Digital Transformation

Recent legislation that intends to close the digital divide still comes with gaps, as Republicans and telecommunications companies oppose municipal broadband as well as regulations to ensure everyone can afford it.

The growing popularity of electronic transactions has led schools to invest in tools like BlueSnap, a digital payment platform that expedites billing for expenses such as meal costs in K-12 and tuition at universities.

Video cameras, Zoom licenses and other purchases that came in handy for snow days became essential during COVID lockdowns, and now schools such as Lincoln Lutheran intend to keep them for conferences and other purposes.

In purchasing the technology adoption vendor EesySoft, the company behind the learning management system Canvas aims to build in-app messaging and dashboards to help educators learn to use and assess new tech tools.

As IT careers become increasingly competitive and essential, colleges and universities must work to retain IT staff with flexibility, healthy environments and meaningful work, or risk losing them to the private sector.

After a year of alternating between online and in-person learning, thousands of students at St. Vrain Valley, Boulder Valley and other districts are taking a four-week summer program to prepare for school in the fall.

Twinsburg City Schools will offer virtual classes through Ohio Online Learning, sponsored by the Educational Service Center of Northeast Ohio, to students whose grades and attendance meet certain criteria.

A global pandemic that upended the way school is taught should reinforce the need to create lifelong learners. Education today means teaching students to think about the future in new ways.

Staff surveys indicated that implementation of academic standards dipped at least in part due to distance learning, as teachers were figuring out how to engage students and use Canvas' online courses.

With the help of matching funds from the federal E-Rate program, the Pennsylvania district is spending more than $180,000 to upgrade its eight-year-old network with 78 wireless access points and 12 switches.

There are about 23,500 students in summer school between Tucson's nine major school districts this year, engaged in hands-on and personalized learning to make up for what was lost over months of remote instruction.

The global shortage of microprocessors is prompting several Georgia school districts to strategize and assess their inventories of laptops, which will remain important educational tools even as in-person classes resume.

The West Virginia school district started issuing the laptops about five years ago, but since they became a staple of daily instruction during the pandemic, training sessions have helped teachers learn to use them.

With help from a data analytics company, Duval County Public Schools used metrics like attendance, discipline reports and test scores to flag at-risk students and increase graduation rates by over 25 percent in 10 years.

The university joined others in New York, Utah and North Carolina as part of the National Science Foundation's research of new wireless devices, protocols and applications to improve broadband connectivity.

A student-driven nonprofit is preparing an "InspirEd Hacks" event with workshops on data science, machine learning, educational technology, game design and virtual and augmented reality.

The Mississippi school district will put $4.2 million in coronavirus relief funds toward technology infrastructure such as laptops, servers, Internet access points, an upgraded content filter and other equipment.

The School District of La Crosse is installing nearly 300 81kW solar panels on the building, paid for by grants and donations, which may lend themselves to science instruction around renewable energy while saving money.