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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In this episode of THE Journal Insider podcast, host and THEJournal.com editor Kristal Kuykendall welcomes two former teachers who have been working on AI writing tools at Turnitin, a plagiarism-detection software used by thousands of K–12 schools and institutions of higher education.
Turnitin is expected to launch a new AI writing detector and additional related features for educators in the next few weeks.
David Adamson, principal machine learning scientist at Turnitin, and Patti West-Smith, senior director of customer engagement, have been working on Turnitin’s AI writing detection feature and related new tools to help educators better understand ChatGPT — and to show teachers how to use AI to save themselves time and how to tweak assignments so that ChatGPT cannot earn a good grade on writing homework.
Adamson, who taught computer science and math at Digital Harbor High in Baltimore, and West-Smith, who worked in public schools for 19 years as a teacher, curriculum supervisor, and principal, both believe that ChatGPT has presented a growth opportunity — or perhaps more like a growth demand — for writing instruction, which they explained at length in the newest episode of THE Journal Insider podcast.
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. Find all podcast episodes as well as K–12 ed tech news updated daily at THEJournal.com.
Resource links:
Music by LemonMusicStudio from Pixabay
THEJournal.com editor and podcast host Kristal Kuykendall digs into a story of tutoring triumphs in Odessa, Texas, with guest Dr. Scott Muri, superintendent of Ector County Independent School District, which has 33,500 students and 44 schools.
ECISD entered the pandemic already ramping up to address a district failing the state’s academic growth grading system. Under Muri — who took the helm at ECISD in summer 2019 — the district has implemented district-wide high-dosage tutoring strategically and quickly, with some unusual features such as pegging the tutoring providers’ payments to how much the students being tutored actually grow academically.
Muri’s efforts — and the remarkable academic growth that has resulted from his tutoring strategy — are notable not only because of the unique outcomes-based contract tutoring; the Texas Legislature passed a law in 2021 that began requiring individualized intervention for every student falling below state standards on core subjects in several grades. The requirements and the urgency with which they went into effect have proven to be a heavy lift for many Texas districts, and ECISD has stood out as an early success story for what high-dosage tutoring implemented strategically and within the structure of the school day can accomplish.
In this episode, Muri shares a number of valuable lessons his district learned along their journey — lessons likely to save time and money for any K–12 school or district selecting a tutoring provider, negotiating a contract, or deciding when and how the tutoring sessions should be held. He also explains outcomes-based contracting, which he and ECISD helped pilot in a study with Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research. For more details, read our extended report on ECISD's academic recovery efforts at bit.ly/Texas-tutoring.
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.
Resources:
Music by LemonMusicStudio from Pixabay
Cypher Learning, the company behind the NEO K–20 learning management system, was founded on the idea that the modern instructional model of public education is not, in fact, modern at all.
Former classroom teacher Todd Ryckman, now global director of customer success at Cypher Learning, felt the same way when he was in a traditional classroom; he eventually attended an education conference that sparked a new vision of what education could be, and he helped start a competency-based education academy in his district. How, he's a full-fledged proponent of the CBE model of instruction and helps schools all over the world revolutionize learning in ways large and small using Cypher Learning's platforms.
“The concept behind competency-based education is simple: learning is best measured by students demonstrating mastery of learning, rather than the number of hours spent in a classroom,” summarizes the Aurora Institute, a leading educator-led reform advocacy nonprofit and CBE proponent. “By redesigning the education system around actual student learning, we will prepare each student more effectively for a future in an increasingly global and competitive economy.”
In this episode of THE Journal Insider podcast, Ryckman joins THEJournal.com editor Kristal Kuykendall for a discussion about the CBE movement, what it looks like in school districts that have been implementing CBE over the past five years, and how Cypher Learning’s NEO LMS empowers educators and students, regardless of whether their school uses the traditional or “modern” instructional model or more of a CBE approach.
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.
Resource links:
Music by LemonMusicStudio from Pixabay