Education Technology
Businesswire | July 10, 2023
YuJa, Inc., a leader in ed-tech solutions, has introduced a number of new and exciting features across its portfolio of higher education offerings, which include the flagship YuJa Enterprise Video Platform, YuJa Panorama Digital Accessibility platform, YuJa Engage Student Response System, YuJa Verity Test Proctoring, and YuJa Himalayas Enterprise Archiving Platform.
“Our goal is to continually innovate to meet the evolving needs of our customers,” said Nathan Arora, Chief Business Officer at YuJa, Inc. “With these new features, updates, and enhancements, we aim to empower educators and institutions with innovative tools that foster engaging learning environments and enable seamless collaboration. We are dedicated to supporting the ever-changing landscape of higher education and ensuring our products remain at the forefront of educational technology.”
Highlighted feature introductions and updates are listed below.
YuJa Enterprise Video Platform
A number of Enterprise Video Platform improvements were implemented. Highlights include:
The need for third-party cookies has been eliminated, which simplified product use and enhances the privacy and security for institutions as they access the Video Platform from within their learning management system.
A new umbrella system infrastructure has been deployed to support systems of higher education with multiple campuses or institutions using a single Video Platform instance. Administrators can manage system-level deployment and designate sub-administrators at an individual college level.
A new client-side Microsoft Teams app complements the cloud-side Teams integration, which creates a streamlined video-sharing workflow between Teams and the Video Platform.
YuJa Panorama Digital Accessibility Platform
YuJa Panorama Digital Accessibility Platform has a long list of new features to help streamline accessibility across institutions. Some accessibility enhancements include:
A new gradient reader helps reduce unnecessary eye movements and increases the reader’s focus by providing a guiding color gradient to facilitate a smooth shift between lines of text.
YuJa Panorama provides “How-to-Fix” guides to help instructors fix accessibility concerns. Now, guides can now be edited with new text, images, and links, and each issue is now accompanied by both a video tutorial and a link to web content accessibility guidelines.
The Alternatives Formats Menu has an updated UI and minimized steps to view a preferred format.
YuJa Verity Test Proctoring Platform
Among the top updates to the YuJa Verity Test Proctoring Platform include the following:
YuJa Verity users can now monitor third-party assessments across all learning management systems, which provides secure testing environments within the Verity LTI app.
A new lockdown app has been launched. The app works seamlessly with Verity Live Proctoring to ensure students can’t end recordings during an assessment and enforces strict measures to prevent common methods of bypassing proctor settings.
Instructors can now create custom profiles for their proctoring settings, which can be applied to upcoming proctored tests.
YuJa Engage Student Response System
The YuJa Engage Student Response System also saw a host of new and updated features, including:
A new mobile application for IOS and Android has been introduced to their respective app stores to provide on-the-go access to polls and results for both students and instructors.
Surveys have been updated to seamlessly integrate with the gradebook and new question types have been added.
Gradebook results can be manually adjusted within YuJa Engage, which allows instructors to tailor the grading process to better align with individual student progress and ensure accurate evaluation of academic performance.
ABOUT YUJA, INC.
YuJa is a leader in ed-tech solutions. Our platforms provide organizations of all sizes with the tools to educate, engage, inspire and collaborate. We serve learning enterprises within all sectors, including higher-ed, K-12, government, healthcare, non-profit and corporate. We have legal headquarters in Delaware with primary U.S. offices in Silicon Valley, California, and Canadian offices in Toronto.
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Education Technology
PRnewswire | July 04, 2023
Newsela, the leading K-12 instructional content platform, announced today that it has acquired Formative, the leading real-time instruction and assessment platform. This acquisition brings together two beloved classroom products to provide a comprehensive instructional solution that engages students and accelerates learning.
"Newsela has led the transition away from static classroom instructional materials to become the digital platform of choice for teachers seeking to accelerate student growth with accessible, real-world content and scaffolding activities that support all learners," said Pep Carrera, Chief Executive Officer at Newsela.
"Combining Newsela's best-in-class, accessible content with Formative's data-rich assessment activities will give students and teachers the complete, meaningful learning experience they want, while providing the deep insights that teachers and administrators need to effectively impact student outcomes."
Craig Jones and Kevin McFarland founded Formative as graduate students at UCLA in 2013. Today, Formative is used by educators and administrators globally and has a presence in the majority of U.S. school districts. In the past year alone, more than four million students have engaged with the platform.
"All teachers know the importance of being responsive to their students, but that individual attention requires a lot of time and resources. As a teacher, I saw greater improvements when I had the time to provide daily formative assessments, targeted intervention, and quicker feedback loops. Formative was created to apply this approach at scale, so teachers can do it better, faster, and take swift action with real-time data," said Craig Jones, Co-Founder and CEO of Formative. "Our goal was to give teachers the most effective tool for assessment and analysis. Now, the most effective assessment tool can be used with the best content."
As school districts look for the best pathways to improve student outcomes following the disruption of the pandemic, the role of formative assessments in concert with authentic, engaging content, could not be more critical in the effort to accelerate learning. Teachers will soon be able to apply Formative's powerful technology to Newsela's 15,000+ content library to gauge learning immediately, provide even more powerful scaffolds and support, while course-correcting in real time to meet academic goals throughout the year.
"We've learned that schools can have the best assessments and the best content, but that won't matter if teachers don't have the resources to make actionable changes based on data. Formative's success to date has been giving teachers real-time data that helps make informed decisions," said Kevin McFarland, Co-Founder and COO of Formative. "Now with Newsela, teachers will have all the resources—the best content and the best assessments—to help students achieve their goals."'
About Formative
Built by teachers for teachers, Formative's mission is to accelerate learning and close the opportunity gap for all students. Formative empowers educators to super-charge their existing lessons and teaching tools into data-rich, formative-learning experiences across every grade level and subject matter. Formative's world-class Customer Success team ensures that administrators and teachers get the most from the platform, providing expert support for any level of technology in the classroom.
About Newsela
Newsela is an education technology company dedicated to meaningful classroom learning for every student. With over 15,000 authentic texts published at five reading levels, teacher scaffolding tools and activities, and flexible formative assessments, Newsela's products provide K-12 teachers with the instructional content they need to support and grow every learner.Newsela's platform is backed by learning science and purpose-built to drive outcomes and unlock student motivation. Today, over 3.3 million teachers and 40 million students have registered with Newsela for relevant, real-world content that accelerates learning and engages every learner.
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Corporate Education and Training
Globenewswire | July 05, 2023
ChildCare Education Institute® (CCEI), an online child care training provider dedicated exclusively to the early care and education workforce, offers CUR134: An Introduction to Learning Stories as a no-cost trial course to new CCEI users July 1-31, 2023.
A Learning Story is a record of what a caregiver has observed about a child or group of children. Learning Stories can use text, images, or videos in any combination. They usually focus on a specific moment in time but may also include an accumulation of a child′s experiences over an extended period. They can also focus on a group experience or a moment when children were engaged in learning experiences together.
Learning Stories highlight children′s thinking skills, approaches to learning, and dispositions. Dispositions are described as characteristics or attitudes toward learning that children demonstrate. The retelling of an event becomes a Learning Story when the teacher adds their perspective or feedback about the child′s learning and development. This might include a description of the concrete skills the child demonstrated or a more theoretical perspective such as the child′s approach to learning.
Learning Stories help teachers connect to the aspects of early education that bring them joy and fulfillment. Using Learning Stories can also help teachers nurture their love of teaching. The first-person format makes the documentation personal. The narrative format gives educators a chance to share their feelings about the steps in a child′s unique developmental journey. Rather than spending time identifying what children cannot do, teachers focus on documenting children′s success stories. This focus on success creates a positive mindset for both the children and the teacher. Reviewing Learning Stories with children helps teachers build emotional connections with children, which creates a nurturing, curious, and supportive learning environment.
This course will introduce participants to Learning Stories, a powerful assessment tool in early childhood education. When fully embraced by educators, directors, and families, Learning Stories are a transformative approach to assessment. They deepen connections between teachers, families, children, and the broader community. Participants will discover the essential components of Learning Stories and how to develop each component.
"Learning Stories create an understanding of both children and adults in a way that promotes further discussion and ongoing learning," says Leslie Coleman Education Director of CCEI. "They provide educators with a chance to share ideas, plan for future learning, and reflect on their practice."
CUR134: An Introduction to Learning Stories is a two-hour, intermediate-level course and grants 0.2 IACET CEU upon successful completion. Current CCEI users with active, unlimited annual subscriptions can register for professional development courses at no additional cost when logged in to their CCEI account. Users without subscriptions can purchase child care training courses as block hours through CCEI online enrollment.
About ChildCare Education Institute
ChildCare Education Institute®, provides high-quality, distance education certificates and child care training programs in an array of child care settings. Over 200+ English and Spanish child care training courses are available online to meet licensing, recognition program, and Head Start requirements. CCEI also has online certification programs that provide the coursework requirement for national credentials including the CDA, Director and Early Childhood Credentials. CCEI, a Council for Professional Recognition approved training partner, is accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC), is recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and as an IACET Accredited Provider, offers IACET CEUs for its learning events that comply with the ANSI/IACET Continuing Education and Training Standard.
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