Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

3 ways MDM helps fight school cyberattacks

Last September, the Los Angeles Unified School District was hit by a ransomware attack at the start of the new school year. The second-largest educational district in the country, with more than 600,000 students and 25,000 employees, had its email taken offline and other internal systems affected by the cyberattack. When the district chose not to pay the ransom, sensitive employee data was posted online. While this attack may seem extraordinary because of its size and scope, digital security breaches like this are happening at educational institutions across the country. And school districts need to take defensive action against cyberattacks now before it’s too late.

With school districts across the U.S. being targeted by cyberattacks, the need for robust, cost-effective cybersecurity support is not just important–it’s now considered essential. But many local governments and educational institutions remain unprepared for this type of active threat. A recent report by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on the K-12 school cybersecurity landscape found that close to 50 percent of the school districts in the country have neither the staff nor the budget to adequately protect their IT infrastructure.  

As schools look for solutions to bridge this security gap, one easy and cost-effective method they should consider is the adoption of mobile device management (MDM) platforms. A small number of schools are currently using this solution to their advantage. This includes public schools like the Interboro School District in Prospect Park, PA, which employs MDM to manage a fleet of iPads used to supplement classroom instruction. Interboro uses MDM to ensure the tablets are secure and functioning properly, the students using them are staying safe online, and the costs associated with maintaining the devices are minimized.…Read More

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Adapting to the ChatGPT era in education

ChatGPT has rapidly begun to infiltrate K-12 classrooms nationwide. A recent survey by study.com found that nearly 90 percent of students admitted to using OpenAI’s chatbot in some home-related capacity, and more than 25 percent of teachers have already caught a student cheating using the chatbot.

The propensity for students to use ChatGPT to cheat has raised concern amongst educators and even prompted several school districts, ranging from New York City Public Schools to the Los Angeles Unified School District, to issue a ban of the chatbot. However, cheating with ChatGPT is just a symptom of a larger problem in education: a focus on rote memorization and regurgitation of information.

The cheating-related concerns are warranted, but many appear to overlook a key point: students opting to cheat on homework, essays, or exams is not a new phenomenon. Companies like Chegg have become multi-billion dollar platforms, which is mainly attributable to students seeking on-demand access to textbook and exam answers. Before ChatGPT was publicly available, the International Center for Academic Integrity found that 95 percent of high schoolers participated in some form of cheating.…Read More

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4 steps to avoid a ransomware attack

Educational institutions have an urgent reason to put data security and backup at the top of their agenda: the rising threat of ransomware. Security firm BlackFog reports that the education sector is now the top target for ransomware attacks, surpassing government and healthcare.

In one recent case, the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has more than 540,000 students and 70,000 employees, suffered a ransomware attack that blocked email, computer systems, and applications. Following the attack, Vice Society, a Russian-speaking group that claimed responsibility for the breach, released a 500GB cache of data that appeared to contain personal information, including passport details, Social Security numbers, and tax forms, according to reports.

A successful cyberattack on a school can have far-reaching and devastating consequences. Not only does it come with a high financial cost, but it also disrupts the core function of education by making resources inaccessible, potentially leading to a loss of sensitive information such as HR and MIS data. Furthermore, it diverts valuable time and resources away from the primary goal of educating students.…Read More

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TutorMe Partners With Snowline Joint Unified School District to Provide One-on-One Tutoring Support

LOS ANGELES (PRWEB) — TutorMe, an online tutoring solution creating access and opportunity for all students, announces a partnership with  Snowline Joint Unified School District (JUSD). This partnership provides high school students in the rural community with accessible tutoring support to meet graduation requirements.

The state of California provided the district with an  A-G Completion Improvement Grant, which allows districts to purchase resources students need to improve their knowledge. The district used the funding to acquire TutorMe for students to increase their subject knowledge for the A-G requirements, which they must pass to apply to a four-year university.

Through the partnership with TutorMe, students can work one-on-one with high-quality tutors 24/7 when it works best for them, whether before school, after school, or even on weekends. TutorMe enables meaningful connections that students need to learn and thrive, creating better learning outcomes for the entire school community.…Read More

FEV Tutor Names Two New Executive Leadership Team Members

WOBURN, Mass. – FEV Tutor, the market-leading provider of the most comprehensive virtual tutoring solution in K-12, recently announced the addition of two executives to its senior leadership team. The company has named Abhinav Ramani as chief operating officer and Aaron Osmond as chief growth officer.

Before joining FEV Tutor, Ramani oversaw regional operations for the health care provider DaVita (DVA) Kidney Care. In west Los Angeles, he led a team of managers in implementing change management and process innovation measures across 10 clinics, improving their overall outcomes until they ranked among the top 25% of clinics across the enterprise. Next, Ramani worked as a DVA group regional operations director in the state of Washington, leading three regional directors in overseeing 36 clinics in Portland, Tacoma, and Seattle. There, he increased net revenue by over $1 million. Ramani holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Osmond has approximately 30 years of experience in K-12 education. Most recently, he held several business development leadership positions at Amazon Web Services. He first served as the western regional lead for the company’s Education to Workforce Team program and then led the program’s U.S. business development and program management team. After that, Osmond was promoted to global lead for the AWS Training and Certification team.…Read More

TutorMe Partners With West Virginia School District to Provide One-on-One, Individualized Tutoring Support

LOS ANGELES (PRWEB) — TutorMe, an online tutoring solution creating access and opportunity for all students, today announced a partnership with  Roane County Schools in Roane County, West Virginia. This partnership provides all K–12 students in the district with one-on-one, individualized tutoring support this school year.

High-impact tutoring is one of the most-studied and  effective educational interventions. Through the partnership with TutorMe, students can now work one-on-one with high-quality tutors, 24/7, when it works best for them—whether that’s before school, after school, or even on weekends. TutorMe enables meaningful connections students need to learn and thrive, creating better learning outcomes for the entire school community.

“We are excited to partner with TutorMe and provide our students an additional avenue for growth,” said Richard Duncan, Superintendent at Roane County Schools. “Our goal is to provide equal opportunities for our students to grow as learners. The around-the-clock access to high-impact tutoring through TutorMe ensures each one of our students receives the personalized support they need to build their confidence and knowledge in reading, math, and other subjects—no matter their personal schedules or transportation situations.”…Read More

How to be proactive in your cybersecurity strategy

Keeping K-12 schools safe from cyberattacks has become a growing concern for educational institutions, especially as these attacks increase in sophistication and frequency nationwide. This past September, a school district in Detroit was hit with a cyberattack that closed its schools for two days. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the country, was also subject to an attack over Labor Day weekend, which shut off access to email and crippled the district’s website and critical systems.

These attacks have been a wake-up call to school districts about the risk of cybercrimes and the impacts they can have on operations. But why are cybercriminals drawn to them?

Why Schools Have Increasingly Become the Target for Cybercrime…Read More

Protecting your schools as cyberattacks rise

Think cybersecurity won’t or can’t impact you?

Well, you would be wrong.

The number of cyberattacks only continue to grow. Virtually every business you can think of has been hit–cybercriminals have targeted the pipelines we rely on for oil and gas; the hospitals we turn to in times of need, even the social media companies where we connect.…Read More

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Ransomware attackers head back to school

Just when we thought the painful trend of ransomware attacks on public schools might be waning, news arrived of a massive incident. Over Labor Day weekend, the country’s largest school district, Los Angeles Unified, experienced a ransomware attack. The district serves 600,000 students and described “significant disruptions affecting access to email, computer systems, and applications.”

There was good news, though. The district appeared to catch the attack early, shut its systems down and avoided more serious problems. A lot of the time these attacks result in the loss of social security numbers and all kinds of other data, amounting to a serious violation of children’s privacy. For such a large district, this could have been catastrophic. LAUSD’s impressive response likely resulted from some smart preparation.

LAUSD was unfortunately not the only school to be victimized this year, and in other cases, some of the consequences appear to have been more severe. Staff at Cedar Rapids, Iowa schools saw their personal information stolen this summer, including Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, bank account numbers, and even medical history information. …Read More

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