Continuing Education
Businesswire | August 11, 2023
Research shows that safety in school science labs and classrooms is a national concern. More than half of schools have had an injury or litigation, and more than three-quarters of accidents involve students. Accelerate Learning and Science Safety Inc. have exclusively partnered to increase safety in STEM education programming nationwide.
Accelerate Learning now offers Science Safety products and services to enable districts to improve safety policies and practices, reduce risk, and support ongoing compliance requirements.
“Safety is essential for hands-on learning, and it’s an integral part of Accelerate Learning’s STEM curriculum and professional development programs,” said Kent Donges, chief revenue officer for Accelerate Learning. “Through this partnership, our team now provides districts with comprehensive, preventative safety programs to meet the most current professional standards and regulatory requirements while making their STEM programs safer and more successful for all.”
Science Safety’s scalable, cloud-based mobile apps provide exceptional compliance capabilities for Facilities-based Safety Inspections, Student Safety Acknowledgment Forms, and STEM inventory management. Online Science Safety Training gives administrators, educators, and students access to STEM safety learning Pathways and Modules that are role, grade level, and subject matter specific, and can be customized to meet the local jurisdiction’s compliance requirements. Upon completion, learners receive verifiable micro-credentials and certificates. Professional expert safety services include in-person training and inspections, workshops, safety document services, and safety inspection report validations.
“Appropriately documented safety training is an annual requirement for educators in every district. Yet, many schools lack the proper tools, training, and expertise to mitigate the risks and legal liability of delivering highly engaging science and STEM programs,” said James Palcik, CEO of Science Safety. “Science Safety is excited to join forces with Accelerate Learning to elevate safety awareness and help schools build a culture of continuous safety.”
About Accelerate Learning Inc.
Accelerate Learning provides STEM curriculum and professional development solutions that empower teachers, increase scores, and inspire students to become tomorrow’s STEM leaders. Its STEMscopes, Collaborate Science, and Math Nation curricula and resources are highly adaptable, accessible, and support instruction in any learning environment.
About Science Safety Inc.
Science Safety’s mission is to elevate STEM safety awareness in schools and create a fundamental culture of safety that can mitigate unforeseen risks and liabilities.
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Talent Development
Businesswire | August 08, 2023
PowerSchool the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, today announced it is joining the K-12 Education Technology Secure by Design Pledge, a voluntary pledge for K-12 education technology software manufacturers, developed by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the U.S. Department of Education. PowerSchool also announced new commitments to further secure the education technology ecosystem by offering free and subsidized security-as-a-service resources to all U.S. schools and districts.
“Our primary mission is to personalize education for every student and that journey starts with our responsibility to protect and safeguard the over 45 million students we serve today in the U.S.,” said Hardeep Gulati, CEO of PowerSchool. “That is why we have made significant investments in cybersecurity and successfully defend our districts against over 1 billion cyber-attacks each year. We are honored to sign this pledge and even provide additional free and subsidized security-as-a-service trainings, tools, and resources to support and enable all U.S. school districts to fight against cybersecurity threats.”
As part of First Lady Jill Biden’s Back to School Safely: Cybersecurity Summit for K-12 Schools event on August 7th, 2023, PowerSchool CEO Hardeep Gulati will highlight PowerSchool’s cybersecurity leadership and initiatives including cloud infrastructure security, cyber defense, and governance risk and compliance, that secure over 80% of the school districts across all U.S. states, including 90 of the top 100 districts by student population.
“Let’s face it: in today’s digital age, our students and their teachers will increasingly use technology in the classroom. Schools have access to more devices and connectivity than ever before, and this technology in education has incredible potential to help students better connect with their learning and achieve, and teachers better engage with their students,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. “But to make the most of these benefits, we must effectively manage the risks.
Just as we expect everyone in a school system to plan and prepare for physical risks, we must now also ensure everyone helps plan and prepare for digital risks in our schools and classrooms. The Department of Education has listened to the field about the importance of K-12 cybersecurity, and today we are coming together to recognize this and indicate our next steps.”
PowerSchool already adheres to several commitments outlined in the pledge, including offering single sign-on for free to customers, providing audit logs to any customer upon request, maintaining a published vulnerability disclosure policy administered by an independent third party, and embracing vulnerability transparency by openly engaging with customers on vulnerabilities, threats, and risks the company identifies.
PowerSchool is also taking additional steps to provide industry-leading cybersecurity support to educational institutions. This includes offering free and subsidized security-as-a-service resources, including on-demand webinars, toolkits, and trainings to U.S. schools and districts, as well as offerings from partners including Abnormal Security, Amazon Web Services, and KnowBe4. These resources will be available to any U.S. school or district, regardless of their customer status.
“Keeping our students and our schools safe from cyberattacks comes down to equipping schools with three things – knowledge, resources, and people,” said Anne Neuberger, Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technologies. “This week, the White House worked to do just that – mobilizing funding, cybersecurity fact guides tailored for schools, and cybersecurity teams to visit schools and help them fight ransomware. We appreciate the innovative and meaningful private sector commitments in this ransomware fight, as we work together to keep kids cyber-safe online and in schools.”
PowerSchool’s significant investment in advanced security technologies, including static and dynamic code scanning, best-of-breed Web Application Firewalls, and more than 30 annual penetration tests, reinforces its unwavering commitment to providing unparalleled protection and trust to districts and schools. As a signatory of the Student Privacy Pledge 2020, PowerSchool adheres to all applicable state, province, and federal regulations and goes beyond those by independently verifying its security management system annually to third-party audited, internationally recognized standards for security management systems, achieving the ISO:27001 certification and SOC2 Type 2 – the gold standard data security certification for business service providers. PowerSchool is also partnered with the Consortium for School Networking (COSN) on their recently rolled-out K-12 Community Vendor Assessment Tool (K-12CVAT) and is an active partner of 1EdTech, focusing on industry standards, interoperability, and data privacy and security best practices. PowerSchool products have been vetted and certified as TrustEd Apps by 1Edtech, based on the organization's rigorous data and privacy rubric.
About PowerSchool
PowerSchool is the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. Its mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their full potential, in their way. PowerSchool connects students, teachers, administrators, and parents, with the shared goal of improving student outcomes. From the office to the classroom to the home, it helps schools and districts efficiently manage state reporting and related compliance, special education, finance, human resources, talent, registration, attendance, funding, learning, instruction, grading, assessments, and analytics in one unified platform. PowerSchool supports over 50 million students globally and more than 15,000 customers, including more than 90 of the top 100 districts by student enrollment in the United States, and sells solutions in more than 90 countries.
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Education Technology
PRnewswire | July 18, 2023
Anthology, a leading provider of education solutions that support the entire learner lifecycle, today announced its future of incorporating generative AI capabilities into its ecosystem of EdTech solutions in collaboration with Microsoft.
By using Microsoft's advanced AI technologies with Anthology's purpose-built suite of higher education solutions, Anthology is bringing forth new capabilities to help institutions personalize learning journeys, improve efficiencies and operations, and bolster recruitment and enrollment programs.
Anthology selected Microsoft as its AI solution partner because of Microsoft's vision and leadership in cloud AI developer services, long-standing relationship, and shared commitment to responsible AI by design.
Leveraging the power of AI across its solution suite is a key differentiator for Anthology and core to its mission to provide dynamic, data-informed experiences to the global education community through Anthology Intelligent Experiences™.
"We are thrilled to be partnering with Microsoft to drive the next wave of innovation in education and open a world of possibilities for the global education community," said JD White, Chief Product Officer at Anthology. "While other vendors might be looking at AI within a point solution, Anthology is assessing the power of generative AI technology across our vast stack of EdTech solutions. By thoughtfully integrating AI into our ecosystem, we can harness its power to foster innovation.
The collaboration with Microsoft ensures these solutions are scalable, secure, and seamlessly integrated into existing educational ecosystems, making them easily accessible to institutions worldwide."
"We're excited about our collaboration with Anthology to power new AI solutions for education with a shared commitment to responsible use," said Serena Sacks-Mandel, Global Chief Technology Officer for Microsoft Education. "Anthology is a proven partner that has consistently demonstrated innovation and is aligned to our mission of empowering education through technology."
Anthology's collaboration with Microsoft represents a significant step forward in delivering state-of-the-art AI capabilities tailored to the unique needs of higher education institutions. By integrating Microsoft's AI features into Anthology's purpose-built higher education solutions, institutions can unlock new opportunities for personalized student engagement, advanced data analytics, and streamlined administrative processes. For example, using Microsoft's Natural Language Processing capabilities, institutions can gain deeper insights from unstructured data sources, such as student feedback, surveys, and communications, empowering administrators to make data-informed decisions to improve student success and satisfaction.
Anthology unveiled new real-world applications of AI capabilities today at Anthology Together within its Blackboard Learn learning management system that are using Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, including:
• A course-builder aide for instructors that create draft modules, titles, descriptions, etc. The integration of Azure OpenAI Service will enable instructors to streamline content creation processes, saving valuable time and effort.
• Content-based test generation. AI-powered algorithms analyze a document's content and quickly generate a diverse set of questions. This allows educators to allocate more time to other important tasks, such as lesson planning and individual student support.
• Rubric creation. Rubric creation powered by AI streamlines the rubric creation process and ensures consistency and fairness in evaluating student performance.
Educators will have the ability to customize and fine-tune these AI-generated rubrics according to specific learning objectives and assessment criteria, providing a balance between automation and instructor expertise.
These features are built following Anthology's commitment to responsible AI use, ensuring that human judgment and ethical considerations always guide AI-facilitated decision-making and to use AI as a tool to enable positive outcomes while respecting privacy, fairness, and transparency. Learn more about Anthology's approach to ethical and responsible AI use.
Anthology uses Azure for cloud services and the Microsoft Power Platform for business intelligence solutions. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the foundation of its customer relationship management (CRM), Anthology® Reach, and Finance and Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions, which will allow Anthology to use Dynamics 365 Copilot features to accelerate innovation. Anthology also harnesses the power of Microsoft 365's collaboration and productivity tools within many products, including its learning management system (LMS), Blackboard® Learn.
Microsoft awarded Anthology the Microsoft Business Applications Inner Circle award in 2022/2023 and 2021/2022. The award recognizes Outstanding Achievements in EdTech and Anthology's rank in the echelon of Microsoft's Business Applications global network of partners.
About Anthology
Anthology offers the largest EdTech ecosystem on a global scale for education, supporting more than 150 million users in 80 countries. With a mission to provide dynamic, data-informed experiences to the global education community through Anthology Intelligent Experiences™, we help learners, leaders and educators achieve their goals by offering over 60 SaaS products and services designed to advance learning.
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