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Email app Superhuman adds a cheaper plan for students and teachers
They can pay $10 per month instead of $30.
Netflix puts free documentaries on YouTube for students and teachers
To help teachers and students learning from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, Netflix is making a handful of documentaries available for free on its Netflix US YouTube channel. At the moment, there are 10 documentary films and series available, including 13th, Babies, Chasing Coral, Knock Down the House and Our Planet. Each comes with educational resources, like discussion questions, ways to take action and more info.
School districts ban Zoom over security concerns
Concerns about Zoom's security are having a real impact on its use in remote education. Some US school districts, including large ones like New York City and Nevada's Clark County, have banned or disabled Zoom over security and privacy worries. Others, such as Washington state's Edmonds School District and Utah's Alpine School District, are rethinking their policies on Zoom use. And unsurprisingly, both are either switching apps or considering it, such as NYC teachers moving to Microsoft Teams.
The latest Chrome OS education devices will get updates for eight years (updated)
To help schools get more out of their limited resources, Google is extending the length of time it plans to support new Chrome OS education devices with security and platform updates. Starting this year, the latest education devices from Lenovo and Acer will get automatic updates until June 2028, and it seems that other new devices could receive similar support as well. Before today, Google guaranteed to support most devices with at least six years of automatic updates. To pay for the additional support, the company is increasing the price of its Chrome Education Upgrade, a one-time license school boards can purchase to get additional support from Google, from $30 per device to $38 per device. However, all new devices will get eight years of support, whether a school buys the Chrome Education Upgrade or not.
Google’s ‘Assignments’ tool flags plagiarism and missing sources
Google is setting out to make plagiarism harder than ever. The search giant today announced the launch of Assignments, a new grading software for higher education instructors who use G Suite for Education. Formerly known as Coursework, Assignments will allow instructors to create, assign and grade coursework with Google Docs and Drive. To boot, all student work turned in through Assignments and Classroom (its K-12 counterpart) will receive its own "originality report", a new feature that is essentially a litmus test for plagiarism.
Microsoft wants to make 'Minecraft' easier for kids to read
Microsoft is bringing its Immersive Reader to Minecraft: Education Edition. The tool will let users expand the text in character dialogue, settings and boards. Immersive Reader will dictate each word as it is highlighted, so users can follow along, and it will add Minecraft-specific images for words like "Creeper" and "Mooshroom."
iRobot enters the classroom with acquisition of Root Robotics
iRobot, the company behind the Roomba, is about to do more than vacuum your house, mop your floors and mow the lawn. Today the company announced that it's acquired Root Robotics, and it will add the Root educational coding robot to its lineup.
Chromebook App Hub gives teachers ideas for class activities
Many schools use Chromebooks, but they might not always know how to make the most of those systems in the classroom -- and Google knows it. The firm is launching a Chromebook App Hub that will both help teachers find activity ideas and connect institutions with developers that might fit their needs. Educators can both create and look for "idea sparks" and apps based on the age range, subject, idea category and even specific learning goals.
Apple’s free ‘Everyone Can Create’ curriculum is available on Apple Books
In March, Apple unveiled its Everyone Can Create curriculum, a program aimed at helping educators integrate drawing, music, video and photo skills into their lessons and assignments. Now, the company has made that curriculum available for free through Apple Books. The program includes four guides, with projects that help students progressively build skills in a creative medium, as well as a teacher guide that comes with 300 lesson ideas.
GitHub Education is a free software development package for schools
GitHub, the online, open-source code repository recently acquired by Microsoft, has already made big moves to support future software developers. In 2012 it launched the Student Developer Pack, in 2015 it built the GitHub Classroom for teachers, and earlier this year it opened up teacher training with its Campus Advisor program. Now, it's packaging all of these tools and features together under the umbrella "GitHub Education", which will available to schools completely free of charge.
Adobe offers schools Creative Cloud licenses for $5/year
Adobe has been slowly moving its apps and services to the cloud since 2013. If you use any of the company's creative products — like Photoshop, Illustrator or Lightroom — you probably already purchase them via a subscription, which can run anywhere from $10 to $83 per month for an individual. Now, Adobe is making the full suite of Adobe Creative Cloud apps for K-12 schools to $5 annually per license (with a minimum purchase of 500 licenses per school or 2,500 per district).
What educators think about Apple’s new iPad
Yesterday's Apple event showed that the company wants to make a serious push back into the education sector. This isn't anything new, though, according to CEO Tim Cook; it's just the company going back to its roots. The centerpiece here is a "new" iPad, a 9.7-inch tablet with Apple Pencil support that aims to woo teachers everywhere. There's also a redesigned iWork suite that lets students doodle and create digital books within Pages; the Schoolwork app, for tracking, well, schoolwork; and a kid-friendly tool for coding AR. Apple is hoping that will be enough to win over schools.
DHS to release an active shooter training simulator for teachers
Last June, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a virtual training program for first responders aimed at preparing them for an active shooter incident. Now, there's a program specifically for teachers. "With teachers, they did not self-select into a role where they expect to have bullets flying near them. Unfortunately, it's becoming a reality," Tamara Griffith, one of the chief engineers of the program, told Gizmodo. "And so we want to give them that chance to understand what options are available to them and what might work well for them."
Microsoft wants OneNote to be the go-to classroom app
Microsoft has been quietly focusing on the education market with its OneNote app for some time now. It's offered free Office 365 subscriptions for students, an integrated math tutor and a classroom-centric add-on called OneNote Class Notebook. The company has just updated OneNote with even more educational extras, including improvements to Notebook, new learning tools and some fun new stickers that teachers and students can use to spice up their collaborations.
Google gives students interactive tools for STEM and internet safety
Google launched a new browser-based Google Earth this past April, adding educational tools to make it easier for teachers to show the world off to students without having to leave the classroom. The company also collaborated with the BBC to create a digital storytelling platform called Voyager that helps curate the discovery of various places of interest around the globe. Google is taking things even farther today at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference, announcing a bevy of new tools and virtual experiences to empower students.
UK schools trial police-style body cameras for teachers
To combat disorderly students, two secondary schools in the UK have started trialling staff-worn body cameras. Teachers will use the equipment to record specific incidents, such as a "perceived threat to a member of staff or pupil," according to Tom Ellis, a lecturer at the University of Portsmouth and a former Home Office researcher. The identity of the schools is, for now, a mystery, to avoid unwanted interference during the trial. The cameras won't be recording at all times either -- similar to the police, it will be up to teachers to decide when to hit the record button. "It's not like a surveillance camera," Ellis stressed.
Must See HDTV: State of the Union, 'Workaholics,' 'Teachers'
After President Obama finishes his State of the Union Address, there are still a bunch of new choices for your TV watching this week. Netflix is premiering a new season of Degrassi, while Amazon has more episodes of Just Add Magic. Workaholics is back for a new season on Comedy Central, while TV Land is premiering its latest comedy Teachers. The Martian set the record for video on-demand sales with over 1 million in its first week, and now it's on Blu-ray, along with season on of Mr. Robot. For gamers, Gone Home is out on PS4 and Xbox One, plus new DLC for the latest Assassin's Creed game. Look after the break to check out each day's highlights, including trailers and let us know what you think (or what we missed).
Microsoft is launching a site to help teachers master 'Minecraft'
Minecraft has proven to be an invaluable tool for educators and students. Not only is the game popular with children and adults, but its open, customisable nature means it can be used for all sorts of different purposes. Like learning to code, understanding Britain's geography and reimagining modern art. Microsoft clearly knows this, so it's launching a new portal where teachers can discuss the game and share classroom resources. The full site isn't live just yet, but the trailer below gives you an idea of what Microsoft and Mojang are aiming for. After this and its Hololens demonstration, it's clear the company sees its $2.5 billion acquisition as more than just a game with a guaranteed smash-hit sequel.
Apple is making it easier for schools to put iPads in classrooms
Apple's dreams of putting iPads in classrooms have run into a number of roadblocks, but one of the biggest is simply the amount of work involved -- each slate needs its own account, making it a nightmare if you want to outfit an entire school. That won't be a problem for much longer, however. Both MacRumors and 9to5Mac have discovered that Apple is ditching the requirement for individual IDs on school-supplied iPads as of this fall. Staff will just have to decide which devices get apps or books, letting teachers focus on the actual education instead of getting things running. They'll still have plenty of control, so kids can't load up on games and other distractions unless they get the green light. It's too soon to know if this will lead to more kids taking home tablets instead of textbooks, but there will at least be fewer barriers to making that happen. [Image credit: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images]
Los Angeles schools won't be giving students their own devices
Los Angeles' one-time dream of giving every student an iPad (or any device, for that matter) just got dashed. The city's school district superintendent, Ramon Cortines, tells the press that he doesn't believe LA "can afford" gadgets for each student. Instead, schools will fall back on a more conservative model that doles out hardware when kids need it for lessons and tests. The move is unfortunate if you like the idea of young learners having their own laptops and tablets, but there's no question that reviving earlier plans would have been daunting. The iPad effort was going to be expensive ($1.3 billion, at last count), and it ran into problems with misuse almost as soon as it began. Cortines suggests that the initiative reduced education to a "gimmick of the year" -- to him, device programs have to be sustainable. [Image credit: AP Photo/Michael Conroy]
