Best collection of e-Learning articles, e-Learning concepts, e-Learning software, & resources.

As winter bears down on most of America and Covid-19 again surges out of control, pundits and parents alike are wondering when our nation’s 50 million schoolchildren will return to classrooms. With the election over, now is the time for legislators and leaders in states and the federal government to turn their attention back to education. The debate is raging on social media, school email chains, and even around the dinner table. On the one side you have folks arguing that the science does not indicate students are a major vector for the virus and that pandemic-induced school closures are causing deep and lasting harm to students, especially the most disadvantaged. There is truth here — evidence is clear that children are at less risk than adults, and there isn’t compelling evidence that careful school re-openings spike coronavirus rates. On the other side you have folks arguing that the science on transmission in schools is murky and that schools are not safe enough to reop...

Over the last few decades, our education system has consistently prioritized educating for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) skills. The United States spends $54 per student on those subjects, but only 5 cents per student on civics education. The result is an education system that has neglected preparation for engaged citizenship, and a divisive, dysfunctional political environment that is coming into sharper focus in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Now that the results of the 2020 election have become clear, at least to most Americans, we’re all asking questions. How can America be so divided? How could so many Americans turn a blind eye to ongoing racial injustices, magnified in the past four years? Is this a victory for Democrats? Or do we continue to be a country divided by race, education and class? From an education vantage point, can we sum up the election results by pointing to a split between college-educated and non-college-educated voters?  Wha...

The topic of trauma — specifically, trauma-informed teaching — has become a focus in education. Almost 50 percent of students in the U.S. have experienced some form of trauma, so it’s critical that educators be equipped to support every student. Trauma is often linked to adverse childhood experiences, including abuse, neglect and other events that happen to people under the age of 18. All have been proven to have a negative impact on academic performance and overall student health. As the visual arts teacher at an elementary school in Brooklyn, N.Y., I teach about 500 students, many of whom have experienced trauma. I teach art via a program called Teaching for Artistic Behavior, which values student choice and agency and aligns perfectly with trauma-informed instruction. I aim to create a learning space that revolves around choice — and instruction that is interest-based, goal-oriented or social and emotional.   Some schools across the nation are now embracing trauma-infor...

How vulnerable is student data at U.S. public schools? That’s a critical question now that many, if not most, of the nation’s 51 million students are learning online at least some of the time. Congressional watchdogs recently attempted to get a handle on the cyber security problem in schools. In a report publicly released in October 2020 , the Government Accountability Office (GAO) counted 99 school data breaches over the past four years, from July 2016 to May 2020, that compromised the personal information of thousands of students in kindergarten through high school. Attacks by cyber criminals were rare, the GAO found. More common were unintentional leaks in which private information, such as health records and telephone numbers, were accidentally made public. Students were responsible for more than a quarter of the breaches; their most frequent motive was changing grades. The GAO relied on a private database of cyber attacks and leaks collected by Doug Levin of EdTech Strategie...

Racial bias in grading is a persistent and knotty problem. It’s one of the reasons that it’s better to grade essay exams blind without students’ names attached to them. Even Nobel Prize winning economist Daniel Kahneman has recommended anonymous grading because of his findings of bias in decision making. But that’s often not practical for everyday assignments.  A recent study highlighted how the unfair grading of ordinary schoolwork extends down to even young students. In an experiment, teachers evaluated the same second-grade writing sample more harshly when there were clues that it had been written by a Black boy than when it appeared to have been written by a white boy.   “Teachers were 4.7 percentage points more likely to consider the white child’s writing at or above ‘grade level’ compared to the identical writing from a Black child.” wrote the University of Southern California researcher, David Quinn, describing his June 2020 study in an article published Nov. 2...

At Ronald D. O’Neal Elementary School, in Elgin, Illinois, none of the third graders could read and write at grade level according to state tests in 2019. Nearly 90 percent of the school population is considered low-income and nearly three-quarters are labeled English learners, meaning that the state language arts test assesses their reading and writing ability in a language they’re still trying to learn. This story also appeared in Daily Herald Just nine miles away sits Centennial Elementary School, where 73 percent of third graders met grade-level standards on that same test. A fifth of Centennial’s student body is considered low-income, and 17 percent get extra supports as they learn English. The state has celebrated Centennial for “exemplary academic performance.” It designates O’Neal as a school in need of targeted assistance. But despite its low performance and its students’ needs, O’Neal received $9,094 per student in 2019 in state and local funding compared to Cen...

OAKLAND, Calif. — Vida Mendoza is only 14, but she hopes to vote in two years. This story also appeared in Mind/Shift Mendoza is a member of the student-led Oakland Youth Vote campaign, which advocates for giving 16- and 17-year-olds the right to vote for school board representatives. In May, the Oakland City Council voted unanimously to put the initiative on the November ballot. Mendoza, a freshman at Life Academy in Oakland, said her school board must be held accountable to the district’s 36,000 students, 85 percent of whom are people of color , and ensure that all of its schools are “getting the resources they need.” Fourteen-year-old Vida Mendoza, a ninth grader at Life Academy in Oakland, California, has campaigned for a ballot measure that would lower the voting age to 16 for the city’s school board elections. Credit: Alison Yin for The Hechinger Report Photo by Alison Yin for The Hechinger Report “Who is the school board really representing?” said Mendoza. “Are s...