I've been researching grant opportunities for ePortal so it was exciting to hear about K12's new foundation--The Foundation for Blended and Online Learning. K12 is a provider of online K-12 education and they have recently started a new foundation to "empower students through personalized learning by advancing the availability and quality of blended and online [...]
Today's tool is designed to help students better navigate the often complicated and ambiguous online world. A choose-your-own-adventure style game lets students select characters who go through various online related scenarios ranging from plagiarism to cyberbullying to the disparity between online and offline personalities. Each storyline takes about five to ten minutes and includes a [...]
The next greatest improvement to the ePortal system involves apps. Right now, the ePortal development team is testing apps before deployment to individual school systems, but in a few months, we will turn that responsibility over to you, allowing you to choose your own apps and implement them in your own system. Apps on ePortal [...]
Today's tool is more of a content framing device than a subject matter tool. Nearpod allows you to create and share presentations with students, but unlike other presentation programs, the teacher is in control of the pacing of the presentation. While students have access to the presentation on their own devices, they can only see [...]
Since flu season is coming, I've rounded up a recipe for a low-cost screen cleaner that works on the ePortals. Simply take equal parts distilled water and rubbing alcohol and combine them in a spray bottle. Spray this mixture onto a soft cloth (old t-shirts work nicely) and wipe the tablet screens.
It's time for the very first Tool Tip Tuesday! Every Tuesday I'll post one of my favorite educational tools and some tips about it, such as the subjects and grades that it would be most appropriate for. First up is one of my absolute favorite online tools: the PhET simulations developed by the University of [...]
Gary Waddell (from the San Mateo County Office of Education) has prepared a matrix of sorts to help teachers figure out where they fall in the intersection of innovation and instruction. His matrix (taken from here) is below. Where do you think you fall? The X axis maps teachers’ instructional skills and their depth of understanding [...]
New year, new tools? EdSurge has made a list of the most popular edtech tools that they reported on in 2015. The list can be found below, but be advised that the rankings in this list are based on how many people clicked on each link, not how satisfied users are with the tools. EdSurge [...]
Welcome to the ePortal blog, the newest addition to MXN's blogosphere! Here you'll find updates about the ePortal technology, cool things happening in the world of edtech, and useful hints for making the most of your system. Happy reading!