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Digital Divide Affecting Education Even More

New analysis shows 15-16 million kids—20% more than previous estimates—and as many as 400,000 teachers lack adequate internet or computing devices at home

Southern states have largest divides, but even among states with smallest divides, 25% of students lack adequate internet connection

A full 15-16 million public school students across the U.S. live in households without adequate internet access or computing devices to facilitate distance learning, according to analysis from Common Sense and Boston Consulting Group, which also finds that almost 10% of public school teachers (300,000 to 400,000) are also caught in the gap, affecting their ability to run remote classes. The 32-page report, Closing the K–12 Digital Divide in the Age of Distance Learning, sets a one-year price tag of between $6-11 billion to connect all kids at home, and an additional $1 billion to close the divide for teachers.

According to the study, “This digital divide is a major problem for students in all 50 states and all types of communities but is most pronounced in rural communities and households with Black, Latinx, and Native American students.” Analysis shows that the states with the highest numbers of students without adequate internet connection to study (25/3 Mbps download/upload) also happen to be the states with the highest English Learner populations—Texas: 1.8 million; California: 1.5 million; Florida: 800,000; and New York: 725,000.

“This new report shows that not only is the distance learning gap larger than previously estimated but that too many teachers are caught in it, too, and it will require significant and immediate investments from Congress to close it,” said James P. Steyer, CEO and founder of Common Sense. “This new data and analysis further highlights the urgency for policymakers, educators, and private companies to address this basic educational equity issue that affects kids in every state. Our report makes clear that during this age of distance learning, we have to act right now to close the digital divide that is leaving millions of kids behind.”

The report also highlights the need for digital literacy training for families unfamiliar with digital technology, and finds that the states with the largest K–12 digital divide are largely in the south, with Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama showing the largest deficit by proportion. But every state has a problem. “Even among states with the smallest divides, approximately one in four students do not have an adequate internet connection,” the report concludes.

Download the report here.

A Letter of Apology and Hope from America to its People

To the people who gave me life,
I have failed and hurt you. I have turned my back on my people when you needed me the most. And, in truth, I’ve tried to erase the memory of these failures more times than I can count. But hear me: you are all my people, the strength of who I am, the reason I exist. As I look across so many cities and nations around the globe standing together, I ask you to hold on tight to hope. And in the name of hope, I share this apology.

To my Indigenous people, I apologize. I saw your knowledge, honesty, and generosity. I was so anxious to begin my life, that I ordered the genocide of 100 million of the people who first gave me life (D. Stannard, Oxford Press, 1992) with losses so unspeakable ‘til there was nothing more to lose.

To my Black people, I apologize. I saw your strength, resilience, and brilliance in doctors, teachers, astronomers, scientists, parents, and children, and took you, making you my slaves. You tried to resist then and since then so many times, but I was willing to erase your greatness from history, and so created hidden rules and systems to ensure I didn’t lose.

To my Latino people, I apologize. I saw your home countries’ natural resources, family values, and work ethic. I lured you to me with tactics kept in the shadows and promises of wealth, and you came. You came with expertise and languages, but like many times before, I used education to strip you of your language, designed campaigns to label you illegal, and caged your children alone and afraid to fend for themselves.

To my Asian people, I apologize. I saw your gifts, skills, detailed approaches and tools. I brought and encouraged you to come to me, and you did. You laid my infrastructure, helped me advance, and fought wars for me. But, just as before, when you wanted better, we derailed the image of the good immigrant and turned all my other people’s suspicious eyes against you.

To my Muslim, Arabic, and Middle Eastern people, I apologize. I saw your talent, experiences, and resources, especially oil. I schemed with other nations and waited for you to come to me. It was not the want for better, but the simple want to ‘be’ – to choose how you dress, your religion, your way of life and so I found ways to make you my enemy ensuring that I wouldn’t lose.

To women, my LGBTQ community, the poor, and all of my people, I apologize. I needed more gold, more privileges, just more. You gave me the strength that’s kept me standing, even though the more you gave, the fewer and fewer hands were allowed to share in the fruits of that better life. Not only did I sacrifice the ideals and core values of who I am, but I did so knowing that it meant the worsening of conditions for most of my people.

This apology is not for today, for one moment, or any one of my people. For at the root of what I’ve done is to create and design a nation of contradictions. It is a contradiction defined by injustice, by inequities, and a web of systems that permeate every aspect of life that is meant to maintain those inequities in the hands of a few who work from the shadows as so not to lose. A contradiction of a Lady Liberty who welcomes people when I need you only to resign you to what is often subhuman conditions.

It is your voice that has made me look across the nation at all of my people, standing against an issue that is rooted in the inequities created by my own hand. And now that I see you, do not lose hope. Do not settle for surface attempts to serve justice for one incident, to create more jobs or change just practices used in policing, or to focus on unactionable rhetoric like the, “tools that we need to use to get control … and that the rule of law doesn’t collapse are those very institutional tools that have led to that grief and pain,” Gov. Tim Walz. These reflect false solutions to the root of our current challenge. This struggle has been influenced by a history of helplessness, sadness, and disappointment in founding ideals and has influence over every aspect of life. Ideals that have failed to protect its people in our healthcare, banking, judicial system, policing practices, education, and on and on. To reclaim our founding ideals and shared humanity, we must slow the fury of intolerance, come together as one, and make systemic changes that include policies, practices, and accountability so that so few aren’t entitled to so much more at the expense of all its people.

I know that some have suffered more losses than others and it can feel like we have nothing more to lose. But do not despair or lose hope in the true meaning of “We the People”. Let us come together in solidarity, understanding, and commitment to resolve our current unrest by addressing the root of our struggle. Each of you will have a different way of taking action that are all equally important. Some will protest to bring awareness, others will take a knee or turn in their badge potentially sacrificing their life’s work, and still others will ensure policy changes that hold us all accountable to lasting and actionable change. Wherever your ‘front line’ is, we will all have a responsibility to this work. And our collective path forward will need to honor your power in each of these spaces and the unique and diverse reasons that brought you here.

It should no longer be enough to simply survive for so many of my people who deserve a better day. But better requires humanity, acknowledging inequity, and a focus on changes that ensure systemic justice. It requires that we all remember who we are, where we came from, and that we all came from greatness. It requires that the voices of our allies elevate the voices of those who experience subhuman conditions for far too long in order to identify the extent of disparity in resources, tools, policies, and funds necessary for progress. Yet more than words, it requires follow through and policies that ensure shared accountability to our democracy that must finally be unapologetically separated from the greed and influence of those that put their financial interests ahead of ‘the people’. Most importantly, it requires that we all share of our privilege to ensure the words I make you say hold true for all, “and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all”.

In hope for a better tomorrow, America

Alexandra Guilamo (CEAO, Chief Equity & Achievement Officer, TaJu Educational Solutions) is an expert in the implementation, education, and effective leadership of dual-language, bilingual, and language-learner education. She has previously served as a teacher, academic coach, elementary school principal, and district-level educator.

PresenceLearning

PresenceLearning, a provider of live online special education-related services to K-12 schools, has expanded its offerings to help school-based clinical teams deliver remote special education services to students at home. The company is offering professional development, including live online training and office hours with its clinical experts, as well as access to its proprietary Telehealth Institute self-guided training modules. Through the training, school-based teams receive practical, effective approaches and resources for getting the most out of teletherapy and tele-assessment in home environments. This includes strategies for managing student focus and engagement through screens, developing trust and rapport through screens, communication and training templates for parents who are supporting sessions at home, and how to make the most of the extensive content and tools in the platform.
Included with the training is access to the teletherapy platform designed by clinicians for clinicians specifically to serve K-12 students with special needs. With this training and platform, school-based clinicians around the country have been able to continue to provide services such as speech-language therapy, occupational therapy, behavioral mental health services, psychoeducational assessment, and other special education-related services to their students with special needs in order to maintain progress on goals.
www.presencelearning.com/schools/covid-19-teletherapy/.

Helping Teachers Focus on the Skills to Eliminate COVID-Related Learning Loss

Renaissance has released a collection of free resources to predict and mitigate any learning gaps students have experienced as a result of the COVID-19 school closures. Tailored to each state’s standards, these resources are designed to help teachers identify the most critical skills, dubbed “Focus Skills,” that students may have missed as a result of learning disruptions.

Determined through extensive research to be the skills most critical for accelerating learning and closing learning gaps, Focus Skills unlock student understanding of key ideas in multiple subjects. Identified as key skills within Renaissance’s learning progressions—the path students take as they move from a novice to an expert level of understanding, according to the standards of each state—Focus Skills are essential for student progression and are prerequisites for learning future skills. Focus Skills are also transferrable skills that help students achieve success in adjacent domains and subjects.

Though the acquisition of any new skill affects learning, Focus Skills are the smaller subset of key building blocks that are vital for furthering learning. By prioritizing mastery of Focus Skills, educators can help students develop the essential knowledge and skills to move to the next level. To help educators create a plan to bring their students up to speed this fall, Renaissance has released a collection of Focus Skills assets, including:

  • Interactive visualizations of each state’s Focus Skills and domains, with the ability to drill down into specific skill details, offering quick insight into key skills students may have missed in previous years; and
  • A research brief explaining the importance of Focus Skills and how they inform teachers as they decide how to best help students recover from learning disruptions and get back on track for the new academic year. Renaissance.com/Focus-Skills.

Linguacious Releases First Book of Little Polyglot Adventures Series

Linguacious®, an award-winning Iowa-based company well known for its innovative audio-enabled vocabulary flashcard games in over 30 languages, has just released Book 1 in a new series of children’s books, Little Polyglot Adventures. The focus of the series is on helping kids appreciate the value of different languages and cultures. Volume 1, Dylan’s Birthday Present, is available in several languages, in both monolingual and bilingual editions. In every book in the series, children will learn new words in different languages. According to Victor D.O. Santos, PhD, author of the series, “our goal is to make the series available in hundreds of languages, including many endangered languages”. Volume 2 in the series, A Wild Day at the Zoo, will come out by October, 2020.

Dylan’s Birthday Present (Little Polyglot Adventures – Vol 1)
Dylan is an American boy like many others. One thing makes him special, though: his parents come from other countries and speak to him in different languages. It’s his birthday today and he receives a very unusual present, only to lose it shortly after. Together with his best friend Emma, a sweet bilingual girl born to South African parents, Dylan sets out to find his lost birthday present. During their search, the two multilingual and multicultural friends learn about the value of friendship, of speaking different languages, and of appreciating one’s own as well as others’ cultural and linguistic background.

For more information, visit www.linguacious.net.

Webinar: Virtual Distance Learning Playbook Institute

Virtual Distance Learning Playbook Institute
“Teaching for Engagement and Impact in Any Setting”
July 20, 2020
8:00 AM-3:00 PM PT

In this webinar Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and John Hattie draw on their newly published Distance Learning Playbook to reveal what works best in teaching, assessing, and planning in your online classroom–per 25+ years of Visible Learning® research and evidence. Learn how to:

  • Get started during the first days of school
  • Manage teacher-student relationships from a distance
  • Plan instructional units, engaging task design
  • Obtain equitable feedback for assessment and grading considerations

For more information or to register for this event, click here.

Mississauga Nation Launches Online Language Initiatives; Partners with Conservationists

According to CBC, the Mississauga Nation is launching a three-pronged initiative online to revitalize culture, language and identity in its communities.

“I think people want to be connected to culture, and that’s what they were telling us,” Sean Conway, a member of Curve Lake First Nation and one of three community liaisons who have been working in the Mississauga communities over the last year told CBC. “I think this is a great first step for us in bringing together all of those elements and building on those connections.”

The three parts of the program are:

  • A cultural learning series with the help of local elders and knowledge keepers
  • A virtual workshop series of interactive group experiences that will range from historical storytelling to traditional arts like moccasin- and basket-making
  • Illustrated flash cards and labels released once a month that feature Anishinaabemowin words in the Mississauga dialect

The Curve Lake First Nation, which is one of the six Mississauga Nations, also have partnered with Environment and Climate Change Canada and Otonabee Conservation to install turtle crossing signs in the local Michi Saagig dialect of Anishinaabemowin.

Curve Lake First Nation is home to four types of turtles, and all considered to be species at risk. 

“Curve Lake used to be full of turtles and now we’re not,” Lorenzo Whetung, one of the community members who initiated the project, told CBC. 

The translation was done by elders in the community and the graphic on the signs was provided by the Toronto Zoo Turtle Island Conservation Program. 

“Installing sings in areas where miikinaak (turtles) have been observed crossing the roads is a simple way to remind rsidents and visitors to Curve Lake First Nation to be aware and take steps to avoid turtles when driving,” Whetung stated in a press release.

Photo courtesy Curve Lake First Nation.

Rumi in the Language Classroom: Diversity of Knowledge & Teaching

Rumi in the Language Classroom Series Vol 1

See Vol 2 of the series here

See Vol 3 of the series here

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, also known as Mawlana “our master” and more popularly as Rumi, was a 13th-century Persian poet, philosopher, theologian, and Sufi originally from, Khorasan, Iran. Originally written in Persian, Rumi’s works have made a dramatic impact on literature worldwide and have been translated into many languages.

There is a poem by Rumi titled “The Elephant in the Dark” that details a story that had been told centuries before him. The story details how an elephant was exhibited in a dark room, and people gathered to see what an elephant is. So, they touched it but each one a different part. Depending upon where they touched, they believed the elephant to be like a water spout (trunk), a fan (ear), a pillar (leg) and a throne (back). Therefore, whenever they were asked to describe it, they did it from their own perspectives, from the part they had touched.

This poem is applicable to how teachers prioritize various aspects of learning a second language (L2). Darkness is the lack of awareness about different facets of language learning and the people describing the elephant are different teachers who have touched upon (concentrated on) different features of language learning such as reading, writing, listening, speaking, vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, and the like.

For instance, teachers who concentrated more on vocabulary define language development as learning more vocabulary items. Likewise, teachers who focused more on listening may believe in learning a new language through watching films and listening to music.

J.C. Richards argued that a teacher should possess 6 forms of knowledge to be an effective teacher, i.e. theories of teaching, teaching skills, communication skills and language proficiency, subject matter knowledge, pedagogical reasoning and decision making, and contextual knowledge. Thus, if teachers obtain all these forms of knowledge, they can see the whole elephant (second language learning) and posit a moderate view on language learning which distributes balanced focus on different skills and systems of language learning. Therefore, teachers can provide better learning environments for learners by integrating various types of skills and teaching methods.

References

Richards, J. C. 1998. ‘Beyond training: Perspectives on language teacher education’. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Mojaddedi, J. 2004. ‘Introduction’. Rumi, Jalal al-Din. The Masnavi, Book One. Oxford University Press (Kindle Edition). p. xix.

Celebrate World Emoji Day

2020 marks a decade for experiencing emojis, and July 17th is World Emoji Day. In 2010, Unicode made the decision to codify Emojis – giving them international scope in every coding (and linguistic) language in the world. Since then, the Emoji has become part of our global consciousness and language: allowing people to communicate in ways that transcend borders, and teaching the international community about its preferences and biases in the process.  

The date of World Emoji Day was chosen because it was the day that iCal for Mac was first announced at MacWorld Expo in 2002.

World Emoji Day was created by Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge in 2014. 📙 Emojipedia is the custodian of this global holiday.

Emojipedia serves over 25 million emoji lookups each month and they spend their time updating 📃 emoji definitions, tracking emoji 🔄 changes, and keeping the world informed about the latest emoji additions and ✅ approvals.

The first 🌎 World Emoji Day was celebrated on July 17, 2014 and the first tweet about #WorldEmojiDay was on July 11, 2014.

Prior to the existence of 🌏 World Emoji Day people would sometimes post 📲 the Calendar Emoji on July 17, too!

HMH Introduces Teacher’s Corner

Learning company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt today introduced Teacher’s Corner, a brand new online space that supports continuous professional learning for educators. Connected directly to HMH’s curriculum solutions ecosystem via digital teaching and learning platform Ed: Your Friend in Learning, Teacher’s Corner invites users into an easy-to-use, ever-growing library of on-demand professional learning resources within a bright, intuitive, and modern user experience.

Whether it’s quickly prepping for a lesson, investing time picking up best practices for remote instruction, listening to a short podcast from a fellow teacher or joining a live event alongside hundreds of peers, Teacher’s Corner provides trusted resources that empower educators.

“Educators are facing challenges that we have never seen before as we approach the Back to School season. The global pandemic has ushered in a new connected era of education, and laid bare the need for inspiring professional learning that centers teacher agency and adds deeper value to day-to-day teaching,” says Amy Dunkin, General Manager and EVP of Professional Services at HMH. “Teacher’s Corner is at the heart of our ongoing shift to virtual delivery of on-demand, flexible professional learning opportunities that meet educators where they are, create community and support effective curriculum implementation.”

Leveraging video, text and interactive media, Teacher’s Corner offers intuitive access to research-based insight from a connected community of practicing teachers, coaches, program authors and renowned learning experts. Reflecting a new kind of professional learning experience, the platform prioritizes educators’ voices and needs, ensuring resources are relevant and inspiring, and creating opportunities for best practice sharing, real-world advice, and actionable tips.

Sample content includes:

  • Regular video series from learning experts and thinkers, including “Hip Hop Teacher Moves” from Dr. Chris Emdin and special content from HMH literacy, math and science program authors, who walk through how their research meets practice in the curriculum.
  • Authentic, original resources from more than one dozen practicing teachers, like the how-to video series “Real Rap with Reynolds,” where ninth-grade Philadelphia-based English teacher CJ Reynolds offers guidance on building engaging, noteworthy online learning, as well as program-specific teaching tips and model lessons from educators using HMH programs.
  • Live events featuring instructional coaches, experts and fellow teachers in real-time online sessions with active participation and feedback, including “Phonics Fit,” a yoga meets foundational reading session, and “The Power of AND,” which steps teachers through the process of recognizing both their own and their students’ needs, and creates connections and community across remote learning environments.
  • A virtual “Breakroom” where educators can stay inspired and share ideas, new lesson resources and weekly reflection.
  • Content rooted in social emotional learning that prioritizes educator well-being, including support in navigating remote learning and the challenges of the unique Back to School experience ahead.

“I’m so excited to be a part of Teacher’s Corner,” notes LaNesha Tabb, an Indianapolis-based kindergarten teacher and Teacher’s Corner ambassador. “What an amazing opportunity for educators to come together to share expertise. I love when the voices of educators are amplified, and there are bite-sized resources at my fingertips!”

Teacher’s Corner is available now via Ed: Your Friend in Learning for teachers with programs on the platform. Bringing together assessment, insights, professional learning, instruction and practice for core, supplemental and intervention solutions, Ed provides a connected experience at point-of-use for today’s educators.

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