THE Journal Insider
THE Journal Insider podcast explores current ed tech trends and issues impacting K–12 educators, IT professionals, instructional technologists, education leaders, and ed tech providers. Listen in as THE Journal Editor Kristal Kuykendall chats with ed tech experts, educators, and industry leaders about how they are 'meeting the moment' in the U.S. public education system.
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As education leaders around the globe call for more emphasis on STEM education, and as government statistics project millions more tech jobs than trained workers in the next decade, the REC Foundation is changing the way K–12 students learn about technology by making robotics both accessible and fun for students from every background, all over the world.
REC Foundation has been helping K–12 schools start their own VEX Robotics education programs and participate in competitions since 2008 — and over 1 million students each year now participate in more than 70 countries, about three-quarters of those coming from the United States.
The foundation is also devoted to changing the face of STEM, with programs designed to make robotics more equitable, such as the Girl Powered initiative launched in 2016. Six years later, half of all elementary school students participating in VEX Robotics teams are girls.
Last year, REC Foundation added a drone program and competition in Texas, and this fall it expanded to Maryland and Michigan — with more states expected to be added soon.
For this episode of THE Journal Insider podcast, THEJournal.com editor Kristal Kuykendall visited with REC Foundation CEO Dan Mantz who explained the foundation’s recent adjustments to its mission and vision, the addition of drones, and how exciting student competitions for robotics and drone teams are helping prepare the workforce of tomorrow.
THE Journal Insider podcast explores current ed tech trends and issues impacting K–12 educators, IT professionals, instructional technologists, education leaders, and ed tech providers. Listen in as THEJournal.com Editor Kristal Kuykendall chats with ed tech experts, educators, and industry leaders about how they are 'meeting the moment' in the U.S. public education system. Find all podcast episodes as well as K–12 ed tech news updated daily at THEJournal.com.
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Music by LemonMusicStudio from Pixabay
In this episode of THE Journal Insider podcast, THEJournal.com editor and host Kristal Kuykendall visits with several K–12 educators, instructional coaches, and education technology specialists who participated in the Apple Learning Coach pilot program last year before it was launched publicly this past March. Apple Learning Coach has just opened up applications for its fourth cohort, and any U.S. educator with the capacity to coach K–12 teachers can apply through Nov. 16, 2022, or learn more at Apple.co/alc-apply.
This episode’s guests share deep insights and inspiring stories about how the Apple Learning Coach program has been a change agent at their schools: from helping spark new enthusiasm among students and teachers, and improving the frameworks of existing teacher coaching programs, to building technology-powered instruction that dramatically increases student engagement, creation, and collaboration.
Maranda Ralph and Jessica Keller from Berkeley County School District in West Virginia start off this episode sharing how they, as coaches and technology integration specialists, benefitted from Apple Learning Coach and the evidence of its impact they’ve seen as the coaching methods and the iPad apps they learned about during the ALC program have trickled down into classrooms and throughout their district’s teaching staff.
Next you’ll hear the director of educational technology at the Los Lunas, New Mexico, school district, Bill Hays, explain how his participation in the ALC pilot program led to the creation of a student film festival that has been a huge hit with students and the community.
Resource links:
Music by LemonMusicStudio from Pixabay
THE Journal Insider podcast explores current ed tech trends and issues impacting K–12 educators, IT professionals, instructional technologists, education leaders, and ed tech providers. Listen in as THE Journal Editor Kristal Kuykendall chats with ed tech experts, educators, and industry leaders about how they are 'meeting the moment' in the U.S. public education system.
In this episode of THE Journal Insider podcast, host and editor Kristal Kuykendall talks with YouScience Chief Operating Officer Jeri Larsen about how their Discovery aptitude assessment platform works and how it helps both educators and students. We learn how the assessment insights help students "discover" their aptitudes, allowing them to take ownership of the learning and their futures by more closely connecting their schoolwork to their skills, aspirations, and informed career options.
NOTE: This episode includes a few minutes of video, where Larsen demonstrates the YouScience Discovery assessment results and platform. Listen and watch on YouTube (video is embedded below) to see what she is talking about!
Why this matters: An enormous study published in July by student aptitude and career guidance platform YouScience analyzed almost a quarter-million Discovery aptitude assessments taken last year by high-schoolers nationwide. It’s easy to see how this kind of data is deeply relevant to the larger curriculum goals of K–12 schools and also to the individual choices that students are asked to begin making as early as ninth grade, as they choose electives throughout high school.
The analysis revealed that students have the innate abilities to excel in today’s in-demand jobs but often lack interest in those fields, either because they’ve not been exposed to such career options or had no idea they possessed aptitudes in those fields.
The findings of aptitude assessments are helpful both at the upper levels of curriculum decision-making and at the granular level, in classrooms with students. Educators and guidance counselors can see the gaps in so-called “career exposure” — where students have innate aptitudes but no career interest indicates they may need more information about career possibilities — and they help schools better tailor each student’s courses in high school to the career paths they are both suited for and interested in.
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Music by LemonMusicStudio from Pixabay