feedback–would draft checkpoints improve engagement? The coach might suggest the following instructional adjustments: to add structured revision conferences and require a brief “feedback response” paragraph before final submission.

Scenario 2: Tool Fatigue Is Undermining Learning

Help desk tickets reveal repeated confusion with a newly adopted digital annotation tool.

A coaching conversation shift could discuss whether the cognitive load of the tool outweighs instructional benefits, and whether simpler workflows could achieve the same goal? The coach could suggest the following instructional adjustments: providing micro PD on streamlined tool use and replacing complex features with focused functionality.

Common Coaching Pitfalls to Avoid

• Data Overload – Too many metrics paralyze action. Coaches should start with a single data thread to consider and then build from there with the teacher.
• Misinterpretation – For instance, clicks do not equal comprehension. Don’t overvalue the data; confirm what it means.
• Equity Blindness – Usage patterns may reflect access disparities.
• Tech-Centric Framing – Coaches must remember that data must serve pedagogy, not the reverse. Instruction remains the goal, technology is the lens.

Building a Data Culture

For school leaders, supporting this work requires intentional coordination rather than isolated technical efforts. Effective use of dark data requires collaboration between instructional coaching teams and IT departments, clearly defined privacy protocols, and professional learning focused on interpreting analytics through an instructional lens. Leaders must also provide structured time for cross-functional teams to examine patterns together and ensure that insights are explicitly aligned to instructional priorities.

When these conditions are in place, dark data moves out of siloed systems and into strategic instructional conversations through which it can meaningfully inform practice.

A Reframing for Learning

For years, schools have invested in platforms that promise insights; however, many of those insights remain buried. Instructional coaches and technology facilitators occupy unique positions: They understand pedagogy and systems and can see where digital behavior and classroom intentions diverge.

Dark data is not about mining students or pointing out teacher failings, but illuminating instructional blind spots. When interpreted ethically and strategically, the quiet signals already flowing through school systems can become powerful catalysts for better teaching. The question is no longer whether schools have enough data but whether educators are effectively using the data that already exists.

Every leader faces the same challenge: how do you make your team's work visible and valued at the highest levels of your organization? The answer lies not in presenting more data, but in weaving that data into compelling narratives that directly connect to what boards care about most: the organization's mission and strategic priorities.

The Power of Strategic Alignment

School boards and administrative teams don't remember statistics. They remember stories that illuminate progress toward goals they've committed to achieving, especially those that illustrate how the students are improving through your auspices. When advocating for library and IT programs, for example, don’t focus on the equipment or software but on what the students and teachers will be able to do now that they were not able to do previously.

The most effective advocates understand that every board has articulated priorities, whether that's closing achievement gaps, preparing students for college and career, advancing equity, or fostering innovation. Your task is to position your department's contributions within this existing framework, showing what you do and why it matters in the context of the district's strategic educational goals.

Finding Your Story in the Data

Begin by examining your department's metrics through a strategic lens. Raw numbers, website visits, training completions, tickets resolved, number of books checked out, etc., tell an incomplete story. The narrative emerges when you ask, “What change do these numbers represent, and how does that change advance our mission?”

Consider an instructional technology department that increased learning management system adoption from 45% to 92% of faculty. The data point alone is impressive, but the story becomes powerful when connected to strategic outcomes. If the board's strategic plan emphasizes "personalized learning experiences," that increased adoption translates into 15,000 students now accessing differentiated content, real-time feedback, and flexible learning pathways. That directly advances the district's equity and achievement goals.

For a library media center tracking resource usage and information literacy instruction, rather than simply reporting that digital resource access increased by 80%, frame this within the board's college and career readiness goals: "Our expanded digital library and embedded research instruction reached 3,200 students this year, with 89% demonstrating proficiency in evaluating source credibility. The improvement in this critical skill for academic success and informed citizenship directly supports our graduate profile."

Crafting Your Narrative Arc

Effective board presentations follow a narrative structure that creates emotional resonance while maintaining analytical rigor. Start with context that grounds your story in the organization's strategic landscape. What challenge or opportunity existed? Why did it matter to the mission?

Next, illuminate your department's response. This is where you integrate data, but always in service of the story. Show the progression: where you started, the interventions your team designed, and the measurable changes that resulted. Use concrete examples that humanize the numbers. If your library services team launched a maker space that served 800 students, share a brief story about a reluctant reader who discovered graphic novels through your new browsing displays and went on to check out 23 books that year, reigniting a love of reading that had dimmed.

The climax of your narrative demonstrates impact aligned with strategic priorities. This is where you explicitly connect your department's outcomes to the board's goals. Use their language. If the strategic plan mentions "closing achievement gaps," show how your instructional technology initiatives enable differentiated instruction at scale. If they prioritize "innovative learning environments," demonstrate how your library transformation created collaborative spaces where students develop critical thinking and creative engagement.

Making the Strategic Connection Explicit

Don't assume board members will automatically draw connections between your data and their priorities. Make the alignment explicit and direct. Consider creating a simple visual framework that shows the strategic goal, your department's contribution, and the measurable impact.

For example:

Board Priority: Prepare all students for post-secondary success.

Our Contribution: Implemented one-to-one device program with an embedded digital citizenship curriculum and expanded library database access.

Impact: 94% of seniors now demonstrate college-level research skills, up from 67%, and digital tool proficiency increased from 58% to 91%. This directly supported the goal of eliminating barriers to post-secondary readiness.

This approach transforms you from a department head requesting technology budgets or library materials into a strategic partner demonstrating return on investment in terms the board values most: student outcomes and achievement of educational goals.

Building Long-Term Visibility

Improving your department's identity with leadership isn't about a single presentation either. It is about consistently demonstrating strategic value. Create a rhythm of communication that keeps your contributions visible. Share monthly or quarterly updates that track progress on specific strategic metrics. Advocate for regular opportunities to present to the board to highlight accomplishments. Work with building principals to highlight how you have supported their goals as well. When organizational wins occur, proactively identify your department's enabling role.

Perhaps most importantly, invite board members into your work area or encourage them to participate in programs your department manages and observe your team in action. These experiences create advocates who understand your value firsthand.

The Transformation

When you master the art of wrapping data in a strategic narrative, something shifts; your department moves from being seen as a support function to being recognized as a strategic asset. Budget conversations then become easier because you have demonstrated clear connections between your resources and organizational priorities. Recruitment also improves because talented professionals want to join teams doing meaningful, visible work. Most importantly, your team gains the recognition and support they deserve for their contributions to the mission.

The data has always been there. The impact has always existed. Your task is to tell the story that makes both impossible to ignore.

For most users, Meta's 2024 integration of AI across its social media tools was just another update. But for schools in Puno, Peru—a predominantly rural region where 79% of teachers rely on WhatsApp extensively for instruction—it raised an uncomfortable question. What happens to student data when essential infrastructure evolves without consent?

These teachers have used WhatsApp for years to coordinate schedules, share assignments, and communicate with families because it doesn't use mobile data—a critical advantage in their low-connectivity area. But the platform now gives AI access to educational interactions without school oversight or control over sensitive student data.

This dynamic isn't unique to Peru. Recent legal complaints show vendors launched AI in U.S. classrooms under existing contracts without renewed consent. And when these tools become infrastructure, whether due to cost constraints, connectivity issues, or reluctance to change, schools lose the ability to say no once AI is part of the package.

But platform evolution is only part of the problem. While districts grapple with vendors adding AI features, staff are bypassing institutional governance entirely by using unapproved AI tools on their personal devices. A recent survey shows 78% of education employees know of colleagues using unauthorized AI tools, and the problem is growing.

This article examines how schools are losing control of student data as AI enters classrooms through both vendor platforms and unauthorized staff adoption—and why existing data governance policies are ill-equipped to address either pathway.

3 Ways AI Integration Undermines Student Data Privacy

When the public thinks of AI in schools, they might picture the illicit use of ChatGPT to crank out essays and solve complex math equations. But education leaders know AI's use cases are far more vast and varied, with features embedded in grading software, learning analytics, and other tools schools have already entrusted with student data.

Unfortunately, these platforms can now add AI features without renewed consent. Everything from Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams to learning management systems (LMS) and WhatsApp is now able to analyze student questions, assessment responses, and behavioral patterns thanks to AI integration.

This impacts student data governance in three ways:

1. Student data becomes permanent

Once student data is used to train AI systems, the models retain patterns and information derived from those data points. Current unlearning methods can remove individual records from databases but not the learned behaviors retained by complex neural networks. This means that even if a school requests deletion, AI output may still contain details derived from students’ performance, writing style, or learning profiles.

Analysts have warned that the embedding of student traits raises long-term identity and fairness risks, especially if reused to train commercial AI models. Emerging frameworks still lack effective mechanisms to ensure models “forget” once trained—a critical issue in education, where consent is more often delegated by institutions than by individuals.

2. Behavioral profiling happens without consent

While platforms such as WhatsApp deploy end-to-end encryption for content, metadata (e.g., message timing, class interaction frequency, or question-response length) remains visible to servers and analytics systems.

MIT’s research on metadata protection shows that this secondary data can reveal behavioral and emotional patterns, such as learning difficulties or absenteeism trends, even without message content exposure. When analyzed alongside LMS logs or classroom camera data, metadata can construct a high-resolution behavioral map of students, effectively profiling cognitive and social engagement patterns without direct consent.

3. Vendor lock-in eliminates oversight

As schools embed AI-ready ecosystems from Microsoft, Google, and Meta, they may increasingly depend on proprietary APIs for grading, attendance analysis, or chatbot tutoring. Recent reports note this dependency constrains contract renegotiations: smaller districts lack the capacity to audit algorithms or demand granular data deletion timelines, effectively accepting “as-is” privacy terms dictated by vendors.

Even well-resourced institutions may find it difficult to exit or migrate systems once data pipelines and assessment workflows are tightly integrated. This dependency amplifies vendor power and blurs accountability, making oversight reactive rather than preventive.

The 2024 cases against IXL Learning and other companies demonstrate all three of these risks in practice: AI features were added to widely used platforms under existing contracts, creating permanent data retention, behavioral profiling via metadata, and limited institutional recourse for schools already dependent on these systems.

While districts grapple with the ramifications of platform evolution, another crisis is unfolding simultaneously: educators adopting AI tools that bypass governance entirely.

How Shadow AI Makes Things Worse

The effects of unvetted AI integration compound when staff use unauthorized AI tools. And the 78% who know about unauthorized use are just the beginning: sixty-two percent of education employees have fed work-related content into AI without district approval, and 50% report more unauthorized use than a year ago.

The root cause is a dangerous gap between how confidently employees use AI tools and how little confidence organizations actually have in the tools' security, accuracy, or compliance.

Eighty-four percent believe unauthorized AI protects their info, 52% see little or no risk in unauthorized use, and 42% didn't know approval was needed.

This confidence-compliance gap creates serious institutional risk. When staff enter student data into unauthorized AI tools—for instance, excerpts from assessment data into ChatGPT to generate report card comments—they may inadvertently violate laws such as FERPA and COPPA.

And education IT leaders are struggling to keep up:

• 84% agree employees adopt AI faster than IT can assess.
• 83% say it’s challenging to control unauthorized AI use.
• Only 40% say their schools have clear, enforced AI policies—meaning 60% are operating without effective governance.

In some ways, unauthorized staff AI use feels more egregious than platform integration risks. It's easier to blame a teacher using AI on a personal device to generate quiz questions and answer keys than a district locked into contracts with Microsoft or Google.

But this mindset misses the point. Both problems stem from the same failure: schools lack the frameworks to address AI that enters through existing infrastructure or through staff adoption that outpaces oversight. And both create the same consequences: permanent data embedding, metadata exposure, and loss of institutional control.

The question isn't who's to blame. It's how to build governance that addresses both pathways before the window for intervention closes.

4 Ways To Maintain Control of Data

For most districts, crafting data governance policies is a months- to years-long process that involves assessing current tools, needs, and resources, followed by drafting, stakeholder review, and board approval. But no matter how carefully education leaders develop these policies, the truth is these aren't designed for AI.

Traditional data policies assume platforms remain static, that tool adoption happens only after approval, and that initial consent suffices for ongoing use. These focus on preventing data from leaving approved systems but can't address what happens when those same systems implement AI features or when staff bypass approval entirely.

These policies can't account for data permanence, metadata exposure, or eroding institutional leverage. Instead, effective AI governance requires an approach built on the following four pillars:

1. Set clear guidelines for sensitive data entry

Guidelines should define what student data can or cannot enter AI systems, whether those systems are authorized or not. For example, schools may restrict teachers from entering student names, grades, or essay text into external AI tools such as ChatGPT unless the tool is specifically approved or governed by the district.

Questions for your district:

• What types of student data does our policy explicitly prohibit from entering into AI tools?
• Are there clear, written guidelines available for staff on what data is considered sensitive or protected?

2. Establish platform oversight protocols

Schools must decide how to monitor and respond when vendors add AI features. This might look like the IT department reviewing vendor updates quarterly to identify whether new AI features have been added and notifying staff about any changes affecting data privacy.

Questions for your district:

• How do we find out when vendors add or change AI features on our platforms?
• Who is responsible for monitoring platform updates and communicating risks to staff?

3. Encourage mandatory staff training

It's essential that schools understand data implications, metadata risks, and why approval matters. This might look like all teachers completing an annual online module about risks of sharing student data with unauthorized AI tools and recognizing metadata privacy issues.

Questions for your district:

• Have all staff received baseline training on AI data risks in the past year?
• Does our training cover emerging risks, such as metadata exposure, and use real classroom examples?

4. Provide enforcement and approved alternatives

Schools should provide vetted alternatives rather than blanket bans. For example, the district might provide a vetted AI writing assistant integrated within the learning management system so teachers do not need to use unsupported external tools.

Questions for your district:

• Do staff have easy access to a list of approved AI tools and know how to request new ones?
• How do we ensure enforcement of policies—what are the steps if unauthorized AI use is reported?

Together, these four pillars create a governance framework that addresses both platform evolution and unauthorized adoption. The question is whether schools will implement them proactively or wait until a data breach, regulatory violation, or community crisis forces reactive measures.

Regaining Control

Schools can regain control of student data by establishing clear policies, implementing platform oversight protocols, training staff on AI risks, and providing vetted alternatives. But the window for action is closing. Vendors keep adding AI features, unauthorized use is growing, and every delay builds dependency, as seen in schools from Peru to the U.S.

Schools that take proactive measures now can still determine what AI does with student data and which tools enter classrooms. Those that wait will find these decisions made for them.

As the second largest district in the nation, it is no small feat to analyze and understand the needs of Los Angeles Unified School District’s broad spectrum of educators and students to best serve their unique educational requirements.

“During the pandemic, we were looking for ways to ensure value on the apps we purchased,” says David Kooper, Senior Director of Information Technology at Los Angeles Unified School District. “We wanted to make sure the apps were being implemented with fidelity and whether our internal divisions should continue to fund various apps based on how often they were being utilized in the best interest of the district.”

For this and other efforts, Kooper, Senior Director of Information Technology at LAUSD, was recently recognized with the Innovative Technology Director Award at the Tech & Learning Regional Summit in Austin, part of the Innovative Leader Awards.

Betting On Big Data

Part of the responsibility of finding new tech solutions is to determine the best bang for the budget buck. Validating the investment through evidence-based results is ideal.

“Budgets are made by decisions,” says Kooper. “While part of the budget involves fixed costs like staffing, the other side is discretionary spending. If you invest in one area that provides you with the data that you need, it's going to potentially save you money in another. It's one thing to buy a product, it's another entirely different thing to figure out at the school level and at the district level whether or not these apps are being utilized.”

Another issue in a district as large and broad as LAUSD is connecting disparate schools to collect usable information. Kooper broke down silos by creating a dashboard that could equip 400+ principals and district/school leaders with visibility into student device and app usage, paired with targeted professional learning to ensure leaders could act on the data. This could enable principals to retire ineffective tools, maximize investments, and deliver more consistent digital learning across one of the nation’s largest school systems.

Gaining access to a tool to determine true tech use value across a vast district using data demonstrated where cuts could be made without affecting the student or educator experience. For this, Kooper relied on insight provided by Lightspeed Systems, which proved invaluable.

“You just have to look at it from a wide lens to see what the impact is,” Kooper says. “What are you losing by not investing in this, versus the amount of money that you're spending. It makes sense for most districts. Districts also gain the ability to negotiate or renegotiate contracts using this usage data. I don't know how a school district could function without looking at the operational and structural impact within their data.”

For LAUSD, savings reaped through removing ineffective tools and smart guidance for future purchases more than compensated for investing in the tech.

How to Use Data Insight to Inform Professional Development Plans

Advice from Kooper to other districts looking to replicate LAUSD's success:

Look at the data. Analyze data at the app, school, and district level to decide what training needs to take place.

Track implementation of not just paid apps, but unpaid apps. Use insight from data as visibility of how often emerging technologies such as AI or engineering-type apps are being used at schools.

Ask questions. Are there barriers to the technology implementation? Is it due to a lack of training? Is it because of a lack of direction? Is some other factor limiting the exposure to a particular app or to a particular technology?

Extrapolate meaning from the data. Ask why would one school be utilizing an app or technology, whereas it is being underrepresented at another school. It gives insight that might lead to follow up and targeted PD at the school level.

The Right Tech Helps in Times of Need

Southern California faces added challenges due to extreme weather and natural disasters. When wildfires forced school closures at Eaton and Palisades, Kooper created school-site groups to track student engagement and access in real time.

“We measured usage data among the impacted students to figure out who was logging in and who potentially was using key apps we use in our school district for delivery of instruction,” he says. “It told the story of where people were and their ability to start accessing learning tools. It gave some insight in terms of students getting back to a sense of normalcy based on their ability to log in, access the curriculum and get the support they needed. It also gave us one additional tool to look at the impact that technology plays on instruction.”

By surfacing differences in device and application use across campuses, Kooper ensured equitable digital learning continued despite the disruption — demonstrating how innovation through data use can directly support students in moments of crisis.

Bigger Builds A Better Product

As the second largest district in the nation, LAUSD offers a broad and varied opportunity for focus groups. Kooper consistently drives K–12 innovation by piloting emerging technologies and building partnerships that shape the future of educational technology.

“We like to think we deal with partners, not just vendors,” he says. “Everything we do is at scale, with all the functionalities that make an implementation more challenging for a larger school district. Companies need to understand beforehand how their systems are going to be impacted by the number of users we have.”

That massive array of user experience is an asset. Kooper brings a collaborative approach — ensuring principals, teachers, and IT leaders are included in testing and feedback. This inclusive process has accelerated adoption, reduced resistance to change, and given districts confidence that new tools will translate to better learning experiences for students.

“We want people to be able to see working with LAUSD as an advantage,” he says. “They might have a canned product that works well for 60 or 70% of the people. We're going to help them create a product that could be used in ways they may not even be anticipating. The exposure is grander, with a lot of users, so we tend to see things a little bit earlier than other folks.”

Beyond technology pilots and roll-outs, Kooper’s programs in business intelligence, device management, application effectiveness, and network security have provided nationwide models for safe, scalable, and impactful edtech adoption. Care is always put into new additions to the program.

“We have to really think out of the box and think things through 100% before implementation to avoid rolling the dice on impact for any user's experience,” he says.

In 2025, Kooper participated in LAUSD’s first districtwide screen time analysis, equipping leaders with data that directly informed school board decisions and parent engagement. This combination of policy leadership, crisis response, and community trust-building highlights how Kooper’s work extends beyond classrooms to shape districtwide culture.

By sharing clear, transparent trends, Kooper strengthened trust between schools, families, and the community, while setting a precedent for evidence-based policy.

Procurement of Digital Solutions (PoDS)

PoDS is the system LAUSD uses to review and approve all digital tools, apps, and online services before they are used in classrooms or offices.

Why is PoDS important?

• Protects student and staff information. Many apps collect personal data. PoDS ensures vendors handle this information safely and legally.
• Keeps our network secure. One unsafe app could put an entire system at risk. PoDS prevents that.
• Ensures quality and compliance. PoDS checks that tools meet District standards, align with teaching goals, and work within existing systems.
• Applies to all products. Free, paid, instructional, or administrative. If it is digital, it goes through PoDS.

Tools They Use

• Lightspeed Systems
• Brain Pop
• Discovery Education
• Dreambox
• EdPuzzle
• IXL
• Kami
• Labster
• Nearpod
• Newsela
• Reading Horizon
• Renaissance
• Rosetta Stone
• Seesaw
• Shmoop
• SmartMusic
• Soundtrap
• ST Math
• Zearn

After years of building up their digital ecosystems, school districts are entering a new phase. The question heading into the 2025-26 school year isn’t whether to use edtech. It’s which tools are working, which ones aren’t, and how to tell the difference.

District leaders are under increasing pressure to improve student outcomes, support teachers, and use limited funds wisely. Technology remains a key part of that strategy, but not all tools contribute equally. The challenge is deciding what stays, what goes, and what truly delivers results.

That challenge is compounded by the sheer volume of available metrics. Edtech companies often present usage dashboards, testimonials, or standards alignment charts. While those indicators can be helpful, they don’t always answer the most important questions

• Is this helping students learn?
• Is it supporting teachers in practical, sustainable ways?
• Is there evidence that it’s working in classrooms like ours?

The most effective decisions I’ve seen, both as a district administrator and now leading research and analytics at a global edtech company, are grounded in three essentials: how tools are used in context, whether they’re backed by independent research, and whether they deliver measurable gains in student learning.

Usage Data That Informs Instruction

Most digital tools can show how often students log in or how many minutes they spend on a platform. But frequency doesn’t equal effectiveness. The real value lies in how a tool is used within instruction and whether that use leads to deeper engagement and stronger learning outcomes.

That’s where nuanced, actionable usage data comes in. The strongest districts aren’t just reviewing platform activity reports, they’re using data to understand:

• How teachers are embedding tools in daily instruction
• How students are interacting with specific features or content
• How students are performing and where patterns diverge across schools, grades, or student groups

This level of detail allows leaders to spot what’s working and where implementation needs support. For example, if one school sees consistent student growth and high engagement while others lag behind, it may point to a training gap or a difference in how the tool, resource, or intervention is introduced. If a feature designed for remediation is barely used, it could signal that educators aren’t aware of its value or that it’s too difficult to access during a lesson.

Usage and performance data that also drives professional development and tailored coaching is beneficial to the real-world needs of educators. Is the program being utilized in ways that drive student understanding and meaning-making? Are there features that boost rigor and could be accessed more often for better results? Are students spending too much time on low-level tasks?

Insightful data can guide targeted improvements that raise the bar for everyone. Ultimately, the data provided by products and programs should support feedback loops between classroom practice and district strategy.

Research That Stands Up to Scrutiny

In an era of increased accountability, claims about being “evidence-based” must be more than marketing language. Districts deserve to know that the tools they’re investing in are grounded in credible, third-party research and that vendors are transparent about what’s known and what’s still being tested.

ESSA’s tiers of evidence continue to be a helpful benchmark. Tools supported by Tier I, II, or III studies, including randomized control trials or quasi-experimental designs, offer the strongest validation. But even tools in earlier stages of development should have a clearly articulated logic model, a theory of change, and emerging indicators of impact.

District leaders should ask:

• Who conducted the research and was it conducted by an unbiased independent research team?
• Does the sample size reflect school environments, including high need and/or diverse populations?
• Are the outcomes aligned to what district leaders are trying to achieve, such as change in performance or mastery of content in math, literacy, or engagement?

Importantly, research is not a one-time effort -- it should be ongoing. The strongest edtech partners continue to evaluate, refine, and improve their products. They publish third party and internal research findings, learn from real-world implementation, and adjust accordingly. That level of transparency builds trust and helps districts avoid tools that rely on glossy brochures rather than genuine results.

Alignment that Leads to Real Gains

Too often, standards alignment is treated as a checkbox. Often, a product or program lists the standards it covers and calls it complete. Content coverage and alignment without a clear tie to grade level and student outcomes is a hollow promise.

The real test is whether a tool helps students master the skills and knowledge embedded in those standards and whether it supports teachers in helping all students make progress. This requires more than curriculum alignment. It requires outcome alignment.

Districts should look for:

• Evidence that students using the tool show measurable growth on formative, interim, or summative assessments
• Disaggregated results by race, income, English learner status, and special education status to ensure the tool works for all students
• Proof that learning is transferring. Are students applying or could apply what they learn in other contexts or on more rigorous tasks?

An edtech product that delivers results for high-performing students but doesn’t address the needs of those who are still on the journey to become expert learners will not help districts close opportunity gaps. Tools that truly align with district goals should support differentiated instruction, provide real-time feedback, and drive continuous improvement for every learner.

Raise the Standard: What the New Baseline for Edtech Should Be

This year, districts are making harder choices about what to fund and what to phase out. Budgets are tighter. Expectations are higher. This moment is not about cutting innovation, it is about clarifying what counts. The baseline for edtech must shift from tools that simply exist in the ecosystem to those that actively elevate it. Districts that succeed in this new landscape are those asking sharper questions and demanding clearer answers to questions such as:

• How is this being used in classrooms like ours?
• What evidence backs up its impact?
• Does it help our students learn, not just practice?

District leaders, now more than in years past, are less interested in vendor promises and more focused on evidence that learning took place. They are raising the bar, not just for edtech providers but for themselves. The strongest programs, products and tools do not just work in theory. They work in practice. And in 2025–26, that is the only standard that matters.

With the upswing in hacking and ransomware attacks on schools and other educational institutions, it is essential for educators to ensure their data is secure. As some school districts have seen significant data loss due to such activities, such preparation minimizes risks that no one can afford. 

Problems with ransomware attacks and corrupted cloud accounts have also seen several of my colleagues lose data. It’s distressing and often can be costly to recover.

Educators should consider the following for backing up their data:

5 Quick Tips for Backing Up Your School Data

1. Follow the 3-2-1 rule for data backup. Have at least three backups of your data, using at least two different media with one offsite. Those backups should be stored in at least two physical locations. For instance, one copy at home and another at the office. Or maybe on external hard drives. A third might be stored on the cloud, either a personal or an institutional account, although remember that cloud accounts are not 100% reliable and should not be your only backup. Backups should also be on at least two different types of media. External hard drives, flash drives, and optical disks are all potential options along with cloud backups. 
2. If possible, automate the backup process so you don’t have to remember to manually start it. At the end of each semester or term, it is a wise idea to create a complete backup. Label that backup and set it aside as an archival record for that semester. 
3. Make sure you invest in high-quality external hard drives for your archival backups. Many systems include password protection or encryption on the hard drives. Encrypting your data provides an additional layer of protection. If you have large amounts of data, you might want to consider a cloud-based backup service. 
4. Test your backups. Make sure each backup is complete and successful by recovering at least a couple of files from each backup. Backups are of no value if one is unable to recover the data. 
5. Take extra care with any data that includes personally identifiable information (PII). One might consider adding password protection to documents including any PII, especially regarding students. 

Implementing a thorough and effective data backup plan is crucial to safeguard your data against loss due to hardware failure, cyberattacks, or accidental deletion. By combining local and off-site backup solutions, automating the backup process, and regularly verifying the integrity of backups, individuals can ensure their data remains secure and recoverable. 

It’s important to evaluate your specific needs and resources to select the most appropriate backup methods and tools. Remember, the goal of a backup strategy is not just to preserve data but to enable efficient recovery when needed, ensuring minimal disruptions to one’s work and personal life.

• 6 Steps to Remove Social Security Numbers from Student Data
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Education leaders recently met at an event sponsored by Lightspeed Systems in Sacramento, California, to discuss AI in education, including its implications for students, teachers, workflow, and data privacy.

“There was a diverse set of philosophies around the use of AI in districts,” said panelist Jason Borgen, Chief Technology & Innovations Officer (CTiO), Santa Cruz County Office of Education. Some districts are treading lightly around AI use, either banning or discouraging it, while Borgen and the districts he works with are taking a different approach. “We're in the mindset with the schools that we serve and support, ‘Let's try it out and pilot it and test the waters with it,’” he said.

In the past, teachers have had concerns about using search engines, spellcheck, and email with students, but over time they have learned how to navigate these once-new technologies. To do that with AI, Borgen said educators have to get used to experimenting. “Life sometimes is R&D, and in our work as educators we need to research and develop how things can work for our own use and our own programs,” he said.

Protecting Data Privacy While Using AI  

When using any technology at schools protecting students’ data privacy is paramount. Even though AI tools often save questions and inputs to add to their data training set, Borgen said that interacting with these is not all that different from inputting information into a search engine.

“It comes down to just digital literacy,” he said. “Don't share personally identifiable information about yourself or students.” That goes for any digital tool that isn’t vetted and doesn’t meet your district's privacy requirements, whether it's a generative AI tool or a search engine.

Even so, Borgen says it is okay for teachers to input student work into an AI model as long as that work does not contain identifiable information regarding that student.

Use AI Effectively With Students 

Teachers who work in different subject areas often have different views of utilizing AI technology. For example, “The high school English teachers are somewhat conservative around their use and are concerned about cheating,” Borgen said.

The trick is figuring out how to utilize AI in a manner that familiarizes students with this important new technology and prepares them for careers that will likely require them to interact with AI, all while also protecting academic integrity.

For those English teachers worried about cheating, Borgen advises against using AI detection tools due to the unreliability, and instead suggests building assessments that are more AI-proof.

“Evaluate small chunks of information rather than large summative approaches to writing because then you can really tie in student voice to that,” he said. “Make sure students build connections to their life, because, obviously, AI cannot get into a student’s body to understand their life and mind. So when creating assignments, make sure there are those variables that AI cannot generate.”

Use AI to Save Teachers' Time 

Several AI tools are already being used by teachers Borgen works with to increase efficiency. These tools can do things such as watch YouTube or other videos and then create transcripts, questions, and instructional activities based upon the video, Borgen said. Others can help teachers generate lesson plans, create IEDs, and more.

Borgen stresses that teachers need to curate the use of these tools. “Treading lightly though, these are all brand-new tools, so spend some time making sure it's valid and correct,” he says. “The idea is not to replace the human, but really give the human a catalyst to consider ideas that they may have not thought of before.”

Go here to find out more about Lightspeed Systems

Are you ready to see the power of spreadsheets for mathematical, statistical, and scientific thinking? Let’s follow the path of using data to derive a mathematical model and then, using the model, to build an interactive simulation. A survey of 330 teachers found the No. 1 data analysis tool was – wait for it – Google Sheets! MS Excel was third.

Spreadsheets are the low-end of the computational food chain and can get your students started in relatively simple computations that can get really jacked-up if you want.

Google Sheets offers the big advantage of being free and allows for online collaborative efforts in the classroom and out-of-class projects.

Data - Large and Small 

Collect your own (first-hand, you are performing the measurements)

Collecting experimental data allows the introduction of simple measurement error analysis using centimeter rulers such as Investigating the Height of a Stack of Cookies (good first modeling activity with a “just-add-data” Excelet link). A good source of small real-world data sets (second-hand) is the Quantitative Environmental Learning Project (QELP) website. You can download data as an Excel file that can easily be converted to a GSheets file with no problem.

Exploring Error in Measurements

There are two major groups of errors, random and systematic (adds bias), and both can be built into spreadsheet simulations such as “just-add-data” spreadsheets.

So, how do you integrate error into a spreadsheet? Let’s examine an important measurement device, the ruler, using the Rulers and Measurement Error Excelet to explore the types of errors in a variety of ways.

Big data sets with scatter

Many scientific groups make data available for downloading, and some even make it easy. The file format, .csv (comma separated values as a text file), can be read by Sheets and Excel. Data on web pages that are column-separated can be saved as text files and read by spreadsheets. If you are going to have students download data, check it out first to see the results! It can be messy.

Sea Level Change (and other global problems) is a large collection of GSheets spreadsheets in which data from NASA, NOAA, and other sites have been downloaded and are ready for plotting (see the guides below). A large number of possible questions and tasks are included to aid instructors to modify to suit their classrooms. Dealing with big data with scatter is an important task that students need to get involved in handling it!

How to get started from scratch

Dealing with Data in Excel 2013/2016 - detailed handout for Excel (more about building later)

Dealing with Scientific Data in Google Sheets - Video instructions with an accompanying GSheets spreadsheets for hands-on practice

Mathematical Models and a Multivariable Approach

Deriving a mathematical model from data has become commonplace in math classes from middle school through college. These models, and so many science experiments, tend to be bivariate; however, in the real-world, things are multivariate plus measurements contain error. So our approach needs to deal with variation, which comes in the form of measurement error and the possibility of the variation or change in other variables that we think are constant. See the real-world function machine below.

Modeling

Do you need to teach linear regression? No, it’s just a line of best-fit. Goodness-of-fit, how good the linear regression fits the data, can be judged by the use of r-square and, as students turn to non-linear systems, the use of residues can be introduced. Novice students don’t see curvature in data especially if the r-square is near one. Converting from math, y = mx + b, to the actual variables, H = tn + e (for stacking cookies), is a task that needs lots of practice.

Just-add-data spreadsheets (pre-built with no writing spreadsheet formulae!!!)

These experiments contain a variety of interactive simulation and data pooling too:

• Cookies (pooling: form > sheet)
• Bricks (verify and revise)
• Unstacking pennies (x-intercept, check accuracy, pooling data)
• Nesting Styrofoam cups (an animated interesting model with y-intercept)
• Nested cubes (curvature, quadratic model)
• Tumor volume (peanut M&M’s, calipers, and measurement comparison)
• Discovering Pi & Its Measurement Variation

See What-if Spreadsheets for a wide variety of concepts in mathematics. These are pre-built spreadsheets available in both Excel and Sheets.

Simulations and What-if Questioning

Here is where more science process enters, as we ask the what-if questions that allow students to predict > test > analyze and then explain (yes, use words including math speak!). Students get to investigate how a variable influences the results by numerical experimentation.

Pre-built Interactive Spreadsheets (more than 265)

• Excelets (use forms tools, works on PC and Macs, and no VBA macros used) that include mathematical models, some probability models, many in science (chemistry, astronomy, materials science) and metrology (the science of measurement).
• Google Sheetslets are newer items, such as Roll the Climate Change Die (probability model) or Folding a Ribbon in Half: The Half-life Concept, many with accompanying activities.

Build Your Own Interactive Spreadsheets

• In GSheets, see Dealing with Scientific Data in Google Sheets. The second (cubic polynomial behavior) and third (radioactive decay) spreadsheets will offer directions with hands-on construction. Start simple, with just the yellow cell feed into a formula cell, and then add the bells and whistles! The use of check boxes as an on/off switch gets you into writing “if” statements.
• Here is an article with an Excel tutorial around developing some simulations in astronomy.
• If you want to build errors into a spreadsheet, see The Mechanics of Inducing Error in a Spreadsheet for adding random and systematic errors. For more on errors, see Investigating Types of Errors.

Online Collaboration

See our website, Data Pool in the Cloud, for examples and instructions to set up things in GSheets. The simplest thing to do is pool data for tasks. Gathering the data from groups or even individuals can be accomplished by simply sharing a spreadsheet with editing rights for students to enter the data or collect it via a Google Form. Now class statistics can be obtained and a class discussion can ensue. Discussions can be the whole class with the pooled data projected or set up groups and use the chat feature or comments placed on the spreadsheet in class, and yes it works! Want to play with one, try this - Collaborative Crowdsourcing Eye-ball Curve Fitting and, if someone else is there, open the chat.

Final Thoughts

Interactive spreadsheets bring an engaging pedagogy to the classroom that allows for numerical experimentation. These cover the complete pathway of data to mathematical models to simulations and allow error analysis to be introduced – and help students “get their think on!” Getting students into building simulations is not difficult.

Scott Sinex is a Professor Emeritus at Prince George's Community College in Maryland, where he taught chemistry for decades and served as the Department Chair of Physical Sciences & Engineering from 1995-2016. Learn more about his work and publications at https://sites.google.com/view/ssinex.

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How prepared is your school for the unexpected? A recent high-profile event at the White House with K-12 administrators and cybersecurity professionals highlighted the importance of protecting schools against ransomware and other hacks. 

Sandra Paul, Director of Information Technology and Operations for the Township of Union Public Schools in New Jersey, discusses incident response plans versus disaster recovery plans and how both can keep students, educators, and their personal information safe while also helping schools to recover from cybersecurity breaches and quickly return to the important business of learning.

Incident Response Plans vs. Disaster Recovery Plans: Prepare for the Unexpected 

Cyber threats and attacks on educational institutions are making the news daily. For example, the University of Michigan, which serves 50,000 students, recently faced the challenge of kicking off the fall semester sans internet for several days after having to cut connections following a significant cybersecurity incident. Access to services such as financial aid, research materials, courses, and other resources necessary for a smooth start created a tough environment for everyone. 

These types of cyber attacks are hardly confined to the university level, with more than 120 school districts already suffering ransomware attacks this year, which provoke concerns over private information and put the identities of minors at risk. Private details such as grades, medical records, behavioral information, documented home issues, and financial information are typically compromised. 

Having plans to prepare for and overcome potential risks is key.

“The primary focus of an incident response plan is a collection of the processes and procedures that a school district follows if there is a cybersecurity breach/incident,” says Paul. “This type of plan is a response to an incident that caused a disruption of business and educational services leading to a disaster. In a disaster recovery plan, the primary focus is business continuity for the school district if there is an interruption of business and education services. This plan is implemented when there is a stoppage or halting of services.”

This two-pronged approach can reduce risk and give administrators a clear path to finding their way through an incident without wasting precious time formulating a response.

“Districts need both plans to systematically resolve or prevent technological issues that can be caused by outside and/or inside incidents, including natural disasters,” says Paul.

Disaster Recovery Plan: 3 Best Practices 

1. Have major stakeholders involved in the development of plans. By doing so, it creates support and buy-in for the district, and can also prevent any delays when time is of essence. In addition, it ensures communication is clear and understood, as any potential areas of confusion will be hammered out during the plan’s creation. 
2. Avoid complacency. Those involved need to keep updated and practice the plan. Coordinated response exercises via simulated scenarios with key personnel in the form of tabletop assessments can offer an opportunity for a walkthrough to see if the plan works and makes sense in real-world conditions. 
3. Communication is crucial, as is detailed documentation. Keeping records of results of tabletop assessments can help tweak a plan to be even more effective and usable. Post-incident, clear and specific documentation can help solve issues in the present and prevent future repeat situations. 

Pull Together a Community and a Plan 

Clearly, a response plan for these sort of emergencies requires a specific skill set and background knowledge. CIO/tech directors are trained and keep abreast of the latest development regarding the tools and strategies to keep schools and their students and educators safe. However, the implementation of these plans are not–and should not be–a solo effort. 

“These plans should be developed by CIO/tech directors because there are several resources that will be called upon if any of these plans are to be implemented,” says Paul. “This includes technology service companies, cybersecurity insurance carriers, district security and safety personnel, community emergency management office, district IT, business and administrative personnel, school legal advisors, school board members, etc.” 

As anyone involved in education knows, support for plans not only involves a united front in deciding how emergency scenarios will be handled, but how developing plans and the various aspects within those plans will fit into an often tight budget.

“These plans require financial and IT equipment resources that will have to be approved by the school board and community members,” notes Paul. 

Smoothing the pathway throughout the process by including all stakeholders can avoid political hiccups that could lead to delays or leave schools vulnerable while points of any plan are debated.

5 Phases of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has created a framework which can help create an Incident Recovery Plan. 

1. Identify — Determine your district’s critical functions and what cybersecurity risks could disrupt those functions. 
2. Protect — Define safeguards needed to prioritize the elements necessary to deliver a school’s critical infrastructure services. 
3. Detect — Monitor in a continuous manner to quickly discover unusual activities which could be tied to a potential threat. 
4. Respond — Once detected, implement measures to accommodate and adjust to the threat or incident without hindering the daily business of learning.
5. Recover — Create a strategic plan to restore systems that might have been compromised or damaged. Consider lessons learned and tweak existing plans to help better protect from future threats.  

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The best student cloud data storage options for 2023 are more varied now than ever, and with plenty of free choices, it's become tougher to decide which is the right one for you. Since most students have different needs, this guide aims to clarify the variations between the best choices so you can find the right option to serve your storage needs.

While physical storage on a hard drive or USB stick has its merits, using the cloud is fast becoming the first choice of most students for data storage. One of the main reasons is that there is a lot of it for free right now. But another factor is the ability to access that data from most devices and locations -- no need to remember that drive or to carry it about with you.

The downside? If you don't have an internet connection you won't be able to get at that data. Some say solid state is more secure, however, in most cases the larger data storage services offer so many layers of security, your data is likely safer than in your pocket.

You may already have one of the best laptops for students or best tablets for students and simply want to expand that storage. Or perhaps have access from more than those devices alone. Whatever your need, these are the best student cloud data storage options out there right now.

• Best tablets for students
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Best Student Cloud Data Storage Options

1. Google Drive: Best student cloud data storage overall

Google Drive is the cloud storage solution from one of the biggest data names on the planet. While that could raise a snooping red flag for some security-conscious students, aside from automated tracking of your words, the actual data should be super secure protected by all the power Google affords.

The free storage amount is generous with 15GB as soon as you sign up. Since this is part of Google, you will already have access to this if you have a Gmail account. Then, should you want more space, you can pick a wide selection of capacity amounts -- all reasonably priced -- right up to a massive 5TB of space.

While there is encryption during transit and rest, making your data super secure, this is still a U.S.-based company, so your data could be accessed by the government if needed. You have two-factor authentication, if you need, plus a super easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface that feels simple no matter which device you're accessing it from.

This also integrates with Google Drive, Sheets, Slides, and more, so you can easily access all your data and share it very simply if you already use those services.

2. Dropbox: Best for high-capacity storage

Dropbox is one of the original cloud storage services, so it has been working on perfecting its service for a long time. As such, you can expect lots of security for your data with heavy encryptions. This also means the integrations and user menus are very well-refined and intuitive.

Free storage is available, but at 2GB it's not the most generous. Where Dropbox stands out is the affordability of its larger storage capacity options, with a massive 5TB costing just $15.99 per month. Sharing with other users, even those who don't have Dropbox, couldn't be easier, making this an ideal choice if that's something you plan to do a lot.

This not only works across a host of devices but integrates well with apps that allow you to use this like another drive on your device -- and with lots of offline storage options you can access content anytime if needed too.

3. Microsoft OneDrive: Best for Office integration

Microsoft OneDrive is a good choice if you're already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem. This is because it works really well with all the Microsoft apps, allowing you to access all your documents from one place, anywhere you are. It also means a generous 5GB of storage with a free account.

But this stands out with its storage inclusion for Microsoft 365 users who get a massive 1TB of storage as part of the deal -- which extends to a whopping 6TB for family accounts. 

While this works best with Microsoft devices, as it comes built-in, you can also use it on Mac, iOS, Android, and more. Everything is encrypted to protect your files, however, the Personal Vault feature is particularly helpful as this lets you place certain files in a locked folder that you need to go through two-factor authentication to access.

4. Apple iCloud: Best for Mac and iOS users

The Apple iCloud is a great option for Mac and iOS users thanks to excellent integration across those operating systems and a very generous 10GB of free storage space. The downside? You won't be able to use this on Android, so if that's you're mobile platform you might as well scroll on.

For everyone else, the iCloud offers encryption security for data at rest as well as in transit. You also have the option to expand storage, up to 2TB, at very reasonably priced rates. Plus, if you take out a plan, there are lots of Apple extras thrown in including Apple TV+, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness+, and Apple News+ -- depending on which plan you choose.

If you've got an iPhone this is a great way to automatically have all your photos updated. And for files created on Apple devices, this helps with easy access across devices as well as sharing. 

5. IDrive: Excellent for bulk storage deals

IDrive is a fantastic option if you want to make a saving on large storage capacities by paying up front. As such, this offers some of the best rates for up to 5TB of storage at annual rates -- plus, you can save up to 50% by using student discounts. This does mean there are no monthly plan options, but since that's not what this option is all about, that shouldn't be an issue.

You do get a massive 10GB of storage for free, so it's well worth a try. And affordable doesn't mean unsafe as you have full encryption of your data end-to-end. Just don't expect a lot of other third-party integrations or the best upload and download speeds out there.

During the early days of the pandemic, everyone in education was talking about using the crisis to change education for the better. 

School leaders at the Barrington School District 220 in Illinois wanted to do more than just talk about change, they wanted to learn from the moment and make sure it would help steer the district going forward. To that end, the Barrington 220 Leadership Council undertook a massive data-gathering effort to learn from their educators, students, and parents what pandemic-necessitated innovations should be amplified and which should be discarded. 

Here’s how they gathered the data and how it’s changing the district going forward. 

“A Once-In-a-Lifetime Opportunity”  

Between January and April of 2022 the Leadership Council asked three questions of staff members: 

1. What have you learned throughout the pandemic about what education and
school could be?

2. How have relationships changed between you and your students and their
families?

3. What programs or services developed out of necessity during the pandemic would you like to see continued?

The council collected 1,503 responses from the staff of all 12 of the district’s schools. Additionally, focus groups were held with graduating seniors who were asked how the district might better prepare students for life after high school. 

A key to getting so many responses was explaining to the staff how important the data would be. “[We] set the context to let them know the importance of gathering this information, and how this is really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to not only think about doing things differently but to actually start to put those things in practice and really reimagine education,” says Dr. Melissa Byrne, assistant superintendent for Teaching & Learning. 

What the Data Revealed 

The overarching themes that emerged from the staff survey were around technology, flexibility and adaptability, relationships, social-emotional learning (SEL), and home/school connections. 

Many educators spoke positively about the relationships they formed with students and their parents and the deeper connection between school and home that technology fostered. 

“Because they were literally in students' home for the first time in their careers and seeing what kind of environment the individual students had, it connected them to families in ways that they'd never been connected before,” says Matt Fuller, assistant superintendent for Technology & Innovation. 

The district is looking to continue to foster this connection going forward. One part of doing this will be allowing remote student-parent conferences as an alternative to in-person conferences. 

The student focus groups revealed similar themes around technology and connection, with many students suggesting the district expand opportunities for blended learning. 

“The extent to which our seniors talked about extending blended learning experiences at the high school surprised us,” Fuller says. “That was something that was directly impacted by the pandemic, and it's something that we're putting a lot of time and effort into now, as we're moving forward in the areas of personalized learning, and also future-ready learning.” 

How the Data Is Influencing the District Going Forward  

The survey has also encouraged the district to renew its focus on personalized learning. “We have launched our flexible learning cohort with a team of high school staff, who have been identified by their peers as what we call 'influencers,'” Byrne says. These innovative teachers and principals meet regularly to discuss personalized learning best practices and are dedicated to promoting it at their schools. 

“We’re really making the focus about the students and empowering our students to own their own learning, so that they can truly have agency,” Byrne says. This ties in well and mirrors the work that is being done at the high school level around expanded blended learning opportunities, she adds. 

Another factor the district is focusing on in regard to personalized learning is making sure student staff recognize the difference between personal success skills and academic success skills. 

“Academic success skills are attached to a particular grade level or content, and they're mostly used in a chronological fashion,” Byrne says. “So you learn these literacy skills in kindergarten, these math skills in third grade. Whereas the personal success skills are really developmental, and that can change over time based on your age, based on your grade, based on the task that you're engaged with.” 

The insights gleaned from the data, however, go deeper than talking points and will continue to influence the district in the years ahead. 

“We've heard a lot of people, especially leaders, step forward during the pandemic and say, 'In every crisis, there's opportunity,' and what are those opportunities for schools, but we saw very little follow through,” says Dr. Robert Hunt, Barrington’s superintendent. “We made a decision in Barrington to take the time to reflect and work with the people who were in the trenches and learn what it is that we need to pull forward when we think about redesigning our schools in the future.” 

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The last week of January is National Data Privacy Week. As part of the global online safety, security, and privacy campaign called ‘Stop. Think. Connect.’—an initiative of the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA)—this serves as a reminder to those in education to evaluate how we are doing when it comes to keeping our students and their data safe in the classrooms and beyond.

Student Data Privacy Rules—Is the Party Over? 

Educators are trying their best to keep kids feeling connected and excited about school, even in these chaotic and uncertain times during which “school” might be located in a different place each week. Does remote school safety mean an end to the fun of sharing and showing off projects and achievements?

“We don’t need to stop celebrating the students and their work,” says Eileen Belastock, Director of Technology and Information at Nauset Public Schools, Orleans, Massachusetts. “We just have to make sure it’s safe and secure. So it means having district-sanctioned social media accounts, or a secured website where only your art Google classroom or your students’ parents can see what’s going on." 

Getting permission from parents to even have their child’s image and voice out there is a must. “At the beginning of the year they sign off on a general release form,” says Belastock. “But whether it’s a project they want to showcase on a website of the great things these kids are doing or a video clip pulled from Zoom, systems can be set up to ask permission from parents every time before posting. We’re not trying to say no, we are just trying to do it safely. Yes, it’s an extra step, but the last thing we want to do is put a child in jeopardy.” 

Student Data Security: An Issue Not Remotely Going Away 

It feels as if the news is peppered with daily stories of school data breaches and privacy leaks. Is this just the buzzword of the day or a developing issue schools need to tackle to ensure the safety of their students?

“Information security and privacy have grown and will continue advancing as major factors for all educational institutions,” says Ed Zuger, J.D., Associate Professor and Dean at University of the Cumberlands, School of CIS. “During the past couple years, the revolution of remote schooling removed security controls from the relatively careful environs of trained, formal IT experts. We now have hundreds or thousands of separated students and their homegrown security ‘solutions’—e.g., the $120 big box router. Along the way, every new node, onramp, and pathway amounts to another point-of-entry for potential criminals, not only to access content on students’ personal devices, but to walk through these unlocked and interconnected doorways into sensitive data on the greater school networks.”

Ask any cybersecurity pro and they will say the most risky element of keeping a system protected is the users. “So how do we save the budget?” says Zuger. “Do what we do best and teach. Teach our staff and students how to be savvy cyber-citizens. The best and most expensive security network can’t undo the damage of a careless user clicking on malicious links or kicking open a virtual doorway for any outsider to wander in.”

In conjunction with that, Belastock offers some best practices for schools.

Assess your current landscape. How is the district software being acquired—at the school level, the teacher level? You need to have an easily accessible vetting process so there is a process in place for approval to ensure there are no inherent risks within that tech. 

Be transparent about why. We don’t want to be the people of “No.” Explain to teachers and parents, “What if it was your photo being tagged in a public site or your personal video being shared because there wasn’t security preventing that?” Make it relatable for adults to drive home the importance.

Partner with vendors. Talk to them as there are a lot of data privacy agreements available. Vendors want you to use their product, so make sure they understand your privacy policies. It’s been really helpful for our district.

Get the word out to the school community. Put it in the face of the superintendent, go to school board meetings, just talk about this whenever you can. Talk to teachers, students, parents— always share the same mantra about protecting student and staff data. 

Why Student Data Privacy Matters

“What drives my institution to maintain tight security protocols is the value of our students,” says Zuger. “We are talking about some of the most vulnerable in society, as well as the most targeted because of the inherent vulnerabilities of those who have not yet experienced life’s cautions.”

In some cases, the consequences of lax security protocols could be much more serious than a paper getting swiped, risqué photo accessed or grade changed.

“Years ago, we interrupted a potentially dangerous incident,” Zuger says. “One student, intent on personally connecting with another, tracked their target’s computer lab usage and circumvented our security by installing a keylogger on their usual workstation. This tool records every keystroke, giving access to countless private and personal communications, passwords and data. However, because our protocols included regularly reviewing logs and system changes, we spotted the keylogger, identified the offender and they were turned over to law enforcement before the student-victim was ever compromised.”

An Uphill Challenge

With increasingly more sophisticated cyber criminals and hackers out there, it can make a district leader wonder if there is any point to trying to shield things anymore.

“On the one hand, there is some rationale in simply throwing the hands up. Everyone is prone. The trillion-dollar organization that is the U.S. government, with endless human capital expertly trained and practiced in cyber-defense, still experiences scores of attacks and breaches daily,” says Zuger. “But on the other more practical hand, why do we secure anything? We lock our front doors, enable the car alarm, and use PIN at the ATM. In those days of yore, nearly everyone left their front door unlocked. Eventually we realized that by simply spinning that deadbolt we might shuffle the scofflaw to the next address for easier access.”

Although it might feel like an overwhelming challenge, doing what we can to protect our students is non negotiable. 

“It can be expensive. Securing assets does not create revenue; it costs. So there must be a discussion about the hard costs, both of the tech and in training users to use and rely on the security solutions,” says Zuger. “What, though, might the cost of noncompliance be? Our students’ reputations, psychological and physical health? The institution’s reputation? Accreditation, even? All those and more are at risk. We have a duty to our students and our communities.”

“We can’t control what humans do,” says Belastock. “But we as tech directors can have all the safeguards, communications policies regarding public displays—we can at least do our best to protect our students. There will always be that one parent who takes a video or photos at a celebration and puts it out on Facebook. We can at least say we did our due diligence and put protections in place.”

• How to Implement a Systemic Approach to Student Data Security and Privacy
• 6 Steps to Remove Social Security Numbers from Student Data

It is no coincidence that K-12 organizations have become one of the most targeted sectors for cybercriminals seeking access to confidential data. Most student information systems (SIS) contain sought-after information when the goal is to illegally assume another person’s identity. Student and employee data sets most always include full, legal names, dates of birth, and far too often, social security numbers. 

While still necessary to maintain employee social security numbers for tax and retirement reporting purposes, I believe it is time for schools and school districts to eradicate student social security numbers from both electronic and paper records, if they have not already done so. 

The task may sound simple. However, the reality of accomplishing that feat is complex and must be strategically planned and executed. 

The Greeneville City School District is located in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains in rural, eastern Tennessee. Digital records are now the norm; however, certain paper documents are still maintained in various locations throughout the district. The one warehouse in the district is not environmentally controlled with temperatures soaring during Tennessee summers and dipping throughout the winter months. To preserve these historical records, the district has a goal to digitize it all and has engaged with a vendor-partner to accomplish that task. 

As the current Assistant Director of Schools for Administration, I have also served as the Chief Technology Officer for the school district for the past 27 years and have certainly observed a rapidly shifting landscape in regard to data security and information management. Never has data management been more critical than it is in today’s environment. 

There are so many aspects of data security, privacy, and information management that need to be addressed. Just focusing on the elimination of student social security numbers, the following steps are the ones taken by our rural district and are recommended for others who might be facing this same challenge.

6 Steps to Remove Social Security Numbers from Student Data

1. Assemble a cross-sectional team of stakeholders who have a broad knowledge base. We began by brainstorming and prioritizing what could quickly become an overwhelming project. This is the point in the process at which we identified the importance of eliminating student social security information as our top priority. 

2. Identify all sources of student social security information. While it may be obvious to concentrate on SIS, make sure to account for hard copies of such information that may be inside permanent records or other files. This step in the overall process can be laborious. Allow time for team members to speak with teachers, school leaders, special education experts, school secretaries, and others who will likely have pertinent information to help the project progress.  

3. Communicate plans across the organization throughout the process. Like any project management endeavor, this one will not be fully successful without a robust, streamlined communication plan to keep all stakeholders involved and engaged. Parents and guardians need to know about your effort and understand the reasons behind it. Teachers need to be involved as they might be asked to provide student information when rostering as part of a software pilot project or other similar task. District leadership team members need to receive regular updates as the work progresses. School boards and local media outlets need to be involved. Invite them to serve on data security teams and work together to accomplish your goals.  

4. Develop a strategic plan to address both paper and electronic record scrubbing simultaneously. It is important to have small teams focusing on specific record types. For example, we solicited the help of a couple of great special education teachers to assist our team in purging socials from historical records, which was a substantial task. Our district utilizes PowerSchool as our SIS. Our local PSUG (PowerSchool Users Group) played a tremendous role in developing a plan to begin using a unique pin number in lieu of social security number. They then tested the plan exhaustively in a sandbox environment before moving to the production server. 

5. Involve your state education department information systems team. We reached out to the EIS (Education Information System) team at the Tennessee State Department of Education early in our planning stages. The Tennessee EIS platform is critical because all our state education funding is generated based on the student enrollment and attendance data uploaded by local SIS extracts. Our EIS support team were instrumental in helping us map the data fields and prepare for the transition to the unique pin numbers by which students would be uniquely identified and tracked.  

6. Stay the course. Any school system with a large amount of data (historical and/or current) must acknowledge that the process of removing student social security numbers will be one that requires focus, endurance, and commitment. Team members may leave. New team members may emerge. It is important to have the process documented and a training plan in place by which information and knowledge transfer can happen quickly and thoroughly. 

The Greeneville City School District is now positioned to enroll and serve students without ever seeing or knowing their social security numbers. As a longtime IT professional, I often worry about the fact that many young adults may find themselves applying for college scholarships, seeking a loan to buy that first new car, or filling out an application for a job only to discover that their identity has been stolen as the result of a data breach during their K-12 school years. It gives me a sense of peace to know that social security numbers are not at risk in the district I serve. 

• 5 Ways to Boost School Cybersecurity
• Best Cybersecurity Lessons and Activities for K-12 Education

On October 8, 2021, President Biden signed the K-12 Cybersecurity Act of 2021 into law. The legislation acknowledges that maintaining the security of student data is mission-critical and, therefore, a study will be conducted to determine the best guidance to offer districts. 

While this seems to be a great attempt at protecting our student data, it also represents the federal government slowly crossing the state and local authority line using legislation, policies, and letters to companies to emphasize concerns related to technology in schools, specifically cybersecurity and privacy. However, more than 45 states and Puerto Rico have introduced legislation related to cybersecurity during 2021, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. So, it begs the question: what is the purpose behind the federal legislation?  

The increased use of technology in schools will no doubt increase the risk of attacks on student data. Since 2016, there have been at least 1,062 reported attacks on school districts across the U.S., with 53 school districts being attacked in 2020 and costing more than $7.5 billion, according to a recent report from Amtrust Financial. Since July, at least 16 school districts have already been victims of ransomware attacks.

In spite of these numbers, technology is no longer an option for districts. Schools must include technology in their daily practice of operating a school and delivering instruction. They must also use technology to protect student data as well as protect students themselves while they are online. 

An estimated 500,000 online predators are seeking out children while they are accessing the internet. The F.B.I. reports that children aged 12-15 represent more than 50% of the victims of online sexual exploitation. 

In addition to adult predators, students are also attacked by cyberbullies. Cyberbullying through digital devices occurs through social media, text, emails, instant messaging, and gaming. Research suggests 21% of children aged 10-18 experience cyberbullying, which can lead to additional mental health issues. And, children living in lower-income households are more likely to be bullied online.  

Striking a Balance

Data privacy isn’t the only challenge with our students online. We must protect their safety as well, and some companies aid districts in monitoring student safety online. However, during the first week of October 2021, these companies received letters of concern from three U.S. Senators related to violating students’ privacy. 

Where is the balance between protecting student data and protecting students online? Students -- and the data that come with them -- are the most fragile piece of the education system and the entire reason the system exists. No school or district administrator wakes up thinking of putting their students at risk. Districts and the schools they support must be armed with resources to protect their most significant responsibility, the safety of the students they serve. These resources come in the form of funding, technologies to monitor student activity online, technologies to protect student data, and legislation to back it when a predator or hacker is doing harm. 

Although the federal government may have good intentions, it remains the responsibility of the states and local school boards to govern and direct school operations. 

Cybersecurity and student data privacy are certainly huge issues for districts today and support is definitely needed to fend off hackers and attackers, but does the support need to come in the form of guidance or restricting what products and services districts can use? States have already passed legislation on handling student data, and organizations such as SEDTA and CoSN determine effective practices for managing student data and protecting students while online, and standards have been set to manage this. 

The federal government’s role should be supporting states through funding and legislation that protects constitutional and civil rights when states fail to do so. States and local school boards must do diligence to defend the needs of their schools when it comes to protecting student data and online safety. 

Interested in learning more about cybersecurity in K-12, check out these articles:

• Best Cybersecurity Lessons and Activities for K-12 Education
• How to Implement a Systemic Approach to Student Data Security and Privacy
• 5 Ways to Boost School Cybersecurity
• How to Integrate Student Data Privacy Protection into District Data Governance Plans    

Want to be more informed about protecting students online? Look over these resources: 

• Keeping Students Safe While Learning Online
• A Starting Point for Ensuring Student Online Privacy
• 10 Back-to-School Tips for Online Tips and Resources for Parents   

Longing to learn more about the role of school boards, states, and federal government in overseeing education? Read over this interesting history of our educational system in these resources: 

• History and Evolution of Public Education in the U.S.
• A Relevant History of Public Education in the U.S.  

Our districts are under so much pressure today, let’s stand united to support their best efforts and intentions, and let’s make sure each entity responsible -- federal, state, and local school boards -- educates our amazing students and does the right thing for the good of the whole. 

Emily Oster, an economics professor at Brown University and author of books on pregnancy and parenting, and her team, have launched the COVID-19 School Data Hub. 

The website serves as a central database for educators, researchers, and policymakers looking to study and understand how the pandemic shaped students’ modes of learning in the 2020-21 school year and what the implications of that are going forward. It includes data from 31 states and more than 56,000 schools.

In a recent Q&A with Tech & Learning, Oster said she hopes it will bring K-12 educators and researchers together to answer pressing questions with actionable data. 

Q: What inspired you to start the COVID-19 School Data Hub? 

A: The school data hub project is an offshoot of the project we did last year, which was more specifically tracking COVID rates in schools. When we came to the end of last year, we were not planning to continue that project, but looking back over the school year, we realized that there was so much variation in opening and in what kind of access kids had to in-person school, and it was becoming increasingly clear that it might matter for a lot of outcomes, and that there wasn't a sort of systematic way to retain that data over time. And so, this is really an effort to do that in the service of our own research but, hopefully, also research and policy that others will do. 

Q: Any advice for how people can use and learn from the data hub? 

A: From the standpoint of individuals and policymakers, if you're interested in the broad picture of what was happening, there's a lot of ways to be interactive at either the overall national level or at the state level, just with maps and seeing how things move over time. Increasingly, we'll have research by us and others that will be available in the hub, so that people can start asking some questions. I hope people will tell us, “Hey, this is a question I want the answer to,” and maybe we can try to answer it. 

Q: What about those researching K-12? 

A: We built this all to be accessible to researchers. So the idea was to not just put up those maps, but say, “Here's the raw data. We cleaned it, so you can start using it right now.” So basically, if you have some outcome, be it parental employment, student mental health, something about test scores, sports participation, whatever it is, and you're interested in how that relates to schooling mode, you can go in and download the data. It'll be clean, it'll be in a usable format, it'll be coded up at an easy level, you can merge it right in, and you can start doing stuff right away. There's going to be an interest in being responsive and figuring out what kind of losses have we seen -- how are we going to fix them? Having the ability to do that quickly, without every individual researcher needing to privately deal with each individual state and inputting all the data on their own, that's the goal.

Q: Looking at the data over the past year, what are some of the big themes that have emerged? 

A: One big theme is who has this data, which is a slightly weird theme, but actually realizing the variation across jurisdictions and states in particular in how accessible this data is, is important. There are states where they know every week for every school how many kids are in each learning mode, and they can kind of get that for you in a spreadsheet. Then there are states where they actually have no idea what mode the district was in at all last year, like just nothing. They couldn't tell you anything about it. I mean, they could call the district, but nothing in terms of systematic data. Part of why that matters is highlighted by the pandemic, if you want to be able to affect policy at the district level, or say, ‘“We should all do the same mitigation,” or, “We should all do this kind of thing.”  

The other big thing is just geographic variation and demographic variation. There is a huge amount of variation across the U.S. in how much access people had to in-person schooling, with some areas having really quite a lot pretty consistently over the year and some areas having very low or none. Students of color and lower-income students are much less likely to have had access to in-person schooling, which we know, but it gets reinforced by the data. 

Q: What are some of the questions you and your team are looking at in relation to the pandemic and school? 

A: There are these learning loss questions, and there are these physical health questions. Our team is very interested in how we can think about what we're doing to fix those problems. It's one thing to kind of recognize that there are losses, but then a secondary piece of that is, ‘Well, now everybody's got a bunch of recovery money, so what are you going to do with it?’ 

This data hub, I think of as a kind of clearing house and an opportunity to pull in some information about that and just start to think about are there things that districts are doing or schools are doing that are particularly good for recovery. And that's gonna matter, of course, because while the current learning losses are unusual in their size, and the cause is somewhat unique, the fact that some kids are behind in learning is not unique to the pandemic. And so if we have the opportunity to learn about what kind of tutoring is most effective, for example, that feels like something that has implications beyond this particular moment.” 

Q: Anything else you’d like to add? 

A: I hope people are aware of this, and that they can use it to get a sense of what was going on broadly in their state and across the country. The call to action I would have is this is going to draw in a lot of people who are interested in answering questions that are of interest to schools. I think that the data hub is a coordination mechanism, as much as it is a data mechanism. And so there's an opportunity here for schools to have a reach into some research teams and say, “Hey these are the things we're really interested in answering.”

• Micro Lessons: What They Are and How They Can Combat Learning Loss
• High-Dosage Tutoring: Can Technology Help Curb Learning Loss?

It’s one thing to learn about the impact of global climate change in general terms, it’s quite another thing to study how climate change will affect your neighborhood, community, and even your home. 

That’s what Caleb Rice’s physical science students at Lake Worth Community High School recently learned when the class participated in a pilot program utilizing hyper-local climate change data. The data sets are integrated with geographic information system (GIS) mapping and visualization programs, and were made available through a partnership between AT&T and EcoRise, a nonprofit dedicated to inspiring a new generation of green leaders by working with K-12 students. 

Students in Rice’s class were able to zoom in on their school and neighborhoods and then utilize flood projection data and wind data to evaluate areas most susceptible to flooding, using a 50-year projection. While doing this, they explored ways to create advocacy tools and support preparation strategies for climate resilience projects for areas most at risk.

“Once they started learning about climate resiliency, they got really connected to the subject, especially when we started talking about the social vulnerability index,” Rice says. “Our area has a high social vulnerability index, and they were able to discuss different facets of gentrification and what they have seen, and how that connects to the coastal flooding and people at risk when disasters happen.” 

“Analyzing the data, synthesizing all these topics, will help our students not only in the science content area, but also in math, social studies, and English,” says Venkata-Suseela Tadepalli, a science coach and department chair at Lake Worth High School. “I will definitely push to expand this program to other subject areas.” 

Finding And Using the Data 

The project came about after staff at EcoRise learned that AT&T had a new climate resilience project. “They were partnering with an organization to collect data that was extremely detailed in terms of forecasting climate risks, and there was a GIS mapping component,” says Gina LaMotte, founder and president of EcoRise. “This data for them was for business -- understanding what the climate risk level and vulnerability was for their customers and their infrastructure. But they were really forward thinking in understanding that this information could be utilized by the community at large.” 

Combining this new data with resources, EcoRise has created a powerful resource for educators and students to study climate change and much more. “It's about how we take this into our lives and stand up as a leader and take action right now,” she says. “Young people spend 14,000 hours in a classroom and there's an opportunity for them to be actively solving and supporting the solutions in our communities -- it's not just up to the adults, young people have the opportunity to also contribute their ideas and their actions.” 

How to Utilize It In Your Class 

Educators interested in learning more should visit the Climate Risk and Resilience Portal (ClimRR) as well as the EcoRise’s Gen: Thrive Tools site. 

The data AT&T has collected so far focuses on coastal concerns such as flooding and high winds, but plans are underway to collect more data about environmental concerns such as wildfire risks and urban heat islands (urban areas that experience heightened temperatures). 

In the meantime, Gen: Thrive already has other data layers embedded in its mapping tool. “Students can look at other environmental issues like polluted waterways and hazardous waste sites, and there's certainly a lot in terms of environmental justice issues and equity,” LaMotte says. 

Rice advises other teachers who plan on using these tools in the classroom to let students take the reins. “I've had a lot of success using a collaborative learning strategy with the students where they've been engaged together in small learning groups,” he says. “They've been bouncing ideas off each other while I'm more taking a backseat approach, facilitating.” 

• How to Teach Data Science in K-5
• How to Teach with the U.S. Government’s UFO Report

Charts, graphs, and diagrams are essential tools students and teachers use to visually present data in an informative, attractive, and engaging manner.

Students can visit the sites below to create charts, graphs, and diagrams for assignments in every subject, especially those that rely heavily on data and statistics, such as science, math, history, or social studies. Teachers will find these sites ideal for creating lessons or keeping track of student progress in the classroom, whether in-person or online.  

Fully Free/No Account Setup Required

• Chartle
  Chartle users can take advantage of 10 types of charts, a gallery of example charts, useful FAQs, and the ability to style the color, patterns, and texture of every chart. Additionally, it’s easy to export charts as image, PDF, or csv files.
  
• Chartgo
  A simple, easy-to-use site for creating and sharing bar, line, pie, and area charts. Includes a user guide, video demos, and example charts. Create your chart right in the browser window or upload a csv file. Download your chart as a png, pdf, or svg file—or save it online. Couldn’t be easier!
  
• Hohli
  Easily create, edit, and share 12 types of charts and graphs directly in your browser, with no need to upload csv files. Hohli automatically generates a URL for sharing and HTML for embedding into a website. Customize your chart with a straightforward menu of size, color, text, and axis options. Integrates with Google Charts API, a free dynamic chart-generating program.
  
• Plotvar
  Quickly create a line, bar, pie, or dynamic (“live”) graph and download your chart as a png, jpg, pdf, or svg file. Extra for advanced students: Tutorials to create charts with programming languages such as C#, GNUplot, python, and jschart.
  
• Online Charts
  Offering 12 customizable chart types, including area, radar, meter, and bubble, Online Charts goes beyond what other free sites provide, yet is easy to navigate. Simply click on each menu tab to add or edit design, data, or fonts, then preview in a small, medium, or large version. Save online or download as png, svg, jpg, pdf, or csv file.
  
• Kids’ Zone: Create a Graph
  From the National Center for Education Statistics, this free government site offers 5 graph types, graph examples, ideas for having fun with graphs, and the ability to save online. 

Fully Free With Free Account Setup/Email

• Chart Maker
  Very simple and easy to get started right away creating your own basic pie, donut, or bar charts. Share via social media or the provided link. An account isn’t required to create charts, but it will permit users to save creations online, submit for public review, and comment/vote on others’ images.
  
• Meta Chart
  With 12 chart types available, a clear FAQ page and tutorials, it’s fast and fun to create charts with Meta Chart. No account required to get started, but you’ll need a free account to save and edit your charts. Bonus: Create and share private charts, visible only to those with a PIN.

Free Basic Plan With Account Setup/Email

• LucidChart
  Cloud-based platform for visualizing data with timelines, mind maps, venn diagrams, and other charts. Students and educators are eligible for a free education account, which includes unlimited document creation, three editable documents, and basic collaboration and sharing capabilities. The free education account is integrated with Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Gmail; Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and OneDrive.
  
• Cacoo
  Offers a wide selection of templates and shapes plus the ability to collaborate with others in real time while creating a chart or diagram. The free education plan includes unlimited users, six sheets, and up to 15 collaborators. Check out the tutorial section [https://cacoo.com/blog/categories/tutorials] for ideas on creating and sharing lesson plans [https://cacoo.com/blog/creating-lesson-plans-cacoo/] and diagrams.
  
• Visme
  A comprehensive presentation platform used by K-12, higher education and business customers, Visme provides a free account allowing up to five projects, jpg downloads, and selected templates and charts/widgets.
  
• infogram
  More than just a chart creator, infogram offers a wide array of methods to visualize information, including infographics, reports, maps, dashboards and much more—in addition to 18 types of charts. Free basic education account allows up to ten projects using more than 37 interactive charts types and 13 map types. 

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Today, schools are continuously collecting data on the students they serve. This data can be a powerful tool for learning by assisting educators in benchmarking student success, identifying learning gaps, personalizing the learning experience, and more. 

The electronic ecosystem schools have developed to accomplish this requires that staff collect, maintain, and support data across countless applications. To further complicate the situation, free or unmonitored applications collect student personal information outside the school's ecosystem. On top of this, hackers continuously test school networks and look for ways to capitalize on security flaws.  

Schools have the enormous responsibility of caring for student data and personally identifiable information. Data security and privacy could be one of the most daunting technology tasks educators face, and as we increase the use of technology, the task becomes more challenging every day. This responsibility is bigger than any single school technology department. 

School IT departments are working to prevent data theft through deliberate and malicious attacks, data loss through misuse or insufficient protection, and faulty practices in collecting, sharing, storing, and removing data. Combating this rapid evolution requires a commitment to continuous improvement and planning, but how do schools start this journey? 

Here are a few ideas that help to support districts.

Review the Law, Standards, and District Policies, and Develop Networks 

Data privacy laws are evolving and reflect current threats and knowledge. A district’s first stop should be to review your current state laws and standards. There are many federal laws, such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA), and Children's Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA). 

If your state has not adopted a set of standards or laws that regulate student data, you may want to start with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Framework. NIST is the framework most states have adopted as the gold standard for data security and privacy. It is used by the government, military, and business. 

You should also consider joining data security and privacy networks in your region, state, or nationally. Many of these groups send regular emails with updates on national trends and security alerts.

Start with the Big Question 

It is essential to realize that student data and personal information is part of every aspect of education. Schools need to have regular conversations about data privacy. Start by asking the big questions using the 5Ws of data security and privacy. This includes: 

• What data are we collecting? 
• Why are we collecting this data? 
• Who is collecting and has access to this data?
• When does this data get collected and destroyed?  
• Where is this data stored or used? 

These simple questions can facilitate in-depth conversation about data in your organization and may ignite some level of healthy debate. These questions will also lead to the development of additional documents. 

One vital record to start with is a software and data inventory. A software and data inventory should provide the school a list of software applications, the type of data held in that application, and a determination of each user’s access rights.

A document such as this helps to uncover important information including where data is stored and who has access to that data. This information is valuable for onboarding and exiting users, for example. Schools should only be collecting the information they need, and users should only have access to the data they need to do their work.  

Understand the Threat 

To better understand data security and privacy, schools need to analyze the threats they face and the methods used to mitigate these threats. Potential threats have three general components, and districts can address each with specific measures. This includes:  

• Preventative measures: Any actions taken to minimize the risk of a data breach, loss, or malicious attack. Preventive measures could include providing regular training, updating applications, or maintaining policies and procedures.  
• Detective measures: All ongoing action and technology used to identify potential data breaches, loss, or malicious attacks. Detective measures could include hardware/software alerts, compliance monitoring, or threat detection applications. 
• Corrective measures: Any planning or action taken as a result of a specific threat. Corrective measures should include an incident response plan, corrective plan/actions, and recovery plan/actions. 

A school responds to each of these measures using administrative controls, technological controls, or physical controls. 

• Administrative controls approach data security and privacy by limiting access to specific applications or types of data. 
• Technological controls include applications or hardware that monitors the school’s network for potential attacks or threats. 
• Physical security protects the physical infrastructure from unauthorized access. 

A crosswalk of measures and controls may help schools look holistically at their data security threat measures and controls. 

Continuous Professional Learning 

It may seem that data security and privacy is a technical problem, but it is much more expansive than this. It is an adaptive challenge that requires constant and continuous human support. It only takes one human intervention to prevent or cause a data breach, so ongoing learning and communication is a must for any organization. Staff training is not a one-time event but a regular reminder of data security and privacy best practices, policies, and procedures. Keeping these practices, policies, and procedures up to date with regular review and refinement will help fight evolving and new challenges.   

A data breach, hack, or loss is no longer just a potential risk for an organization; it is inevitable. Preparing with a comprehensive Incident Response Plan and Team is essential. The team should understand the order of command, actions taken based on security threats, communication protocols, and post-activity reflection. Developing tabletop exercises that address your organization’s most significant threats will help make the team ready for any incident. 

Know Your Community Tolerance to Risk and Capacity 

The continuous balance with technology in schools has always been usability vs. security. The more secure you make a network, the harder it becomes for users to do the work they need to do. No network is 100% safe, but schools must continually improve to address the need for security and privacy. Budget restraints, technical barriers, community support, institutional conditions, or other roadblocks may hinder your ability to manage all of your security concerns in the way you want. 

Addressing privacy and security risks can be overwhelming. A tool, such as the Classical Risk Matrix, can help determine the impact of a threat on your organization by analyzing the likelihood of occurrence. 

The Classical Risk Matrix considers the potential damage (neglectable, minor, moderate, critical, or catastrophic) this vulnerability provides to the probable occurrence (rare, unlikely, possible, likely, or certain). The greater the potential damage and the higher the likelihood of occurrence, the more significant the impact. The Classical Risk Matrix helps your team prioritize its work. For example, if a threat is certain to happen and would be catastrophic, it would rank high on the task list. 

Understanding your organization’s current risk level and your organization’s risk tolerance will help you prioritize your plan and pathway forward. Making your school more secure is a journey, not a destination, and every journey starts with just one step. Make your first step today. 

Andrew Taylor is Director of Technology and Professional Learning for Byram Hills School District in Armonk, N.Y.

• 5 Ways to Boost School Cybersecurity
• Free Professional Development Helps Educators Teach Cybersecurity

In this new era of remote learning, having secure access to reliable data is key to measuring the engagement of our students -- whether they are learning online, face-to-face, or in a blended model. 

In this Tech & Learning Lunch ‘n Learn webinar, Dr. Kecia Ray talked with thought leaders about how schools can ensure all of their technology works together seamlessly so teachers can deliver personalized learning, identify and address learning gaps, manage hybrid scheduling and attendance, and more. 

Watch the on-demand version here 

Key Takeaways

Simplification is key. The proliferation of technology has been on a trajectory for the past 30 years has seen an increase in complexity, said Joel Hames, VP Product for PowerSchool. He pointed out that 74% of districts now use more than 26 different edtech products or platforms.

“It makes for a complicated ecosystem for schools to navigate,” said Hames. Having a complex system and platforms that aren’t connected means more work for teachers and students, which takes away from learning time.

“You will never have less data than you do now,” said Sean Casey, Strategic Partnerships, Ed-Fi Alliance, who agreed that having so much complexity is a challenge for everyone.

Casey said the “secret sauce” they’ve is focusing on use case, and by combining technology and educational leadership to focus on specific problems, such as absenteeism in one school, for example, wins can be stacked toward solving larger issues in education, such as truancy. By bringing data from various sources into one place, or on one platform, it can be used in an apples-to-apples way so it can be leveraged to solve similar use cases.

“Teachers may not understand interoperability, but they get excited when you can simplify what they do,” said Hames. By simplifying things, you can galvanize everyone around a common cause.

Working together. When it comes to finding solutions to common problems, Hames pointed to three critical success factors.

“If you can embed with and really connect with the end users, then you can really gain insight on how to use data to help students,” he said, encouraging educators to leverage what they can from other districts who have solved the same kinds of problems before. He reminded educators that they’re not alone and that there are many other LEAs who are solving or facing similar problems.

“Many hands make light work,” Hames said. “We can solve some large-scale problems as a field and solve them as a community working together.” When working together, the group can bounce ideas off one another and allow the best practices to emerge.

Hames also encouraged educators to rally around their priorities to determine what problem they are trying to solve. “Once you zero in on that, then you can determine what data you need to solve that, and then find the tools that support that,” he said. 

Change doesn’t have to hurt. When Oxford Public Schools in Massachusetts started looking for an SIS system to combine with its existing SPED system, interoperability was a key focus so that data could easily flow between the systems, said Kadion Phillips, Director of Technology for Oxford Public Schools.

Phillips discussed the district’s top challenges in this situation.

And then how having data interoperability helped to solve these challenges. 

“Changing over from any system is painful,” Phillips said, although he said by doing it in phases eased some of the bumps along the way. Opting for interoperability, however, will provide a good return on investment, especially for the district’s families. “We can bring in tech, but we first have to make sure it’s going to be actually useful for all our constituents,” he said.

Students first. “Any effort to tie together or implement technology needs to make life better for your students first,” said Hames. The improvement for students that will result from any change you make is a point to rally around.

Echoing that sentiment, Casey added that if district leaders and IT personnel also don’t figure out how to leverage the data that comes from implementing interoperability, a large burden of that is going to fall on the shoulders of teachers. “We have to make our data work for us otherwise it will become this untenable thing for the people we absolutely don’t want it to fall on,” Casey said. “They don’t need more on their plates.”

Lunch 'n Learn with Tech & Learning

We hope you can join us for this  District Leadership Lunch ‘n Learn Roundtable series, hosted by Dr. Kecia Ray. In this series, districts from across the U.S. share their strategic plans, the challenges they are facing, and the creative solutions they are using to support students and teachers. Register for our upcoming events here. 

More from T&L: Lunch 'n Learn roundtable recaps

• How to Use Data to Prepare for the Upcoming School Year
• Using Data to Prepare for Back to School
• T&L Webinars

We are living in a data-saturated world. In fact, 90% of the world’s data has been produced in the past two years and the fastest-growing qualification for new jobs in the STEM field is data capabilities. 

Knowing how to make sense of graphs and ask questions of data is a capability that educators must help their students develop. And yet, the teachers I work with often lament about their students’ inabilities to draw conclusions, reason, and make sense of data. 

The good news is that it’s not too late (or too early, in this case) to start developing data literacy with your students. And the data talks approach might just be the way to develop these skills in your students in a way that works with the time constraints in your instructional schedule. 

How are we falling short in helping students become data literate? 

To start, oftentimes due to curriculum pacing and lack of instructional time, math teachers present data concepts in isolation and out of context. Therefore, instruction becomes very procedurally oriented.  

For example, students view the process of doing statistics as one in which they just have to follow the right steps to find the number in the graph that correctly answers the question. However, data is not just numbers in a graph; data is numbers in context. While students may become skilled at finding the right answers by learning a procedural method, they may not be able to really explain what the numbers mean. By providing students with a premade set of data and data visualizations (graphs, charts, etc.), we withhold from them the opportunity to think critically and do the intellectual reasoning of making sense of the data.

Sadly, teachers of STEM subjects can also do students a similar disservice. As a science teacher, I know that it's important for my students to plan and carry out scientific investigations that produce data, and then use data to make scientific claims. However, if I’m pressed for time, I might skip over the data analysis stage and simply provide the scientific explanation myself. By withholding this opportunity for students to compile and grapple with the data themselves, they are unlikely to develop a full understanding of the science concepts we are studying. 

Enter ... data talks 

A data talk is a discussion-based approach that takes best practices in teaching from both mathematics and science (i.e. implementing tasks that promote problem-solving and reasoning, establishing claims from evidence in science) and combines it all within a structure that is engaging and inviting. It allows the teacher the opportunity to integrate across both mathematics and science disciplines, which can help develop reasoning skills. 

A data talk begins by presenting students with a data visualization that they can relate to. The visualization should rely on their prior knowledge and tap into their curiosity. After giving students time to linger within the graph or data visual looking for patterns, the teacher then invites them to share what they notice and what they wonder about the data. 

The open nature of this invitation supports all students in believing their ideas are valuable. Doing this affirms learners’ identities, which is one of the NCTM’s five equity-based practices to support mathematics learning. So now, students are not only growing their critical thinking and reasoning skills, they are growing a positive identity as a mathematician, scientist, and STEM practitioner. Win-win-win! 

Finally, through rich academic discourse, students collectively grapple with the data to look for evidence to support their claims. The communication portion of the data talk allows students to boost their oral language skills. Students can use the academic vocabulary specific to the mathematics and science units of study while they develop their competencies in speaking and listening. 

All in all, within a data talk, you are addressing math, science, and literacy/language skills--a great way to teach multiple skills within one lesson, saving you instructional time while boosting your students’ data literacy power. 

This process can be summarized in four steps:

1. Questioning
2. Pattern seeking
3. Meaning making
4. Communication

The flow of this structure also supports what cognitive scientists recognize as the three steps in information processing: input, elaboration, application. 

Data talks can lead to scientific investigations 

I recently facilitated a data talk with a class of fourth graders who were in the middle of their science unit of study on weather. I presented students with a bar graph (above) showing the number of tornadoes occurring in Kansas each month for the past 70 years. Students quickly noticed that the most tornadoes occurred during the summer months (May-319, June-317, July-131). They also noticed that no tornadoes occurred in the winter months (December, January, and February).  

Many students wondered why there was such a difference in the number of tornadoes occurring at different times of the year. Some students inferred that the reason why tornadoes didn’t occur in the winter was because it was too cold for them to form. We then compared the bar graph of tornadoes by month to a graph showing the high temperatures by month. Students could see a clear correlation between the two graphs. The openness of this approach encouraged curiosity and motivated students to find answers to their questions. 

I told students that in order to test their claims, we would need to learn more about the conditions that were needed for a tornado to form (one of our science objectives for the unit of study). Next, students spent some time exploring the tornado simulation in the Discovery Education Science Techbook. Students explored by selecting different types of air masses to meet and observed whether or not a tornado was formed. 

What students discovered from the Techbook investigation validated their data-based claim. They found that warm, moist air rising through cold, dry air can create a funnel of fast moving air, and were able to conclude why the data showed no tornadoes occurring in Kansas during winter is because the air is too cold and dry for tornadoes to form. 

Through this short lesson students not only learned about an important science concept (how tornadoes form), but they also started to develop important dispositions that are helpful to a data scientist:

1. Approach data with a curious eye 
2. Always think carefully about the context of the data 

A simple structure to support complex thinking 

A data talk is a simple structure that can elicit complex thinking. Facilitating one is much like facilitating a number talk in mathematics, or the explore phase of a 5E model science lesson. Selecting the right data visualization might be the most challenging part for the teacher, but once you have the right one it will serve as the catalyst for rich student discourse. 

The beauty of the openness of the data talk is that it helps students see the process of data analysis as interesting and investigative. As economist Steve Levitt said, “Data science...opens up...ways for children to become the discoverers of knowledge, as opposed to the recipients of the brilliance of past generations.” 

To learn more about data talks and other ways to promote data literacy, check out: 

https://www.youcubed.org/resource/data-talks/

https://codap.concord.org/

Data Literacy 101: What can we actually claim from data Science Scope—February 2020 (Volume 43, Issue 6) Kristin Hunter-Thomson 

M. Ryan Foster is currently the Elementary Science Coordinator for Virginia Beach City Public Schools. In his 16 years in VBCPS, Ryan has also served as a fifth-grade teacher, Title 1 math specialist, and STEM camp administrator, and is a member of the Discovery Educator Network’s DEN Leadership Council.

• How to Build Remote STEM Engagement
• How to Teach Science Remotely

With COVID-19 showing no signs of slowing down, it is likely that few schools if any will get through the next school year without some form of remote learning. The key to the success of these programs will be an effective collaboration between the technology and instruction departments. 

To help districts address these questions, Dr. Kecia Ray recently talked with thought leaders about how districts are bringing together their technology and curriculum departments to build effective plans to ensure students will receive quality, consistent instruction to ensure learning success in any learning environment. The webinar is part of our "New Year, New Normal" series. 

Watch the on-demand version here 

Key Takeaways

Understanding usage. “When we entered remote learning, we had to make sure our students were engaged, so when thinking about the various platforms, we had to understand our usage first,” said Shawntee Cowan, Chief Technology Officer of Duncanville ISD in Texas. The tech department had to determine if the devices that were distributed were effective, or if the ones students had at home were better. This study of data supported the district’s efforts to upgrade devices for all students, and also helped to determine which platforms and apps were providing a good return on investment. “One of the pieces we talk about all the time is ROI,” she said. “Many times we purchase the same thing over and over, and now that we have a platform [CatchOn] to track that, we’re not double dipping.”

Learning data lessons. “The work we were able to do in the spring was a foundation for the fall,” said Dr. Silvia E. Martinez, Director of Curriculum & Instruction for Duncanville ISD. By using data collected in the spring during remote learning, the district was able to close communication gaps between teachers, students, and parents, and among staff, which provided a strong start for everyone this year. 

The power of partnerships. “We are not alone and we know we have partners who will work with us,” said Martinez. In addition to vendor partnerships, collaboration between departments has been critical. “We’ve had to work vertically as well as horizontally,” said Cowan. “We know that all the instructional materials are tech-based, so if we’re all not working together, we’re not successful.” Curriculum and technology have had to work together, she said, so intentional communication and collaboration has been a huge win for the district. 

Monitoring at-risk students. “By monitoring what our students are doing, what apps they are using, and what their screen time is like, we can see who is at risk and who is engaged,” said Monica Cougan, Manager of Strategic Relationships & Initiatives for CatchOn, an ENA affiliate. By being able to use data to detect trends and improve usage, districts can make shifts quickly in platforms to better ensure student success.

Cougan also suggested that districts create data plans with the following strategic objectives.

Cougan discussed how the CatchOn platform works in terms of tracking student online engagement and platform usage, and how CatchOn works with districts to create customized solutions.

Communicate, communicate, communicate! “You don’t need to be a techie to open the conversation about improving your technology integration,” said Martinez. “If that communication dynamic doesn’t already exist, be the spark to create it.” She recommended departments continue to work together, and stay strong. “Refresh, renew, and know there are tools to reach out for support,” she said. “You’re not alone in this. Be innovative, be creative, and enjoy the journey!”

Lunch 'n Learn with Tech & Learning 

This report is part of Tech & Learning's District Leadership Lunch ‘n Learn Roundtable series, hosted by Dr. Kecia Ray. In this series, districts from across the U.S. share their strategic plans, the challenges they are facing, and the creative solutions they are using to support students and teachers. Access previous webinars and register for our upcoming events here. 

More from T&L: Lunch 'n Learn roundtable recaps

• How to Use Data to Prepare for the Upcoming School Year
• Transitioning from Remote Learning to Blended Learning
• T&L Webinars

Neil Heffernan has long worked to help students receive the benefits of individualized instruction while reducing the time it takes to deliver it. That’s part of what inspired him and his wife, Cristina, to found ASSISTments in 2003, a free math learning program that provides students with instant feedback on problems and gives educators data about student performance. 

“As a platform provider, my job is to help teachers fool their kids into thinking they can pay more attention to them than they really can,” says Heffernan, a computer science professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. “No teacher, be it an adjunct professor, or a person like myself, has enough time to look at everything.” 

Heffernan is famous in the educational world for his efforts in this regard. He’s been featured in The New York Times Magazine and has received multiple grants to develop and improve educational software. As of late, Heffernan, a one-time middle school math teacher, has turned to crowdsourcing to pursue his goal of providing widespread computer-assisted individualized feedback. Crowdsourcing has influenced many aspects of society, including food reviews and encyclopedia writing, but it has yet to be fully utilized for education. “I believe that crowdsourcing now has the potential to transform education,” Heffernan says. 

He’s currently spearheading work on educational crowdsourcing with his team at WPI and recently published a paper at the ACM Learning @ Scale conference that examines how crowdsourcing has an impact on student achievement. 

“It has been shown in multiple studies that expert-created on-demand assistance, such as hint messages, improves student learning in online learning environments,” the paper notes. “In the 2017-18 academic year, 132,738 distinct problems were assigned inside ASSISTments, but only 38,194 of those problems had on-demand assistance.” 

Solving simple problems

To improve the problem-assistance ratio dramatically, Heffernan’s team launched a tool that allowed teachers to create on-demand assistance for a problem as they assigned it. These “assists” consist of helpful hints as well as short video tutorials, and are designed to mimic the kind of assistance a one-on-one math tutor might provide. Heffernan’s team then encouraged a select group of vetted teachers to make their assists available to other teachers who use ASSISTments. 

“We found that teachers inside ASSISTments had created 40,292 new instances of assistance for 25,957 different problems in three years,” the paper notes. “We also conducted two large-scale randomized controlled experiments to investigate how on-demand assistance created by one teacher affected students outside of their classes. Students who received on-demand assistance for one problem resulted in significant statistical improvement on the next problem performance. The students’ improvement in this experiment confirmed our hypothesis that crowd-sourced on-demand assistance was sufficient in quality to improve student learning, allowing us to take on-demand assistance to scale.” 

This paper won a “Best Paper” award at the conference. Heffernan believes it has major implications for education. “The textbook publishers don’t want to hear this story, that this random motley crew can succeed,” he says.

Though ASSISTments focuses on math, Heffernan believes the same principles that make that program can be applied to other subjects, such as physics, and even eventually to areas such as grammar. He’s also exploring programming written feedback for students that would work similarly to Google’s Smart Compose, which offers suggestions as you type. In Heffernan’s system, teachers would input a grade and would be offered a suggested comment based on the grade range. It’s all part of his effort to save faculty time spent on small tasks. 

“The job of any faculty member is so insanely difficult I want to make technologies that help them triage in simple cases,” Heffernan says. “We want to help the teachers in the easy cases so they can spend more time on the hard cases.”

• MIT Professor’s New Book Details Technology's Limitations in Education
• How Learning Pods are a Growing Remote Learning Trend

The research surrounding student outcomes of remotely versus in-person college tells two different stories, says Justin Reich, director of the MIT Teaching Systems Lab. 

“There’s a group of people who say whenever we do studies where we compare radio versus in-person, film versus in-person, computer versus in-person, there’s no difference in terms of media, that you can do good instruction in any model,” says Reich whose book Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education is available on Sept. 15.

“The very best of those studies are randomized control trials,” Reich says. However, “Many of those studies are small, they involve dozens of learners or a dozen class rooms, and a lot of them are in medical education.”  

Over the past 10 years, a new body of research based on observational studies of tens of thousands of students has found evidence of what’s been called an “online penalty.” For instance, researchers looking at the California community college system observed, in the particular context, that not everyone did equally well online. “Many learners appear to do less well online, they’re less likely to pass a course, and they’re more likely to get a lower grade,” Reich says. The online penalty also seems to be more severe for learners who are not historically well-served by our education system, such as learners with low prior achievement and minorities. 

While both areas of research have their strengths and weaknesses, Reich says there is good evidence indicating that well-supported high-achieving students will also do well remotely, but that instructors should make an extra effort to support vulnerable students in their classrooms. 

Designing for success

At Post University in Waterbury, Connecticut, Provost Dr. Elizabeth Johnson says outcomes for students who complete courses are the same in-person versus remote because they are built off of the same learning outcomes. 

“It’s designed so there won’t be a difference,” says Johnson of online learning at Post, for which about 13,000 students enroll in a typical semester. “While the assignment or the assessment or the experience that a student has in their course is clearly going to be different between an in-person classroom or an online classroom, the outcome, the intent behind that learning experience does not change.” 

However, the school does have more issues with retention of remote versus in-person students. 

“With online education, choosing to quit is very easy,” Johnson says. “There is no walk of shame from your residency hall out to the car where mom and dad come and get you. It’s literally as simple as closing your laptop and no longer accepting calls from the university.” 

To prevent remote students from disconnecting from the university, Post has invested in a number of initiatives designed at providing emotional learning and support. One is YOU@Post, a personalized student portal that supplies students with relevant resources on mental health, stress reduction techniques, and on-campus events. To complement YOU@Post, the university recently launched SOAR, a 24-hour service that offers mental health counseling, financial and legal support, and personal convenience services to students and their families. It even includes a cartoon simulation of the campus itself in which students can do things such as click into the library building, where they can enter video chat rooms with other students.

The 9-to-5 schedule of traditional universities does not always work as well for remote classrooms. “Online students are weekend warriors, they’re evening and night warriors,” Johnson says. “They need their questions and their problems answered at off times. So from a technology standpoint those partnerships with those companies that can support having those questions answered throughout the night, having those questions answered throughout the weekend, that is a huge piece to effective online education.” 

Tips for remote teaching

“We should be very concerned about our most vulnerable students this semester,” says Reich, from MIT. “Too often in higher education we have a kind of ‘sink or swim’ mentality that everybody is here at this campus at the same time, and they all decide how much effort they want to put into things.” 

Reich notes that is a fallacy in the best of times and particularly untrue in the current semester. “We have a responsibility as faculty to ask the question, ‘How can I identify the students for whom online or remote learning is working least well, and how can I provide the most support for them?’” he says. 

“We should think about courses as things that we partner with our students to build together,” he adds. “There is exactly one generation of Americans who have participated in learning and schooling during a pandemic and it’s the students who were in our classroom last spring. We should listen to them and we should talk to them about what worked, and what didn’t and build courses and learning experiences that help them feel like they are helping to co-construct what our response is together.” 

Reich offers some additional advice for teachers here. 

5 strategies for building connectivity online

“In my experience, the key to building connectivity with students taking classes virtually is regular and personable communication,” says Johnson, from Post University. She offers suggestions for doing that based on her experience teaching remote classes and working with others who teach them.  

1. Post and email regular announcements with the assignments and activities for the week to help keep your students on track. Make this announcement fun and personable, so that it represents how you would interact with your students at the start of a class meeting. Consider making this announcement an impromptu video to really let your personality shine.

2. If your online course meets synchronously, encourage your students to interact with you and with each other outside of the virtual class session. One great way to do this is by adding an ‘Ask the Instructor’ discussion board forum and a ‘Water Cooler’ discussion board forum in each of your courses. 

3. Personally engage with every student in your class weekly (or every other week for large courses). This can be through substantive responses to assignments or discussion board postings, emails, or phone/video calls. Connecting with your students one-on-one matters greatly in a virtual environment. When students are not on campus, their time with you in their courses represents their primary connection to the University.  

4. Actively reach out to students who stop attending synchronous class meetings or otherwise disconnect from the course. It is easy to feel disconnected from online learning and convince yourself that no one will care if you give up. Getting students to reconnect with you and the course material may be as simple as an email or phone call asking if they are okay and offering support on how to get back on track.

5. If a remote student needs additional help from your school’s student support services, avoid just sending the student a website or email/phone number for the department. A warm transfer where you personally introduce the student to a staff member in that department goes a long way to ensuring the student feels like an important and supported member of the university community.

• The Evolution of Education: The New Normal Could Be Better Than Ever
• Strategies for Assessing Students Remotely

In a presentation on student data privacy for Tech & Learning’s recent virtual leadership summit, Ivy Nelson, education technology manager for Belton (MO) School District #124, shared that of the free apps her district was using, only one-third were FERPA and COPPA compliant. This places the district at risk for violations of federal and state student data privacy laws, in addition to any litigation that might incur from students’ parents for data breaches. 

Watch the full presentation here:

Monitoring, reviewing, and approving apps for use is a huge task for districts, but an important one as the landscape is constantly shifting with new regulations. District IT professionals must ensure they are compliant with all data privacy laws. 

One issue that requires constant monitoring and staff development is terms of service. When a user “clicks through” their acceptance of terms of service on any app, this has the same effect as a legally binding contract. Many free apps do not have the built-in data protections required by privacy laws and puts the district and student data at risk. 

All apps and digital resources approved for use by a district should undergo a defined approval process. The best way to do this, Nelson advises, is to establish a data governance policy. 

Designing a Data Governance Policy 

Everyone in a district is responsible for student data privacy; it is not the sole responsibility of the IT department. Creating a data governance policy is a labor-intensive task, says Nelson, “But a little pain now will save a lot of pain later.” 

Districts that are successful in protecting student data exhibit leadership from the top. Here are some of Nelson’s recommendations to get started:

•  Involve leadership by getting them to acknowledge the need. 
•  Designate an Information Security Officer (ISO) who is the individual responsible for polices relating to data use and privacy. 
•  Bring the right people to the table. 
•  Determine which policies and procedures are already in place. 
•  Adopt additional policies and procedures as needed. 
•  Train data users on relevant policies and procedures. 
•  Think about how best to communicate about privacy to parents and students. 
•  Develop a monitoring plan to ensure policies and procedures are being followed. 

“Before signing students up for any online service, take a few minutes to read the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy for the resource (usually linked in small print at the bottom of the company's homepage) to learn about what data they collect and how they use it,” said Nelson in a follow-up conversation after her presentation. ”Otherwise, we could find ourselves paying with our students' personal information.” 

Strategies and Tactics for Implementing Data Governance Plans 

Karen Fuller, director of infrastructure, communications, and networks for Cypress-Fairbanks (TX) ISD, was co-presenter of the session. 

As the third-largest district in Texas, Fuller and her team have taken additional steps to ensure they maximize cybersecurity while protecting student data privacy. As with many fast-growing districts, Cypress-Fairbanks has an ongoing cybersecurity challenge, particularly in the new normal of remote and hybrid learning models. 

Fuller recently oversaw a two-week implementation of a 1:1 program that required the immediate distribution of 117,000 devices to K-12 students and an aggressive focus on data privacy evaluation.

Managing Data Security 

The Trusted Learning Environment Seal is a mark of distinction for school systems signaling that strong and measurable steps have been undertaken to help ensure the privacy of student data. Fuller says that earning the seal takes some time, but it is a sign of the district’s commitment to protecting student privacy.

Annual cybersecurity training is now required by Texas state law HB 3834 for all district staff. The district experienced a data breach of payroll information prior to staff training, which provided a real-life example of the importance of protecting data. Fuller and her team have undergone extensive staff development, believing that the more personally relevant they can make the training, the better compliance they’ll have throughout the district. 

Fuller participates in the Texas K-12 CTO Council, which sponsors TXSPA, the state affiliate of the National Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC). The SDPC helps establish common data privacy agreements unique to the jurisdiction of each state. Districts using this common agreement do not have to negotiate separately with every edtech vendor about permissions and privacy. Vendors doing business with member districts must sign this agreement. Using the agreement mitigates some risk for districts.

Data breach insurance discounts are available to Cypress-Fairbanks because of these practices they have implemented, Fuller said.

Fuller concluded her presentation by emphasizing the importance of staff training again. “This is how we protect ourselves and the district,” she said.

Additional Resources

•  Belton School District #124’s List of Approved Free Apps that have been vetted for data privacy concerns and approved 
•  Student Data Privacy: A School System Priority. An Essential Commitment (CoSN) 
•  Trusted Learning from the Ground Up: Fundamental Data Governance Policies and Procedures. CoSN, November 2019 

“I am on Team Kid, meaning I strive for love-soaked leadership,” says Frances Marie Gipson, Clinical Associate Professor and Director, Urban Leadership Program at Claremont Graduate University. “This means putting students at the center and then backward planning for what our students need. They are learners now and can become leaders in a community that supports them.”

So the challenge is how to move forward in a way in that research and practice comes together and also takes into consideration how to collect crucial data and build a story around it.

“We went into the COVID-19 pandemic, then immediately into crisis—it was emergency pedagogy for all,” says Gipson. “Many still feel like we're in that space—deciphering who has connection, who doesn't, who has device access, and then how do we have relationships with students, how do we determine attendance, grading. Then it becomes how do we move from remote to restart, let alone recovery.”

Gipson discussed digital storytelling in depth during Tech & Learning’s recent “Future-Proofing Your District” virtual conference.  

The Story of Three Little Provocations 

Gipson poses three provocations to consider:

1. Is Normal What We Want

“It's a challenge, this new normal,” says Gipson. “But what is normal? Is ‘normal’ what we even want? In the words of Laura Darling Hammond, what we had was 'deeply erratic and unequal in delivery.' Some places were doing a phenomenal job, really closing gaps about big issues of equity to become mirrors and models of what we could do as a nation for our students. In other cases, we have to ask what is normal, really normal, and do we want to use that language.”

As of March, studies have shown students in high poverty communities were not finding access points, even with a device. WiFi-enabled buses or working closely with public libraries to create study hubs are solutions, as are sponsorship opportunities for major partners to create connected spaces.

2. Rethink What Competency Means

Another provocation to consider is this quote by John Kind: “There's a danger to the sequential model, but there is also a danger to behaving as though those gaps that students have don't matter and that you can get them to succeed with grade-level work without ever addressing those gaps.”

This could mean redesigning around mastery learning and thinking about competency in different ways, says Gipson. “For example, Khan Academy has really illustrated, ‘This is what competency means’ and backward planned for that so that topics and strategies are addressed. We can curate high-quality curriculum based on things we know work and then put our energy on the relationship building and intervening supports that might be needed.”

3. Online is Not Optional

A recent Forbes article stated, “Online teaching will no longer simply be an option.” This looks different in different environments, and is shaped by connectivity, whether students have devices, and where those devices are being used--are students sitting in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant, what do we know about their learning settings? 

“When it comes to the brick-and-mortar schoolhouse, there might be a mourning over that, a loss, but for others there's an opportunity,” says Gipson. “Now we must build capacity, find the balance and advocacy points, as we move out of this emergency and into the restart.”

Data Storytellers will Define the Next Decade of Data 

“When you communicate what's happening for you and your district, think of each data point as a character in your story,” says Gipson. “It's a way to share your values and visualize these insights in a more structured and narrative way. The data feels cold, this is a storytelling leadership opportunity. What's the story of your system? Facts and figures won't influence decisions or move people to act. Well-crafted data stories can and will.” 

Tools, Belt to Box to Chest 

While using terms such as remote and distant and online, we need to think in a more relational, connected storytelling environment. It’s a new way of process modern learning.

“Think about your teaching toolbox—you know how to selectively pull things out,” says Gipson. “But there's also this big red tool chest with all of these parts and intervening resources. You might think you’ll never know how to use all of that, but it is there. I'd advocate a tool belt—what can we quickly and nimbly use in the moment and do you know how to differentiate quickly (and then know when to go to the toolbox and if needed, or the tool chest).” 

Dashboards and data are great, but teachers and the community need to easily access the information, and to be able to add the storytelling that adds the texture.  

“By using dashboards or automated alerts, employees across your organization can be provided with relevant, role specific insights,” says Gipson. “When these individuals are empowered to act on these insights, schools will see a beneficial wave of incremental improvements.”

• What's Next? Modern Learning Systems for Learners and Leaders
• 5 Steps to Design Instruction for Blended Learning Environments

How can you prepare for the next school year when there are so many unknowns? During this recent Tech & Learning Lunch ‘n Learn leadership webinar, Dr. Kecia Ray talked with district thought leaders about how they collect actionable data that can be used to support back-to-school planning.  

Click here to see the on-demand version

Key takeaways

Keeping it simple. When students and staff were sent home in March due to the pandemic, tracking student performance remotely was yet another unexpected challenge for leaders in Anne Arundel County Public Schools (Maryland). “We wanted to partner with teachers--I didn’t want to be another thing to learn,” said Anna Harding, Accountability Data Administrator. Staff was already using PowerSchool’s Performance Matters platform, so content and assessments were able to be implemented with very little staff training required to assess data. Harding and her team created accountability office hours and were able to provide how-to documents for staff through the platform portal. “We’re not shoving online assessments down anyone’s throats,” Harding said. “We’re just here ready to support them when they’re ready.”

Maintaining focus. By continuing to collect data, educators were able to see which kids were engaging and who needed help. Data collected in Spring will help inform the district for Fall, said Harding, who anticipates needing lots of data, including diagnostic assessments, to create a holistic picture of each student. “There’s no point in collecting it if you’re not doing anything with it,” she said. “Simply putting data in pretty charts does nothing. If we’re not using the data to impact students, then we’ve lost our vision.”

Seeing the bigger picture. “There’s always a story behind the data, but the data gives you a quick insight,” said Marnie Stockman, Education Solutions Director for PowerSchool. Stockman shared her story from her time as an assistant principal during which she worked with a high school student who had initially struggled in high school. By having access to his lifetime assessments data, she could see he had excelled in elementary school and dropped in middle school, so she knew he had the intelligence to excel. They then worked together to get him back on track and eventually graduate. 

Lunch 'n Learn with Tech & Learning 

This report is part of Tech & Learning's District Leadership Lunch ‘n Learn Roundtable series, hosted by Dr. Kecia Ray. In this series, districts from across the U.S. share their strategic plans, the challenges they are facing, and the creative solutions they are using to support students and teachers. Access previous webinars and register for our upcoming events here. 

More from T&L: Lunch 'n Learn roundtable recaps 

• Collaborating with IT and Instruction to Ensure Continuous Instruction in Any Learning Environment
• Using Data to Prepare for Back to School
• T&L Webinars

With so many unknowns, time is more critical than ever for administrative teams to make decisions that are informed by as many facts as possible. There are numerous questions, such as “where, who, and what,” that need to be answered in order to plan for the 2020-2021 school year. Effective data analytics tools can also help schools answer a number of these critical questions by enabling them to assess the effectiveness of instructional planning, whether related to online, face-to-face, or blended models.

Using Geovisual Analytics to Identify Student Needs

The need to understand questions that begin with “where” has become essential to effectively servicing all students. Inequities have been exacerbated by the switch to eLearning during the pandemic, which required students to log in from home. As scenario planning begins for fall, the ability to visualize students geographically to determine hybrid models, split schedules, and/or students who will remain remote for the beginning of the school year is vital to capturing the needs of each and every student in the planning process. Understanding where students are located geographically and what their needs are will remain an important considerations for leaders going forward.

Administrators are utilizing geovisual analytics to address questions regarding:

- Digital Divide challenges:

• Where are the students located who are struggling with no access or haven’t logged in all spring?
• Where do we need to provide hotspots or other options to enable connectivity? 
• What support can local providers supply and where is that support needed most?

- Scenario Planning for Fall Return

• How will we ensure equitable balance in all buildings as we reduce class sizes to accommodate split or alternating day schedules? 
• How will each building be zoned for the various models? 

Mark Finstrom, CTO from Highline Public Schools in Washington, used GuideK12 to track where devices were placed, what the device was, and if the device had connectivity. Looking at additional characteristics, such as socio-economic status and single vs. multi-family dwellings, enabled him to determine where to deploy hot spots and how many were required to provide proper access.

Using Data to Plan for a Variety of Return-to-School Scenarios

This past spring, many districts were in emergency mode, so accommodations and exceptions were made regarding grading standards. Students on IEPs or with special needs may have not been able to receive all of their traditional support or services when schools were suddenly moved into distance-learning mode.

As schools develop more robust instructional plans for next year, there are many more questions that will need to be answered using analytics, including:

• Are students grade-level ready or did the extended break create a gap for some? 
• Which students are completing the assignments?  
• Are there certain subjects that the students are struggling with more online? 
• Where are the areas of disproportionality within the district and what is being done to address the achievement gap? 
• Are students on-track in terms of readiness for their college and career plans?

As a result of the significant number of questions that remain surrounding what a return to school will look like in the fall, districts are creating multiple “what if” scenarios to ensure that they are prepared. Kristin Tollison from Wayzata Public Schools is using GuideK12 to accomplish this, as her district explores all of the possible return-to-school scenarios to ensure that even a split-schedule classroom is consistent with the building’s overall demographics and not skewed by the selection process.

Finding and Funding the Right Tools

CARES Act funds and local state funds could provide a mechanism for districts to purchase tools to answer the important questions tied to access and eLearning. One such tool is 5Lab™ from Forecast5, an analytics tool that provides school districts and building leaders with critical dashboards to monitor student performance, whether in a traditional, remote, or blended learning environment.

Many tools provide districts with log-in information on students entering an eLearning platform. However, it’s critically important that leaders are able to assess and understand what is actually happening while students are logged in. What is the actual level of student activity? How engaged are they? What is their degree of comprehension? The answers to these questions, when tied to student characteristics, are key to ensuring students aren’t falling behind. They can also help identify if an instructor is struggling with the online setting, which might affect student progress.

“After school ended, we had our school improvement meeting and shared 5Lab examples. Our high school administrative team immediately saw the benefits of how helpful this will be during eLearning instances, not only if we do have an extended ‘stay away’ period, but even if we’re in the school building. It gives them examples to look at to see how active kids are with their learning,” commented Lynn Schemel, Director of Data Systems and Assessment at Westfield Washington Schools.

Preparing for the New Normal

Many factors are at play in this “new normal.” Having the ability to explore the variables, both at the grade and building level as well as at the student and teacher level, will ensure administrators can provide students with what they need to continue to learn and answer important “where” questions with tools such as GuideK12.

The ability to track and assess online learning, as well as traditional classroom learning, for determining student progression requires proper metrics. Analytic tools like 5Lab, which answer these critical questions will provide a more focused, relevant way of ensuring every child continues to learn despite the obstacles brought on by the pandemic.

Find out more at www.Forecast5analytics.com, check out their special site of COVID-19 resources here:https://www.forecast5analytics.com/covid-19-resources , or contact jfitzgerald@forecast5analytics.com for more information.

With classrooms from coast to coast locked up and teachers as well as students stuck at home, the ability to teach remotely has never been more important. But it takes more than a webcam, a nimble teacher and some digital content to make it all work, according to Mo Katibeh, executive vice president and chief marketing officer at AT&T Business. An 18-year veteran of AT&T, Katibeh is responsible for getting data to more than 3 million customers. 

Due to social distancing requirements, we had an email conversation in early April about the role of data and communications links in remote learning. 

Tech & Learning: How important is broadband data to curriculum today? 

Mo Katibeh: The nationwide massive shift to eLearning means that broadband data is absolutely necessary for K-12 and higher-ed students. In addition to using technology for homework assignments, our education customers see the need for their students to have broadband access to investigate, explore, research and respond to learning assignments. And, the need is just as important for teachers and administrators, who not only need bandwidth, but highly secure data to conduct their jobs. 

T&L: Should the students’ experience at home be equivalent to the one at school? 

MK: We know that the virtual learning experience won’t always be equivalent to a classroom experience. But there are also many benefits to eLearning. Right now, education experts across the country are trying to determine what is the optimal amount of video conferencing, independent study and use of other online resources. There isn’t necessarily one answer. 

We are seeing teachers who use video applications for teaching classes and also use it during times of independent study for students to ask questions. Other educators are gathering their classes together in the morning and then allowing students to work on their lessons throughout the day. There are many models right now depending on the age, grade and content. 

T&L: Is video an increasingly popular way to teach? 

Yes, at every level of education. Video is extremely popular in higher education and used extensively for online degree programs. Some colleges are even using programs for incoming freshmen with the plan to move students into the classroom in later years. This allows higher acceptance rates without the limitations of on-campus housing. 

Most K-12 teachers use video content to support their own teaching and for occasional collaboration with experts outside the classroom. Yet, direct delivery of instruction via video is not prevalent for K-12. There are many innovative teachers using video content with their students during the COVID-19 crisis. 

T&L: What are the delivery choices these days(LTE, 5G, Wi-Fi, phone hotspot, stationary wireless, ...)? 

MK: Yes, all of the above. The right answer depends on where you are, of course. Many students will be using their home Wi-Fi. However, mobile broadband also plays a key role. 

T&L: What is AT&T doing to make the transition to home teaching and learning easier? 

MK: Moving the classroom into the home requires that every student has access to the Internet. We launched an unlimited wireless data offer for new lines, at no cost for 60 days, to qualified public and private K-12 schools, colleges and universities.  

Schools also need to ensure they can block or filter internet content that can be harmful to students. We’ve included a content-filtering solution in our offer to help schools protect the children in their care. 

To further support Internet access to communities across the country, we’ve expanded our low-cost option for home Internet service with Access from AT&T program. And, we’re also offering video conferencing solutions that support students, teachers, and entire administrations.

T&L: Has the company seen a big increase in the use of broadband data since schools have closed? 

MK: Yes. We have seen increases in traffic, for example audio/video conferencing minutes. As of April 6th, we’ve had an overall a 23 percent increase in data traffic versus a similar day in February, but this includes things other than teaching. 

Overall, our network is performing very well. Our employees are working around the clock installing, maintaining and repairing our network so our customers can communicate with each other and stay connected. We are adapting and adding capacity when and where needed to address the minimal congestion resulting from the shift of traffic from work and school to home. 

The data analytics tool CatchOn has released its new guide, Establishing a Robust Student Data Privacy Culture―Action Ideas for School Districts, which is designed to provide school districts with a concise overview of federal student data privacy laws along with five action ideas they can implement in their own systems. Written in collaboration with Reg Leichty, Founding Partner of Foresight Law + Policy, and the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA), this guide presents practical ideas district leaders can implement to make data privacy a prominent part of the fabric of classrooms, schools, and school districts.

This paper also highlights key federal and state student data privacy expectations and requirements that educators and administrators should understand. 

In addition to its federal student data privacy overview, CatchOn is creating state-specific guides that outline and summarize each state’s student data privacy laws and regulations.

Click here to download the federal paper as well as guides for California, Colorado, New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia.

The Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) and the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) announce that more than 400 companies nationwide have now signed the Student Privacy Pledge, affirming their commitment to ensuring student data is kept private and secure. 

Launched in October 2014 with endorsements from President Barack Obama, the National PTA, and the National School Boards Association, the Student Privacy Pledge is asks companies that provide services to schools to commit to twelve legally enforceable obligations, including that they will not sell student personal information, and will not collect or use student personal information other than what is needed for the given educational purposes. Learn more about the Student Privacy Pledge here.

Companies and organizations wishing to review the full text of the Pledge and consider participation are invited to visit www.studentprivacypledge.org or email info@studentprivacypledge.org.
 

The countdown is on for the next Tech&Learning Leadership Summit in Washington, DC March 13 and 14 and Doug Levin, keynote speaker and founder of the K–12 Cyber Incident Map, has just released his annual report that identifies cybersecurity threats facing U.S. K–12 public schools and districts. His results will drive his session during the Summit. Each day this week, Tech&Learning will highlight parts of the report. For the full report, go to The K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center

The K-12 Cyber Incident Map was launched in 2017 by EdTech Strategies, LLC as an effort to build an empirical base of information about the state of cybersecurity in U.S. public K-12 schools and districts. While other efforts exist to catalog trends in cybersecurity incidents and data breaches, including in education, none bring a lens that is both vendor-neutral and reliably actionable for U.S. policymakers, school leaders, IT and cybersecurity practitioners, and civil liberties advocates.

Widely cited research studies, such as Verizon’s annual “Data Breach Investigations Report” and Ponemon Institute’s “Cost of a Data Breach Study,” define the education sector overly broadly: combining K-12 and postsecondary institutions, public and private institutions, U.S. and global institutions all in a singular category of analysis. Other public sources of data breach incidents compiled by experts define their scope in ways that exclude the reporting of significant cybersecurity incidents (while including incidents that are wholly analog, such as the loss of control of paper-based records). While there may be lessons to be drawn from each of these valuable efforts for education stakeholders, the unique focus of the K-12 Cyber Incident Map has allowed it to become the definitive source of information about the state of K-12 cybersecurity.

Check the map here

ENA™ and CatchOn™ announce they have expanded their partnership with Kajeet®, provider of K-12 managed multi-network wireless and mobility solutions. 

ENA will offer Kajeet SmartSpot® devices, portable Wi-Fi hotspots, and Kajeet SmartBus™, a school bus Wi-Fi and technology solution. These solutions equip districts with educational, 4G LTE Wi-Fi that extends the classroom to wherever students need connectivity.

Kajeet will add CatchOn to its portfolio of solution offerings. CatchOn, a data analytics tool, provides district leaders a window into the efficacy of their technology investments and integrations. 

 In recognition of Safer Internet Day (February 11, 2020), the Future of Privacy Forum (FPF) today released a new “Student Privacy 101” video series that is designed to help school leaders better understand federal and state privacy laws and protect sensitive student data. 

The “Student Privacy 101” video series includes: 

• An introductory video that previews the challenges and opportunities around collecting and safeguarding student data in the digital age. 
• A short video on legal compliance, providing concise information about the requirements and role of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA);
• An brief overview of the most common privacy risks and how to avoid them.
• A discussion on transparency, including advice on collecting community feedback, and engaging and informing parents about a school’s data collection practices.

FPF also published a new blog post marking Safer Internet Day today with additional information and resources about how schools can protect children’s data privacy. 
 
To learn more about Safer Internet Day, visit www.saferinternetday.org. For more information about FPF’s student privacy work, visit www.ferpasherpa.org. 

Flexible, feature-filled LMS facilitates focus on whole child

Pros: By using its Groups feature and integrating with Google Classroom, it's easy for teachers to see student progress and keep families informed.

Cons: The number of features and lack of design polish means teachers will have to tinker a lot ot get up and running.

Bottom Line: Being able to access lots of customizable data, group students beyond classes, and communicate easily with families gives teachers a clear picture of each student that they can share.

Read more 

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

Changing our perspective on assessments can take them from a time-consuming necessity to a useful resource to provide pathways to a better future in academia. Scary evaluations are a thing of the past. In a school atmosphere where evaluations are seen as roadmaps for successful learning, teachers and students both win. 

Building a positive culture of assessment is the key to success for both students and teachers. Tech tools alone cannot transform your data culture, but the right knowledge and strong leadership can. We’ve found that schools and districts are most successful if they possess these five common traits.  

1. A broad definition of assessment

The word ‘assessment’ should not be a substitute for the word ‘test’ or ‘grade’. When teachers, schools, and districts broaden their overall definition of what an assessment can be, teachers are able to get a more complete sense of what a student has learned and where there is still room for improvement. These don’t need to be limited to benchmarking, check-points, or end-of-level tests, and not all assessments factor into a student’s gradebook. Whether it be performance-based evaluations, rubrics, or even a one-on-one conversation about frustrations and successes, think of an assessment as any time you allow a student to demonstrate what they know and don’t know. 

2. Assessments aren’t feared by teachers and students

When the statistics come back and the data doesn’t show perfect scores or off-the-charts comprehension, many instinctively assume the data is “bad” and shy away from acknowledging what it can illuminate. All data is good data. Even numbers that reflect a less-than-ideal outcome offer an opportunity to improve and address specific student needs. Just as we tell students, take every opportunity to apply what you’ve learned. 

Students shouldn’t be afraid to take assessments either. Often, students fall into the trap of seeing every evaluation as a grade that tells them how well they’ve prepared or how “smart” they are. Instead of seeing low scores or numbers and thinking “I can’t do that,” teachers work with students to identify additional learning opportunities and help them reframe the way they see assessments to say, “I can’t do that yet! But I will learn.” Evaluations are opportunities for growth and challenge, rather than a harbinger of doom and gloom. 

Teachers should have an understanding that no matter where students are in their learning process, the results of assessments are tools to guide further instruction and evaluate the efficacy of their own teaching. The ultimate goal is to refine programs to best benefit the students and meet them where they are. When students see assessments as ways to show off what they know rather than exposing where they fall short, they’ll be more likely to approach them with a positive outlook geared toward learning and addressing their own knowledge gaps. 

3. Student data are evaluated as a team

Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) empower teachers with the knowledge and tools to best evaluate student data as a team.  From sharing experiences to exchanging resources for growth, teachers making use of PLCs to broaden their own perspectives and create a culture of collaboration. Joining forces with other experienced professionals often paves the way for a more robust program of evaluation (rather than creating competition as some may worry). 

No educator is an island. Sharing resources and delivering common assessments on a school- or district-wide scale forms a solid foundation of consistent data and allows teachers to get new eyes on data. Working together, teachers and administrators can collaborate on instructional strategies to create a space for conversations that have a real impact on student learning. 

4. Real-time data are leveraged to address student needs

See evaluations as a tool for constructive feedback on all levels to address students’ needs. Many successful teachers use the ITS model: Identify student levels of understanding; Target students for intervention; Self-evaluate your own instruction and efficacy. Breaking down assessment data allows teachers to see the full picture of a student’s understanding on an individualized level. First, find the students that have room for improvement and target their weak spots for extra attention. Then, take the critical step of understanding how you can improve instruction as a teacher. 

5. Data are used to differentiate learning and instruction on an individual basis

If we solicit data from student evaluations, we have a moral obligation to use that data to benefit those students. For example, benchmark data is integrated in the formative process. One example of a technological tool that helps make the most of student data is Instructure’s MasteryConnect. This product has a Benchmark Compare feature that allows educators to have a side-by-side view of students’ formative and benchmark assessment data, allowing them to identify important patterns and trends in student levels of understanding to inform their instruction. 

Whichever assessment practice model you use—be it Response to Intervention (RTI), multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS), or any other— these five common traits in schools and districts can help achieve a positive culture around assessments.  

Trenton Goble is the VP of K12 Learning at Instructure 

Trenton left his position as an elementary school principal in January 2012 to become MasteryConnect’s Chief Academic Officer and Co-Founder. He now serves as VP of K-12 learning at Instructure. During Trenton’s 19-year career as an educator, he taught various grade levels, served as an Assistant Principal, and spent 11 years working as an Elementary School Principal. Trenton holds an M.Ed in Instructional Technology from Utah State University, and he designed the Mastery Leadership Institute to support school and district leaders in implementing successful data strategies and cultures. 

When students design an infographic they visualize data and present their research in a dynamic way. They can use icons, charts, shapes, stylized fonts, borders, photos, and more to make data more engaging and understandable. Students can also tell a story with numbers. They are sharing with others their interpretation of statistics, queries, facts, and survey data to tell a bigger story. The web tools below will get you started with free templates students can quickly edit.

Tools for Creating Infographics

• Infogr.am is a simple web tool to design infographics from templates with graphs, charts, fonts, and more. The free plan allows 10 projects.
• Piktochart is a free web tool to design infographics with templates, graphs, charts, fonts, and more. The free plan allows 5 projects.
• Canva is a free web tool, iOS and Android app that allows the creation of several different digital products with templates, fonts, stock photos, icons, frames, and more. In addition to infographics, students can create magazines, flyers, greeting cards, and more.
• Genial.ly is a free web tool for creating infographics, interactive images, timelines, presentations, and more.
• Venngage is a great way to create infographics with some incredible templates students just click and edit. Access to clipart, etc. The free plan allows 5 projects.
• Visme allows you to create a few free infographics with cool transitions and effects. The free plan allows 5 projects.
• Check out this fantastic Google Draw template for creating infographics by John Calvert.
• Easel.ly is another web tool for creating infographics. The free plan allows 5 projects.

To thank you for your sharing, friendship and support over the years I am sharing free tips, learning resources, web tools and apps for 25 days in my Digital December STEM Advent Calendar.

cross posted at teacherrebootcamp.com

Shelly Terrell is a Technology and Computer teacher, education consultant, and author of books including Hacking Digital Learning Strategies: 10 Ways to Launch EdTech Missions in Your Classroom. Read more at teacherrebootcamp.com.

Leaders in education and technology came from around the country to the Tech & Learning Leadership Summit. There they spoke openly and passionately about current trends, critical problems, and possible solutions. 

Home use:

It’s a myth that kids aren’t responsible enough to take devices home. There was a consensus among attendees that If schools and districts put the right systems and structures in place, students can not only use devices at home during the school year, but they can also use them during breaks and in the summertime. Doing so benefits students and the feeling of device ownership reduces damage.

Ransomware and phishing: 

These are now emerging as enormous areas of concerns for educational institutions. 

Device diversity: 

Attendees were split on the idea of student choice when it comes to devices. Some districts felt it was important for students to pick the right technology for the task. In other districts it was an equity issue. It would not be okay for some students to have zippy brand new devices while others had older devices that couldn’t perform the same tasks. These districts provide all students with the same device. 

Evolving conversations: 

Joe Kuzo, Director of Technology at Quakertown Community School District in Pennsylvania, shared that it was nice to hear about the emotional, life-changing impact technology had on students' lives. 

Shifting digital citizenship conversations: 

Paul Sanfrancesco, Director of Technology for Owen J. Roberts School District in Pottstown, PA pointed out that the focus used to be on ensuring students are using technology responsibly. These days, the focus is shifting to ensuring the adults, teachers and parents, are responsible users. It is likely that our students will fix some of the mess we are experiencing now with responsible use. 

Student data privacy: 

We keep coming back to the conversation of student data privacy. We need to figure this out and get beyond this so we can get to focusing on the teaching and learning that students need.

cross posted at The Innovative Educator 

Lisa Nielsen (@InnovativeEdu) has worked as a public-school educator and administrator since 1997. She is a prolific writer best known for her award-winning blog, The Innovative Educator. Nielsen is the author of several booksand her writing has been featured in media outlets such as The New York Times,The Wall Street Journal, Tech&Learning, and T.H.E. Journal.  

Like all Texas districts, Beaumont aligns its instruction and assessments based on student performance on the state’s STAAR (State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness) tests. All K–8 students are screened using Renaissance Star Assessments in reading, math, or early literacy three times each year. Using the screening data, students are placed in the best place for their needs and receive targeted tutorials based on their domain scores.

Beaumont has been using a scripted data-driven instruction (DDI) protocol for several years to guide conversations in their PLCs. For example, all fourth grade math teachers meet and discuss student data together. They script out the approach and instructional delivery to ensure student mastery for the following week. Identifying exact resources to use and how the goals are to be accomplished, teachers leave with a specific plan to achieve learning goals. 

The district uses Accelerated Reader to monitor independent reading, support the self-selection of leveled reading material, and foster a growth mindset. The students also use the data to monitor their own progress. Each student has a data folder where they graph their work in reading, math, and writing every one-to-two weeks. This practice helps students invest in their own academic success. 

Beaumont also uses a social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculum to help build relationships with students. These personal connections provide students the emotional stability they need to focus on learning. The district has implemented the free Sanford Harmony curriculum in every K–5 classroom. Each day students model practices and have conversations that tie back to the goals they have set for themselves. SEL fosters a family environment that gives students tools to manage their behavior and to feel secure and ready to learn. 

To increase access to books at home, the district purchased the My-on Digital Library with thousands of digital books. The platform can be accessed via smartphone, laptop, iPad, Kindle, Fire HD, or desktop computer. To help provide this technology, the district received a grant to provide Chromebooks, Kindle Fire HDs, and WiFi devices for parents to check out from school. 

The weekly data review in addition to the SEL curriculum, facilitated by the appropriate technology, ensures that Beaumont students stay on track to achieve their learning goals.

Technology Used

Renaissance Star Assessments

Accelerated Reader

My-on Digital Library

Kokomo24/7®, a cloud-based school safety platform designed to help reduce K-12 student violence and youth suicides, has announced that it has earned AWS Public Sector Partner status. The AWS Public Sector Partner Program recognizes Kokomo24/7 as an innovative solution that can build, integrate and accelerate AWS product offerings to government, education and non-profit clients around the world. To achieve this recognition, Kokomo24/7 underwent a comprehensive assessment by AWS, including a review of current successes in delivering public sector cloud projects.

Kokomo24/7® Safety Cloud™ is a SaaS product that provides a student safety platform designed to help administrators, resource officers and faculty to reduce bullying, suicide, and other disruptive learning events. Kokomo24/7 Safety Cloud™ is driven by a proprietary A.I Engine that gives educators and resource officers years of analytical incident data to help determine the probability of unsafe student incidents.

The Kokomo24/7 Safety Cloud platform is modular and can be rolled out in a phased approach. The product line consists of three main student safety modules: an Incident Management System (IMS) for users internal to the school district; an Anonymous Reporting System (ARS) for both internal users and the system-wide community within the school district; and an Emergency Operation Center (EOC) module providing communications across schools, local governments and emergency responders.

Kokomo24/7 has deployed its Safety Cloud solution on AWS at the second-largest school district in America. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) uses Kokomo24/7’s Safety Cloud to provide district resources with scalable school safety solutions that have security to compliance standards, and the latest technologies built on AWS services.

DataClassroom

Statistical analysis for science classrooms made easy

Pros: Helps students visualize what certain statistical tools can tell us about data.

Cons: Most of the actual calculations and data analysis is done for the students.

Bottom Line: Perform a t-test or chi-square analysis using your own data or provided data sets.

Read more 

App of the Day picks are selected from the top edtech tools reviewed by Common Sense Education, which helps educators find the best ed-tech tools, learn best practices for teaching with tech, and equip students with the skills they need to use technology safely and responsibly. 

By Common Sense Education

Booz Allen Hamilton (NYSE: BAH) and Kaggle today launched the fifth annual Data Science Bowl®, a data science competition focused on social good. 

As part of the annual Data Science Bowl®, more than 50,000 participants have developed and submitted over 114,000 artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to improve everything from detection of lung cancer and heart disease, to monitoring ocean health and helping accelerate life-saving medical research 

In partnership with PBS KIDS, this year’s competition will look at advancements in early childhood education.  The 90-day Data Science Bowl competition will award winning participants with a share of $160,000 in cash prizes.  

The 2019 Data Science Bowl At-A-Glance

Why does this challenge matter? The first five years of a child’s life are critical to their development as it’s when they learn and cultivate linguistic, cognitive, social, emotional and regulatory skills that predict their later functioning in many domains. 

What will participants do? Participants will be provided with anonymous gameplay data from the PBS KIDS Measure Up! app, which was developed as a part of the CPB-PBS Ready to Learn Initiative with funding from the U.S. Department of Education. They will be tasked with creating algorithms that utilize information about how players use the app to determine what they know and are learning from the experience, in order to discover important relationships between their engagement with educational media and learning. The insights gleaned from these solutions will help PBS KIDS and other organizations create new solutions, content and products that help ensure each and every user has the best chance to learn important skills, helping improve childhood learning access and achievement.

Privacy and data security.  The PBS KIDS Measure Up! app does not collect any personally identifying information, such as name or location. All of the data used in the competition is anonymous. The Data Science Bowl and the use of data for this year’s competition has been reviewed to ensure that it meets requirements of applicable child privacy regulations by PRIVO.

To participate in the competition, register and download the data set here. To learn more about the Data Science Bowl, including more information about past Data Science Bowl competitions, visit DataScienceBowl.com. 

Parents and educators read about the latest security breaches every day in news headlines. These breaches are why protecting the privacy of student data is one of the most urgent challenges districts face.

In the past, security breaches have happened primarily to consumer organizations. Increasingly, education technology breaches are perpretrated as hackers find district information systems relatively easy to access. To protect their data, districts need a comprehensive data security policy that defines precisely the pieces of student data they keep and why they keep it. This includes a review of all third-party technology vendors. Districts need to understand the terms of each vendor’s privacy policy for every digital tool and online resource they use. It’s a huge task.

At a recent Tech & Learning Leadership Summit, district leaders shared the ways they’re keeping student data safe. These leaders believe it’s the responsibility of districts to be proactive about student data privacy issues. They say all districts should be educating parents and training teachers on the importance of student privacy and personally identifiable information (PII). Federal privacy laws apply to all states, and states are being proactive about creating legislation to protect student data.

KAREN FULLER, director, network infrastructure and communications, Cypress Fairbanks (TX) ISD:

“We started to take data privacy and security seriously about three years ago. Texas State Bill 820 defines what districts need to do to protect PII. Texas also developed a partnership with the Student Data Privacy Consortium, a group of schools and districts, trade organizations, policy makers, and vendors. As part of the partnership, vendors understand their common responsibilities across the state. At Cypress Fairbanks, we’ve established a process that limits information given to vendors. We also know how to identify data breaches, and how those breaches should be reported to the state. Districts should understand that teachers and administrators are your weakest link. They need training. One way to see exactly who needs training is to send out a phishing email.”

Check out the Cypress Fairbanks ISD cybersecurity webpage. It includes links to resources on student data privacy, cybersecurity awareness, cybersecurity current events, and an approved resources database.

PETE JUST, chief technology officer and chief operations officer, MSD of Wayne Township, Indianapolis, IN:

“The state of Indiana has developed grants and CyberSecurity initiatives for K–12 schools. It includes funding for a K12 Taskforce. There is a grant to establish managed security services, and a growing “CyberSec Resource Hub” for Indiana K–12 specific resources. We recently hosted a CyberSec Sim (Cybersecurity Simulation) at our statewide CoSN CTO Clinic with 150 tech leaders and we’re making the Sim available to use with their district teams.

“At the MSD of Wayne Township, we have a student data privacy agreement that we ask all data-related vendors to sign. We’ve done significant cybersecurity marketing and have run phishing campaigns (via InfoSec) with our staff for the past 18 months. These campaigns have improved the ‘water cooler conversations’ and end-user security compliance significantly. For the past two years we’ve also implemented a calendar of CyberSecurity reviews based on standards from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) that include penetration testing from different vendors.”

ELLEN MCDONNELL, assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction, and technology, Tuckahoe (NY) Union Free School District:

“New York state has a new Data Privacy Law (Ed Law 2-d) which is changing the landscape of accountability and responsibility regarding not just student data, but staff data as well. Though the law has passed, regulations from the State Education Department are still in the works and we’re all in a holding pattern on specifics. In the meantime, we’re creating full lists of software used, including those free titles for teachers to use, redrafting our policies, and training our staff on cybersecurity.”

ANDREW WALLACE, director of technology, South Portland (ME) Schools:

“Maine’s Student Data Privacy Consortium is managed by the Maine Educational Technology Directors Association (METDA). We worked with a local law firm to create a common privacy agreement. Once one school gets a vendor partner to sign, any member school can use the agreement.”

District leaders find value in sharing their work with one another at Tech & Learning Leadership Summits. If you’re interested in participating in one of these events, you can read more about them at www.techlearning.com/news/tech-and-learning-leadership-summits.

Data Privacy Resources

Here are some resources to help launch or augment your district data security program:

The US Department of Education website features guidance and resources about data security for districts.
https://studentprivacy.ed.gov

All 50 states have introduced student privacy laws since 2013, although not all laws have been enacted. Forty-one states have passed 126 laws on student data privacy. Find where your state stands here.
www.ferpasherpa.org/state-laws

The Forum Guide to Education Data Privacy from the National Center for Education Statistics outlines how states and districts can support data best practices to protect the confidentiality of student data.
www.nces.ed.gov/pubs2016/NFES2016096.pdf

The Student Data Privacy Consortium (SDPC) is designed to address the day-to-day, real-world, multi-faceted issues that schools, states, territories, and vendors face when protecting learner information. SDPC’s vision is to develop common activities, artifacts, templates, tools, and effective practices.
https://privacy.a4l.org

National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) offers policy questions and approaches.
www.ncsl.org/research/education/student-data-privacy.aspx

Pledge commitments align with existing federal law and regulatory guidance regarding the collection and handling of student data and encourages vendors to articulate their practices clearly.
www.studentprivacypledge.org

The Future of Privacy Forum hosts events that are usually free.
www.privacycalendar.org

The CoSN website defines student data privacy as the use, collection, handling, and governance of students’ personally identifiable information (PII). This includes any and all information that can be used to identify, locate, or contact an individual student—such as name, address, student ID, and login information.

Common Sense Education has videos and articles about how parents and teachers can protect students’ data privacy. They also have an information security primer for evaluating edtech software.

Researchers and practitioners from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research (UChicago Consortium), the Network for College Success (NCS), and The To&Through Project explain their “practice-driven” approach to data in Practice-Driven Data: Lessons from Chicago’s Approach to Research, Data, and Practice in Education. The UChicago Consortium has conducted more than two decades of research on Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and helps build capacity for school reform by identifying what matters most for school improvement and student success. NCS helps build CPS high school leaders’ capacity to respond to emerging research and data with actionable strategies for improvement through ongoing professional learning. The To&Through Project is an initiative that utilizes NCS and the UChicago Consortium as partners to integrate research, data, and professional learning to move more students to and through high school and college. This combination of research, data, and professional learning has yielded significant improvements in CPS students’ educational attainment, as well as some important lessons with implications for educators in Chicago and across the country. These lessons are:

1. PREPARE
Build Capacity to Facilitate Hard Conversations

Using data to guide school improvement means that the conversation around the data is just as important as the data itself. In order for data to improve student outcomes, educators must be able to use data in conversations about their practice. Our work in Chicago has underscored the importance of building educator capacity to have hard data conversations that clarify what the problem is and what the solutions might be. This requires investing in the capability of one person or a few people at a school to lead data-driven conversations, and it also requires strong school leadership to support a culture of data-driven improvement.

2. FOCUS
Prioritize Research-Based Indicators

In a relatively short period of time, CPS, like a great many school districts across the country, moved from a system in which educators were thirsty for any data to one where they could drown in data if they weren’t careful. The proliferation of data meant that educators needed to find ways to focus their discussions on the most important data. It’s the role of researchers to work with educators and develop high-leverage indicators that can help them focus on what matters the most for future student outcomes. Data system designers can then integrate these indicators into the data that reaches schools. Finally, educators and school leaders can then incorporate this data into their ongoing work, using these indicators to track progress and examine patterns both within and across schools.

3. MAKE MEANING
Develop Shared Ownership over the Implications of Research

When using data for improvement, accessible research findings give school and district leaders the opportunity to infuse their data work with research evidence. This in turn builds educators’ sense of ownership over the problems of practice raised by the research as well as their commitment to changing adult practice to improve student outcomes.

4. STRATEGIZE
Use the Right Data at the Right Time

Decision making in schools varies from big-picture strategy to fine-tuning interventions with individual students. Each of these decisions—and everything in between—benefit from the right data at the right time. The data system should provide schools with different data for different levels of decisions, with researchers evaluating popular strategies across contexts to determine the potential for scale.

5. DISRUPT
Identify and Stop Inequity

Decades of public discussion on the need to reduce achievement gaps has done little to produce more equitable outcomes for American students. In Chicago, we use data not only to highlight differences in student achievement, but also to push educators to examine the beliefs, practices, and institutional conditions that create inequitable outcomes for our youth across the district. Everything from the intentionality of the conversations at the school to the organization of the data ecosystem to the design of the research itself has implications for equity.

Taken together, these five lessons from Practice-Driven Data: Lessons from Chicago’s Approach to Research, Data, and Practice in Education form an approach to data use that focuses stakeholders at various levels on the most important goals and features of a data ecosystem that has the potential to catalyze systematic improvements in student outcomes.

An excerpt from the December 2018 report New Knowledge and Developments in Public Education, published by the University of Chicago’s Urban Education Institute.

While most US high-school students aspire to earn a college degree, less than one in three succeed. One of the primary goals of the University of Chicago’s To&Through Project is to empower K–12 educators with the research, data, and resources they need to move more students to and through high school and college.

“Our work is research based and practice driven,” says Alex Seeskin, director of the To&Through Project and one of the authors of “Using Data to Improve Schools from the Ground Up.”

Knowing that data can be critical for educators as they help students learn and achieve their potential is one thing, but applying the often overwhelming amount of data in practice is another. “We’re data rich and information poor,” says Seeskin. He identifies some key areas of focus for districts as they seek to harness the power of data: identifying barriers to student success, building systems to curate data, professional learning—and patience.

SMOOTHING TRANSITIONS

“One of the biggest problems facing schools is the transitions students have to navigate all the time—between grade levels, schools, and even classes,” says Seeskin. “Students are vulnerable at each one of these, as they move from one set of relationships and systems to another. It’s hard to personalize experiences for students when we don’t know what challenges or successes they faced in the last grade, school, or class. When a student moves from a math to an English class, for example, the English teacher often has no idea what’s happening in that math class and how that student is interacting with material in math.”

It’s critically important, therefore, for teachers to look at data together. Only when they have a holistic picture of each individual student can they personalize learning and offer the support students need. This is especially true of SEL, says Seeskin. “We encourage schools to build these structures and to make it a priority for teachers to talk together about common students and shared groups of students.”

Research also shows that a student’s GPA and attendance are much better indicators of future success than test scores, which tend to predict test scores, Seeskin says. “So we need to understand and pay attention to those indicators as we intervene and personalize work with students.”

CURATING DATA

“Schools and practitioners often feel they’re drowning in data, and time is a valuable resource,” says Seeskin. “The key is to help them curate the data so they know what to pay attention to when—at different times of the school year, for example. We need to build tools that funnel the right data to schools and practitioners—and that also funnel the data they don’t need away from them. Data needs to be understandable and accessible so teachers can make decisions quickly.”

Practitioners need support as they learn to use data and make these data-based decisions. Professional learning should include a technical component as well, Seeskin says, to ensure that the technical problems most schools face don’t sabotage adaptive learning. Trust and collaboration are also key building blocks to success. “There needs to be trust between the system and practitioners and discussions around who’s best equipped to make decisions at different levels within a district,” says Seeskin. “And it’s important to take time to consult with other schools facing similar challenges.”

PLAYING THE LONG GAME

“This is incredibly challenging and complicated work, and there are very few easy answers,” says Seeskin. “I see this a lot—a school can have all of the data and resources they need, but they don’t see immediate change and go looking for a silver bullet. I see systems and schools ping-ponging between new initiatives every year. That type of change is frustrating, exhausting, and often demoralizing.”

Instead, he says, schools need to be comfortable with somewhat slow, incremental progress. “We have to play the long game and build systems and structures and a culture that enable us to invest in process over results. We have to have patience. We can’t change a school in a year. When you take the longer view, you begin to think about gaining trust and buy-in from those who matter most and crafting solutions alongside them.”

This patient view of the bigger picture applies to every step of the process, beginning with the launch. “I’m a huge believer in starting with one thoughtfully chosen school, grade level, or even teacher rather than launching a new initiative across 100 schools tomorrow. There’s real power with starting with an N of 1 and going slowly, recognizing that there will be failure. It’s probably not going to work the first time, but that just means you haven’t figured out how this approach works in your context. When the system is willing to iterate with the first school, by the time they get to the second or tenth school, the intervention is more mature, and they’re able to offer better guidance and respond more quickly. When you give interventions or initiatives a chance to adapt to the surrounding context, they work much more often.”

The research, stories, and resources at https://toandthrough.uchicago.edu illustrate how To&Through’s research-based and practice-driven work is impacting schools and students.

We have never collected more data about our students and society in general. The problem is most people and institutions do a poor job interpreting data and using it to make meaningful change. This problem was something I wanted to tackle in FH Grows.

FH Grows is the name of my seventh grade class in Fair Haven Innovates. FH Grows is a student-run agriculture business at Knollwood middle school in Fair Haven, New Jersey. In FH Grows, we sell our produce to community members and restaurants online and through our student-run farmers markets. Any produce we do not sell we donate to our local soup kitchen. To get the most out of our school gardens, students have built sensors and monitors using Raspberry Pis. These sensors collect meaningful data about our gardens which we can interpret and then turn our data into action. 

Turning Data into Action

In the greenhouse, our gardens, and alternative growing stations (hydroponics, aquaponics, areoponics) we have sensors that log the temperature, humidity, and other important data points that we want to know about our garden. This data is then streamed in real time, online at FHGrows.com (I’ll also embed the dashboard at the end of this post). When students come into the classroom one of the first things we look at is the current, live data on the site and find out what is going on in our gardens. Over the course of the semester, students are taught about the ideal growing conditions of our garden. When looking at the data, if we see that the conditions in our gardens aren’t ideal, we solve the problem. 

If we see that the greenhouse is too hot, over 85 degrees, students will go and open the greenhouse door. We recheck the temperature a little bit later and if it is still too hot, students will go turn on a fan. But how many fans do they turn on? After experimenting, we know that each fan lowers the greenhouse temperature between 7-10 degrees. Opening the door and turning on both fans can bring a greenhouse than can push close to a 100 degrees in late May or early June down to a more ideal 70-80 degrees. 

Turning data into action can allow for some creativity as well. Over-watering plants can be a real problem for students. After some research, we found that our plants were turning yellow because we were watering them every day instead of just when they needed it. How could we solve this problem and become more efficient at watering? Students built a Raspberry Pi that used a moisture sensor to find out when a plant needed to be watered. We used a plant with a moisture sensor in the soil as our control plant. We figured that if we watered the control plant at the same time we watered all our other plants, when the control plant was dry (gave a negative moisture signal) the rest of the plants in the greenhouse would probably need to be watered as well. 

This method of determining when to water our plants worked well. We rarely ever saw our plants turn yellow from overwatering. Here is where the creativity came in: since we received a signal from the Raspberry Pi when the soil was dry, we played around with what we trigger with that signal. We displayed the moisture data on the dashboard along with our other data, but we also decided to make the signal trigger an email. When I showed students how they could write anything in the body of the email from “the plant,” they decided to write the email message from the plant in first person. Every week or so, we received an email from Carl the Control Plant asking us to come out and water him and his plant friends! We later sold this moisture sensor with an email trigger as a product for our customers who forgot to water their plants at home.

If students don’t honor Carl the Control Plant’s request for water, use data to know when to cool our greenhouse, or take similar actions to protect our plants based on the data they collect can have devastating consequences. It doesn’t take long for a hot greenhouse or lack of water to kill our produce. This is a lesson that is unique to combining data literacy with a school garden: failure to interpret data then act based on their interpretation has real consequences. Or, as I explain it to students, not making a decision is making a decision. When it takes 60-120 days to grow the average vegetable, the loss of plants is a significant event for our program. We lose all the time and energy that went into growing those plants as well as lose all the revenue they would have brought in for us. I love the urgency that combining data and the school garden creates because many students have learned that is better to act on an educated guess than to not act at all. 

Using Data to Spot Trends and Make Predictions 

The other major way we use data in FH Grows is to spot trends and make predictions. Different than using data to create the ideal growing conditions in our garden everyday, the sensors that we use also provide a way for us to use information about the past to predict the future.

FH Grows has about two years’ worth of weather data from our Raspberry Pi weather station. Using weather data year over year, we can start to determine important events like when it is best to plant our veggies in our garden.

For example, one of the most useful data points on the Raspberry Pi weather station comes from the ground temperature sensor. Last semester, we wanted to squeeze in a cool weather grow in our garden. This post-winter grow can be done between March and June if you time it right. Getting an extra growing cycle from our garden is incredibly valuable not only to FH Grows as business (since we would be growing more produce to turn around and sell) but as a way to get an additional learning cycle out of the garden.

So using two seasons worth of ground temperature data, we set out to predict when the ground in our garden would be cool enough to do this cool veggie grow. Students looked at the data we had from our weather station and compared it to different websites that predicted the last frost of the season in our area. We found that the ground right outside our classroom warmed up two weeks earlier than the more general prediction given by websites (probably because it is a protected courtyard, kids guessed). With this information we were able to get a full cool crop grow at a time where our garden used to lay dormant. We will be doing the same this fall to try and get another cool veggie grow before the first frost of the season. Two more growing seasons from our garden thanks to data!

We also used our Raspberry Pi to help us predict whether or not it was going to rain over the weekend. Using a Raspberry Pi connect to Weather Underground and previous years’ data, if we believed it would not rain over the weekend we would water our gardens on Friday. If it looked like rain over the weekend, we let Mother Nature water our garden for us. Our prediction using the Pi and previous data was more accurate for our immediate area than compared to the more general weather reports you would get on the radio or an app, since those considered a much larger area when making their prediction. 

It seems like we are going to be collecting even more data in the future, not less. It is important that we get our students comfortable working with data. The school garden supported by Raspberry Pi’s amazing ability to collect data is a boon for any teacher who wants to help students learn how to interpret data and turn it into action, a skill that will be in demand as we continue to collect massive amounts of data just waiting to be interpreted. 

Until Next Time,

GLHF

cross-posted at Teched Up Teacher

Chris Aviles presents on education topics including gamification, technology integration, BYOD, blended learning, and the flipped classroom. Read more at Teched Up Teacher.

Vernier Software & Technology is offering 20 free hands-on workshops this fall to help science educators incorporate data-collection technology into their curriculum. Held at locations nationwide, each four-hour workshop will provide educators of all levels with the opportunity to explore classroom-ready experiments and connect with fellow educators, while testing out Vernier Software & Technology’s line of data-collection technology. All attendees will receive a Go Direct Temperature Probe, along with experiment ideas, that they can use in their own classrooms.  

During the workshops, educators will work with a Vernier training specialist to learn skills and best practices for data-collection in physics, chemistry, biology, environmental science, Earth science, and coding, as well as middle school science to help meet the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). After a brief overview of the technology, educators will explore specialized activities based on their grade level and area of interest. 

In addition to a Go Direct Temperature, each attendee will receive a light meal and a downloadable Workshop Training Manual, which includes ready-to-use experiment handouts for all science disciplines. Interested educators can select dates from the schedule below.  

September 2019 Workshop Dates and Locations

September 9: Houston, TX

September 11: San Antonio, TX

September 12: Austin, TX

September 14: Dallas, TX

September 16: Raleigh, NC

September 17: Oklahoma City, OK

September 17: Richmond, VA

September 18: Washington, DC

September 19: Kansas City, MO

September 21: St. Louis, MO

September 23: Buffalo (Cheektowaga), NY

September 23: Indianapolis, IN

September 24: Rochester, NY

September 24: Cincinnati, OH

September 25: Louisville, KY

September 26: Albany, NY
 

October 2019 Workshop Dates and Locations

October 1: Los Angeles (Burbank), CA

October 3: Palo Alto (Redwood City), CA

October 7: Madison (Middleton), WI

October 9: Minneapolis (St. Paul), MN 

For complete details and to register for a Vernier workshop, visit www.vernier.com/workshops.

It is important that students know how to search on the internet. This not only includes the basics of “how to”, but also what search engine to use. In this post, I wish to point out seven areas of search engines everyone should be aware of. They include:

1. The Informational Search Engine
2. The Human Reviewed Search Engine
3. The Computational Search Engine
4. The Individualized Search Engine
5. The Social Media Search Engine
6. Primary Document Search Engine
7. Subscription Search Engine

While there are more categories and of course more search engines, it is important to become familiar with these seven. It is also imperative that students understand that there is still more information available in the somewhat closed web environment. These include reference services and databases. Your school librarian will be happy to introduce you and your students to some of these highly academic resources. Let’s take a moment to look at these seven categories and a search engine from each one. After looking them over take a moment to experiment and try each one out. I know you will also enjoy the sites that follow the seven categories encouraging your students to work on their search strategies. I am certain you and your students will enjoy the search and the inquiry just as much as the getting the answer. Also, remember that the answer just might lead to new questions and inquiry! 

Seven Categories of Search Engines with an Example for Each

Google Advanced Search – Informational Search Engine –   It may be best  to direct students towards the Google Advanced Search Engine even before using the Google Basic Search. In fact, Advanced Search should be used until students understand how to use these advanced techniques in a Basic Search.  When  educators ask students to search and find information on the internet… it is not to just get the answer. It is to learn an important process that will serve them through future schooling and eventual careers. Take a look at the Google Advanced Search Engine and see why it really should be a basic prerequisite! For those who have been long time users of the advanced search you are probably aware that it is no longer next to the search box in its once prominent location. Instead… it was moved a while ago to the upper right-hand corner appearing as a gear icon and sometimes may not appear until you perform a basic search. The link above takes you directly to the Google Advanced Search Engine.  You can check out some of the Google Advanced Search Operators that can be used in the Basic Search at this Link. Read more about using the Advanced Search at 21centuryedtech.

Sweet Search – Human Reviewed – It is owned by Dulcinea Media, a company committed to supplying students with a search engine that returns results that are accurate, reliable, safe, and understandable. Instead of having students sift through millions of websites, the research experts, educators, and librarians at Dulcinea have created a database of tens of thousands of sites that students have access to in their searches. As a result, SweetSearch excludes results from unreliable sites that might rank high in other search engines.  This allows  students to choose the most relevant result from a list of credible returns, rather than having  educational time wasted on unreliable sites. Since Sweetsearch is powered by Google, it does allow the ability to toggle results between Google and Sweetsearch. Read more about using the Advanced Search at 21centuryedtech.

>WolframAlpha – Computational – Google is best termed an informational search engine… its strength is looking for facts and information. There are also data based search engines, by now you may know that I am referring to Wolfram Alpha.  This search engine claims, “to bring broad, deep, expert knowledge to everyone… anytime, anywhere!”. They further state, “We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematization of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.” Check out theWolframAlpha Educator Page. It is filled with great ideas for all subject areas.

Google Custom Search – Individualized – This  is a unique way to curate and archive sites for students and still require them to practice good searching techniques. Many times as teachers we find our students trying to maneuver their way through  the internet jungle often finding sites they cannot understand, are not reliable/credible, or do not apply. As educators, we must help teach our students how to both search and evaluate resources they find.  Many times it seems more efficient to just hand out the links. What might it be like if we still controlled the links, but students still had to search? This is the whole idea behind a Google Custom Search!  It is also easy to learn, takes very little time,  and best of all… free. It also allows the teacher to have a listing of those very best websites in designated areas. You can make as many Custom Search Engines as you wish. All you need is a Google account.
To get started visit the Google Custom Search Engine  Page. Here you can either sign in or if you do not have a Google account… sign up. After doing this you are ready. To create a custom search engine from scratch, you’ll need to define a name and description, and add some sites to search. Make sure you have thought this out and have those sites in mind.

Twitter Advanced Search – Social Media Search – This Twitter Search Page is valuable when showing teachers great ways to collect learning resources.  Many times after using, they are excited to sign up for their own Twitter account.  Using Twitter can have its challenges. With the Twitter Search Page, it may now be possible because no log in or account set up is required. It could be great in finding facts and information. It can also be used with current events or an unraveling news story. Most of all, it can show students the power and educational benefits of social media. As always… before using with students consult your district AUP, Terms Of Use, and check with district administration.  As in using any web application, students should be trained on proper digital citizenship and monitoring of students is essential. Read more about the Twitter Advanced Search at  21centuryedtech.

Infotopia – While not well known, it has some unique features. One is its ability to do a Primary Document Search. You may need to read past the ads… but that is something that should be taught anyway!

Your Subscription Database – Does your school, state, or public library  supply data bases for students. Students must get beyond just Googling! I have listed some that are free and some that might have a cost… or perhaps it is already paid!

Some sites that can help with student inquiry and searching skills

• Inside Search
• A Google A Day
• Google Search Education
• SearchReSearch
• Google App Searching 

Thank you for joining me and I hope you found this information something you can use in your school and useful to share with other educators.  As always, I invite you to follow me on twitter (mjgormans). Please give this post a retweet and pass it on to someone who will benefit. To ensure you do not miss a future valuable post or other resource covering PBL, Digital Curriculum, STEM, 21st-century learning, and technology integration please sign up for 21centuryedtech by email or RSS. Have a great week… enjoy the Websites! – Mike (https://21centuryedtech.wordpress.com/ 

cross-posted at 21centuryedtech.wordpress.com

Michael Gorman oversees one-to-one laptop programs and digital professional development for Southwest Allen County Schools near Fort Wayne, Indiana.   He is a consultant for Discovery Education, ISTE, My Big Campus, and November Learning and is on the National Faculty for The Buck Institute for Education. His awards include district Teacher of the Year, Indiana STEM Educator   of the Year and Microsoft’s 365 Global Education Hero. Read more at 21centuryedtech.wordpress.com.

As a science teacher, I often get the following statement when working with other educators: "Sparking student interest in the Sciences is just easier. You get to show cool demonstrations and stuff...".

Yes, this is very true. It can be easier.

BUT, I recently had an incredible conversation with a Humanities teacher at my school, and she shared some incredible great resources for leveraging data visualization a method for sparking student curiosity in the humanities. 

If you are not familiar with data visualization, check out this talk. 

By finding a visualization, downloading it, removing specific information (titles, legends, keys, etc.) and displaying it to students, questions emerge. 

For example, this visualization of drought patters over the course of the past 100 years in America can be a powerful spark to build student interest in the Dust Bowl. 

Show students the image, say: "What are you curious about?"

Questions will emerge that will vary but ultimately, because of the nature of the visualization, students will not only ask "What does the orange region represent?", they will also notice that similarities exist between the  the 1940s and parts of the 2000s. 

Questions will emerge related to differences in farming practices, the economy, polities, etc.

​Suddenly a conversation related to the core causes of the Dust Bowl emerges without even discussing the Dust Bowl directly. 

​THEN, the next day (or for homework) show Ken Burn's documentary on the Dust Bowl. Delay the instruction. Delay the mentor! It's how the Hero's Journey operates. 

Below are some excellent Data Visualization Resources:  

GapMinder
What's Going On in This Graph? 
Information is Beautiful 
New York Times Data Visualizations 

cross posted at www.cyclesoflearning.com

Ramsey Musallam teaches science and robotics at Sonoma Academy in Santa Rosa, California, with the aim of fostering inquiry-based learning environments fueled by student curiosity. He presents widely on sparking student curiosity and teaching with technology. Musallam is a Google Certified Teacher, a YouTube Star Teacher, and a Leading Edge Certified Teacher. Watch his TED talk here and read his blog at www.cyclesoflearning.com.

Leaders from more than 40 state departments of education descended upon Arlington, VA this week to attend The State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA, @SETDA ‏) Leadership Summit (#setdals).  The annual forum showcased an education all-star cast of speakers including Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Jessica Rosenworcel, Commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, and Jon Landis (@jonlandis), Education Development Executive for Apple Education, who kicked off the day with some big picture thoughts: “‘For a long time, what technology teachers were asked to adopt was about efficiency. Now, at this great moment, we are engaging in things that fundamentally change our pedagogy.’” 

One panel focusing on “Inspiring Thought Leadership in the Digital Age” included speakers Michael Golden, Executive Director and Senior Fellow at Catalyst @ Penn GSE, Betsy Corcoran, CEO, EdSurge, and Karen Cator, President and CEO, Digital Promise, who asked how exactly is big data helping education? “Data continues to inform the decisions, but how do we integrate all of this data effectively? We hear a lot about AI, for example, but if you are doing data analysis, you have to be careful about thinking AI will solve all of our problems. 

“There is such incredible power in data,” she continued, “but we haven't always focused on the messaging around data. When can you use it and when should you be concerned? How do you use data while protecting privacy? We haven’t messaged that clearly to teachers and parents.” 

Rosenworcel focused her remarks on her determination to close the homework gap. She noted that the FCC’s E-rate is still “the largest edtech program in the country and the primary program to connect all schools to modern communications.” She reflected on how E-rate looked five years ago when it “was stuck in the dialog era.”  

“We called for E-rate 2.0,” she said, “and it’s now built for the digital age. More than 40 million students have access, and this change was especially dramatic in rural areas. But there is still work to do.” She noted that 28% schools are not meeting the E-rate goal of 1 GBPS Internet Access per 1,000 students. 

Rosenworcel expressed concern about the current administration's commitment to ensuring the E-rate program moves to close the homework gap. “How do we get students connected at home when 7 out of 10 teachers require some form of connectivity to do homework, but 1 out of 3 households has no broadband access?” she asked. 

She proposed a solution that would rethink the Educational Broadband Service, a program that “allows educators to offer instructional services utilizing low-power broadband systems and high-speed internet access" (FCC).  

Student Voices

The lunch Student Voices Plenary Presentation was introduced by DeVos, who commended the leaders in the room. “You challenge us to rethink school,” she said. “...to look  at everything with fresh eyes and forward thinking. This is very inspiring.” She introduced the students of St. Albans City School (VT), winners of the Student Voices Award, who presented highlights of their programs that included no, low, and high tech tools for stewardship projects that included educating people about how to restore their wetlands, community gardens, and an urban forest.

The SETDA Education Forum inspired many to go back to their states and rethink how they innovate in their schools. “Innovation is always important in the world of education,” tweets Zach Scott‏ (@zachscott33), @NASSP Senior Manager of Federal Engagement and Outreach. “...but we need to ensure that innovation is inclusive. If not everyone has access to innovation then we don't see real growth or success.”