School districts nationwide are facing unprecedented teacher shortages, with thousands of schools understaffed in 2022-23. As districts prepare for the 2023-24 school year, many are considering supplementing their teaching staff with remote instructional services. Districts are able to fill teaching gaps, keep class sizes down, and expand their course catalogs with remote certified teachers. Stride Learning Solutions is working with districts across the country to plan ahead for 2023-24 with scalable remote instructional services.

Learn about:

• Mitigating vacancies with fully qualified and certified remote teachers
• Remote instructional models that are working for districts across the country
• How Stride Learning Solutions works with districts to address unique challenges with teacher recruitment and collaboratively design cost-effective solutions

Now that nearly every student has a device and access to the internet, how can we use technology to maximize in-person instruction? How can we create the most efficient use of screen time while making teachers’ workloads more manageable?

Join Erica Hartman, former district Chief Technology Officer, to find out how to engage students, measure progress, manage online learning, and save valuable time with GoGuardian Teacher and Edulastic. Discover how they can support you in creating an ecosystem of actionable data, intentional feedback, and an instructional workflow for seamless differentiation.

Learn about classroom technology that helps:

• Maximize in-person instruction
• Manage online learning and measure progress
• Create the most efficient use of screen time
• Make teachers’ workloads more manageable
• Increase student engagement

A deep dive into the impact of teacher shortages on education and how technology can support shifting classroom realities

Join Promethean and our education partners for an open conversation about the impact of staff shortages, how the role of an educator is changing, and how technology is continuing to support the needs of teachers and students.
With the release of Promethean’s annual State of Technology report, discussion will be underpinned by key findings and statistics shared by educators across the US. Our goal will be to outline a realistic view of current staffing concerns, discover the wider impact on the role of not only teachers, but school leaders and IT administrators, and assess how technology’s application in the classroom can sustain crucial teacher-student relationships.

Register now to save your spot!

Key takeaways:
• A clear understanding of how educators feel about current school staffing
• How staffing is impacting the role of an educator
• How staffing is impacting the relationship between teachers and students
• Best practices in applying technology to support and foster student engagement

Please join us for an explorative conversation with education market experts from Absolute Software, and Lenovo. We will be discussing the various challenges and trends that K-12 institutions are facing today and provide practical advice on how to tackle them.

What can you look forward to taking away from this session?

• Achieving both visibility and control in a 1:1 program environment
• Streamlining device reclamation
• Preparing for ransomware attacks targeting K-12
• Becoming audit-ready in the wake of Federal funding audits
• Measuring utilization and ROI in order to effectively assign devices and Web subscription licenses in today’s economic climate
• Leveraging device geolocation data to help with the safety of students
• Latest insights on using edtech to support SEL and student well-being

No longer the stuff of science fiction, virtual reality applications are up and running and making significant educational impacts in the classroom. Do you want students to visit Mars, explore inside the bloodstream, or travel around the world to learn a new language? With the right equipment and professional development, augmented and virtual reality techniques can provide students with experiences that are the next best thing to being there.

Join innovative educators and industry experts Thursday, January 12 at 2 PM EST to discuss the advantages of immersive instructional technologies—how teachers can best implement AR and VR into their own classrooms and curriculum to support learning outcomes.

Topics will include:

• What are the learning outcomes teachers can expect from Immersive Education lessons?
• What are the differences between AR/VR/XR?
• Where is Immersive Education headed in the future?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can sometimes be an ambiguous word in education circles, evoking images of machines replacing human teachers in the future. The truth, while less fantastic, is that AI can be a solid tool that assists educators in the classroom right now.

Join Levi Belnap, Chief Strategy Officer at Merlyn Mind and Matt Cole, Senior Vice President of Sales at Promethean in conversation to discuss the real-world ways AI operates with their respective products, Symphony Classroom, which delivers the Merlyn digital assistant, and Promethean’s ActivPanel displays. These systems enable teachers to better interact with students, simplify everyday classroom tasks, and improve overall efficiency and productivity.

Key takeaways:

• How current voice-activated AI systems at home, in cars, and on devices can be put to use in classrooms.
• How to use voice commands or a remote to control laptops, interactive displays, internet browsers, apps, and more.
• How Merlyn Mind’s AI technologies can be integrated into Promethean’s ActivPanel current classroom displays.
• How to scale AI pilot projects into true distinct implementations.

The webinar will review real world threats affecting the K-12 Education Industry, the myths behind them and five useful tips to further protect their organizations from attacks.

Key takeaways:

• Understanding the threats and where they’re coming from
• How to prioritize mitigation efforts
• How and where to start.

Successful STEM programs for schools have never been more important. For them to work, teachers must work together with students to develop critical thinking, communication, assessment, and inquiry skills. The right devices can help students and teachers connect in powerful, positive ways. Those connections boost interactive learning, engagement and ultimately student achievement. Join us to discuss how the Dallas Independent School District has implemented a STEM curriculum using Lenovo workstations to teach students about cybersecurity.

Takeaways include:

• Learn how workstations impact how STEM subjects are taught and internalized across digital districts.

• Get insights on how successful STEM programs incorporate collaborative, active learning activities.

• Discover how the right devices can foster dynamic, personalized learning environments around STEM subjects and drive stronger learning outcomes.

Increase Transparency, Improve Control and Compliance, Mitigate Fraud

Over the past several years, K-12 school districts experienced the limitations of legacy systems. With the recent government funding available, a window of opportunity opens for K-12 schools to modernize and bring resilience to their spend management systems. Automating your school districts spend management solution should be a top priority. Market uncertainty has shown that faculty and staff spending data is often dispersed and hard to track, meaning you are missing complete spend visibility. This lack of reliable, consistent data is leaving school districts vulnerable to risks.

During this webinar we will discuss understanding and managing your school expenditures with a single platform that captures employee spend, when and how it happens, and how investing in a digital spend management solution can help enable school districts to increase efficiency, transparency, compliance, and control.

Key Topics:

• Streamline processes and eliminate manual tasks and piles of paper
• How automation helps reduce risk associated with managing and tracking employee expenditures
• Improve compliance utilizing proactive strategies and policies
• Establish trust though transparency and fiscal accountability
• Manage your cash flow and all parts of your accounts payable process in one system

We’ll be hearing from industry experts: (for full bios, see Meet Your Speakers)

• Derrek Blair, Director of Financial Management and Distribution, Rochester City Schools
• Jim McClurkin, Senior Director, Public Sector, SAP Concur
• Kevin Hogan, Editor-at-large, eSchool News

Cyber security is in an ever-present concern for most of us accessing the internet. Unfortunately, students aren’t thinking about cyber-attacks when they access sites for curriculum, research, and entertainment from their 1:1 devices – now so prevalent since the pandemic. Schools’ exposure to cyber-attacks has also greatly increased due to expanded remote and hyperflex learning.

Join us to learn the latest strategies and tools schools are using to help keep student data safe and ensure students’ digital access is secure.

Key takeaways:

• Learn the latest techniques to secure district systems
• Discover best practices for educating students and families on proper digital etiquette
• Ask cybersecurity experts about your data protection concerns

We’ll be hearing from industry experts: (for full bios, see Meet Your Speakers)
Betsy Cline, Software Specialist & Team Lead, Lenovo
Adam Benjamin, Director of Lenovo and SentinelOne partnership
DJ Whitlock, Senior Sales Engineer for Absolute
Moderator – Kevin Hogan, eSchool News, Editor-at-Large

When every second counts, there is no higher priority for school district leaders than to create secure and informed campus environments. Having a campus-wide communication ecosystem is imperative. Being able to initiate a controlled emergency notification protocol to Alert, Notify and Monitor directly from a mobile device, classroom audio system, or Interactive Flat Panel is essential.

Join Brent Thrasher, Instructional Technology Coordinator at Overton County Schools and Todd Eddy from Galaxy Next Generation on October 6 at 2 pm as they discuss how to make better decisions, prevent risk, and strengthen communication between faculty, administration, and first responders during an active threat.

Topics will include:

• How to immediately notify teachers of a lockdown through software alerts.
• How to instantly notify law enforcement and first responders.
• How to monitor communication within your entire ecosystem using one software platform.

We’ll be hearing from industry experts: (for full bios, see Meet Your Speakers)

• Brent Thrasher, Instructional Technology Coordinator/Coach @Overton County Schools
• Todd Eddy, Galaxy Next Generation

Learn how introducing an AI digital assistant into a classroom can transform how educators teach, giving them the freedom to teach from anywhere in the room. Join us as Levi Belnap, Chief Strategy Officer at Merlyn Mind, introduces Merlyn – the AI digital assistant custom-designed for the classroom, shares the benefits of using an AI digital assistant, and discusses how the new strategic alliance with Promethean enables access to powerful technology in the classroom.

Key takeaways:

• What an AI digital assistant is and how Merlyn is different
• How “technostress” is defined and how it can be reduced for teachers
• How teachers can efficiently control the apps and tools they are already using in classrooms
• How to bring simplicity into the classroom with AI
• How Promethean & Merlyn Mind are working together to increase classroom productivity and support innovative teaching

We’ll be hearing from industry experts: (for full bios, see below)
Levi Belnap, Chief Strategy Officer, Merlyn Mind
Moderator – Kevin Hogan, eSchool News, Editor-at-Large

School districts nationwide are facing unprecedented teacher shortages, with thousands of classrooms unstaffed as the school year begins. With no end in sight to this teacher crisis, Stride Learning Solutions is working with districts across the country to fill instructional gaps utilizing non-traditional teaching and learning models.

Register below for this timely webinar to learn about innovative solutions you can put into place for a single class, school, or the entire district to launch this school year with a fully qualified and certified instructional team.

We will discuss:

• Filling vacancies immediately with certified remote teachers for a single class, school, or the entire district

• Filling critical instructional gaps, expanding course offerings, personalizing learning, or reducing class size with blended or fully online programs

• Empowering learners with tools and resources necessary for high quality education

With cyberattacks increasingly aimed at educational institutions, student and educator safety is a top priority. Schools need versatile solutions that update, adapt, and scale to support everyone, in and out of the classroom. In this webinar, cybersecurity and school district IT experts will share tips on how to implement the Microsoft tools and systems to ensure your IT is safe, accessible, and easy to manage.

We’ll dive into these tools and more!

• Cloud security: monitoring, detection, and protection to secure data.
• Trust and Security Suite: automated compliance templates and AI-powered security to protect devices and apps.
• Compliance Manager: featuring more than 900 customizable controls and over 200 compliance templates including FERPA and COPPA.

Hiring additional reading and math coaches, counselors, school psychologists, and other support staff is a key strategy for meeting students’ academic and social-emotional learning needs. However, when school systems use federal funding for personnel expenses, they must have a plan in place for tracking and reporting the time and effort that employees spend on grant-funded activities to protect current and future student support funding.

Join us on Wednesday, 4/13 as Kecia Ray, Ed.D and Janet Hagood of Jefferson County Schools join UKG’s Rob Tibbs to share best practices and key strategies for completing this process successfully.

You’ll learn:

• Critical guidelines for hiring staff using federal funding
• Best practices for tracking grant-funded activities
• Essential steps for meeting federal funding compliance rules

How districts can take advantage of the great federal funding cashout.

As school district leaders across the country cautiously look forward to post-pandemic teaching and learning, they are also eyeing what may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to upgrade their technology infrastructure and classrooms with next-gen solutions like interactive displays, laptops, and more. In 2020 and 2021, Congress passed three COVID relief packages that added up to over $190 billion for public and private schools. Billions more are slated to arrive shortly.

The potential for this funding is great. How to effectively secure and implement it can be daunting. Join eSchool News and a panel of the country’s most insightful analysts as they discuss the state-of-play of federal and state edtech funding programs and what districts can do to take advantage.

Join us to:

• Learn about the various K-12 district funding opportunities from the industry’s best experts.
• Weave through the funding application process—who needs to apply, how to do it, and when.
• Find out how best to apply these monies into sustainable IT district systems.

We’ll be hearing from industry experts:
(for full bios see below)

• Sheryl R. Abshire, Ph.D.
• Jon Bernstein, President and Founder @Bernstein Strategy Group
• John Harrington, CEO of Funds For Learning

Blended and hybrid learning models were first introduced to extend personalized and flexible learning options to selected individuals or groups of students. But with onset of the pandemic, widespread adoption of blended and hybrid models suddenly became a necessity across all student populations.

Two years later, how have districts overcome the initial challenges and applied the lessons learned to re-imagine teaching and learning and develop an innovative vision for change in their school communities?

Join us for a panel discussion with leaders and educators who share a passion for the bold new vision of blended and hybrid learning as the future of education.

You’ll hear how schools can:

• Integrate flexible in-person learning experiences with enhanced collaborative online learning to maximize facility use
• Build a custom curriculum with a mix of core courses, electives, CTE pathways, and more
• Deliver instruction with their teachers, virtual teachers, or a combination of the two
• Reserve the option for some students to attend 100-percent online

We’ll be hearing from industry experts:
(for full bio’s see below)

• John Watson, Founder, Evergreen Education Group
• Rachel Goodwin, Senior Director of Academics for Blended Schools, Stride

Well-being directly affects students’ motivation, engagement, and learning and has a long-term impact. Skills such as self-awareness and self-management are also critical for effective collaboration and learning. Supporting overall student and educator well-being, creates a foundation for equitable education environments.

In part two of this webinar series, attendees will learn how to:

• Develop and enable a more inclusively designed classroom
• Use actionable insights to prioritize student well-being
• Provide each student the tools and support they need

Personalized learning is more critical than ever to help students recover lost learning and social-emotional growth as well as assist educators in dire need of solutions. While advances in edtech have helped make personalized learning techniques more efficient, scalable, and achievable for educators over the last decade, many strategies were forced to take a back seat to more pressing challenges during the pandemic.

Join eSchool News and this panel of experts to explore what personalized learning looks like now and what’s to come, share best practices, and learn why assessment and accountability are more important than ever in today’s K-12 landscape.

We’ll be hearing from industry experts:

• Bill Daggett, Ed.D., Founder, Successful Practices Network and International Center for Leadership in Education
• Niyoka McCoy, Senior Vice President and Chief Academic Officer @Stride
• Phil Emer, Principal, AWS K12 Vertical Team

(for full bio see below)