TALENT DEVELOPMENT
PRnewswire | April 27, 2023
Clever, the platform powering digital learning for more than 75% of U.S. K-12 schools, today announced its new service, Clever MFA+. Designed to help districts facing a growing number of cybersecurity incidents in schools, Clever's new offering protects sensitive data by providing a dual layer of authentication that's easy for administrators and educators to use.
"With the growing sophistication of hackers, we designed this tool to support the realities of schools today, offering busy teachers and staff peace of mind," said Mohit Gupta, Group Product Manager at Clever. "Clever MFA+ helps districts prevent malicious account access, meet insurance requirements, and ensure a safe and secure learning environment."
In a recent Clever survey, one in four administrators said their district had experienced a hack, phishing incident, data breach, or other cyber attack in the past year. The impact, including cost and learning time lost to get systems running again, is high for K-12 education – on average costing schools $1.6M per ransomware incident.
Clever MFA+ serves as a holistic, all-in-one solution that helps districts easily secure access to critical applications:
• Staff-and teacher-friendly factors: Clever MFA+ offers a variety of authentication options, including app tokens (TOTP), SMS codes, voice calls and hardware tokens, as well as biometric.
• Clever MFA+ into familiar devices and apps: The solution covers Chromebooks and Windows devices, while integrating with Google Workspace, Azure, AD and ADFS and any additional apps available with SAML, OpenIDConnect, or OAuth2.
• One, secure Clever login: This new offering means sensitive applications and devices can be protected behind one secure login and with one familiar, trusted single-sign on partner.
"Our instructional programs all filter through Clever — and some of our most sensitive information is rostered into those programs. Having a second layer of protection is paramount," said Dylan Jones, Instructional Technology and Data Coordinator at Sunflower County Consolidated School District. "Clever MFA+ provides seamless protection for an app that all teachers and staff are used to and familiar with! We already do identity management, rostering, and the single sign-on Portal with Clever — so MFA just made sense."
Clever MFA+ is now available with a low price per staff user per year, and schools benefit from free set-up and support to make adoption seamless and quick. To learn more about Clever MFA+, visit here.
The Clever SSO portal for students remains free of charge. Districts can take advantage of built-in MFA functionality to secure the Clever Portal for users with admin access and the existing Clever Badges + Pin functionality to protect students' accounts today.
About Clever
Clever is on a mission to connect every student to a world of learning. More than 75% of U.S. K-12 schools now use Clever to power secure digital learning experiences. With our platform for schools and a network of leading application providers, we're committed to advance education with technology that works for students everywhere.
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TALENT DEVELOPMENT
Businesswire | April 10, 2023
Brightwheel, the leading all-in-one early education platform, today announced that it has acquired Experience Early Learning, a nationally recognized brand that produces a comprehensive research-based early education curriculum and assessment system. Through the acquisition, brightwheel is merging the best of physical and digital learning tools for the first time as it advances its mission to deliver high quality early education for every child.
“Young children need to learn in-person with physical materials that they can touch and feel,” said Dave Vasen, Founder and CEO of brightwheel. “The merging of physical and digital will save providers many hours each month, improve the classroom learning experience, and even extend it to the home, all through the brightwheel platform. I couldn’t be more excited to bring these two companies together and completely rethink what’s possible in early ed.”
Aligned with NAEYC, Common Core, Head Start, and all 50 states’ early learning standards, Experience Early Learning covers all areas of development including social-emotional, physical, language & literacy, math & reasoning, science, social studies, and creative arts, designed for infants through pre-K aged children. This leading program provides a monthly toolkit with everything a teacher needs to bring the curriculum to life in the classroom, including hands-on materials such as books, music, posters, art supplies, games, and workbooks, each tailored for specific ages.
Brightwheel allows preschool administrators and teachers to manage everything that happens day-to-day such as billing, enrollment, attendance, compliance, and communications all through the brightwheel app. Teachers can easily capture learning moments in real time through photos and videos, take notes, track child development, and conduct assessments. Brightwheel is the first and only platform where teachers can automatically share prewritten notes with parents that help to continue the learning at home.
Experience Curriculum is now live on brightwheel for Preschool and Toddler levels, with Baby coming in the future. Benefits of the newly integrated offering include:
• Elevated quality of learning during the most critical first five years of a child’s development with a professional, research-based curriculum aligned to all 50 state standards.
• Makes teachers’ jobs less time consuming and more rewarding, thereby improving staff retention at a time when turnover in the industry is at an all time high.
• Greater engagement from families in their child’s learning through automated sharing of progress, photos and updates in real-time.
As brightwheel invests in expanding its curriculum offering, it has appointed Julie DeLoyd as Head of brightwheel Education, responsible for leading and scaling the company’s education business. DeLoyd joins brightwheel from developmental toy company Melissa & Doug where she served as Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer.
“I have long admired brightwheel’s dedication to improving the early education experience for children, families, and teachers,” said DeLoyd, Head of brightwheel Education. “For the first time ever, there is a one-stop destination for everything education providers need, empowering them to focus on what they do best. I am proud to join this talented team as brightwheel scales its education offering and improves the quality of early learning.”
About Brightwheel
Brightwheel is the complete preschool and childcare platform providing everything educators need to easily run their program all in one place. Quick to set up and even easier to use, brightwheel’s #1 rated platform enables providers to save time, get paid faster, connect with families and staff, and support child development. Trusted by millions of educators and families across North America, brightwheel is committed to elevating the early learning experience for every child.
About Experience Early Learning
Experience Early Learning is a research-based early education program that fosters a joy for learning through sensory-based experiences. Since 1984, this nationally recognized curriculum system has supported children’s social-emotional, physical, and cognitive development. Monthly thematic kits with lesson plans and hands-on learning materials support teachers in and out of the classroom and encourage learning through play. Experience Early Learning is a community of educators with a mission to help children embrace their unique strengths, grow confidence, and love others.
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CORPORATE LEARNING SYSTEMS
PRnewswire | April 05, 2023
Teaching Strategies, the country's leading developer of early childhood curriculum, assessment, professional learning, and family engagement solutions, has won EdTech Digest's "EdTech Cool Tool Award" for The Creative Curriculum®, its research-based, whole-child curriculum that serves children from infancy through kindergarten.
The Creative Curriculum®, which earned the top honor in the "curriculum and instruction solution" award category, is designed to give early childhood educators, no matter their level of experience, the resources and support they need to implement a developmentally appropriate, content-rich program for children with diverse backgrounds and skill levels. The curriculum's digital platform includes, for example, planning tools to guide individualized instruction; a mobile app to engage families with learning in the classroom and at home; and on-demand professional development and community-building opportunities.
Teaching Strategies was also named a finalist in seven award categories, spanning company leadership to assessment to credentialing.
"Our youngest learners—and those closest to them— deserve comprehensive supports that meet their evolving needs. This is especially true as we continue to navigate the long-term effects of the pandemic on learning in the classroom and at home," said Teaching Strategies CEO John Olsen. "We're thrilled to be recognized by EdTech Digest for our leadership in the sector and for our ongoing commitment to offer children, educators, and families the most innovative, timely solutions."
Established in 2010, The EdTech Awards recognize, acknowledge, and celebrate the most exceptional innovators, leaders, and trendsetters in education technology with three main honors: the EdTech Cool Tool Awards, the EdTech Leadership Awards, and the EdTech Trendsetter Awards.
Teaching Strategies was named a finalist in various categories under all three main honors. The products recognized as finalists for "Cool Tool Awards" include the new Professional Development Teacher Membership; the widely-used and trusted GOLD® assessment; the trauma-informed coaching app Noni™; and Tadpoles®, a communication solution for child care programs.
In addition, Olsen was named a finalist for a "Leadership Award" and the company's entire ecosystem of solutions was a finalist for a "Trendsetter Award."
Access a full list of winners and finalists for the awards.
This year's finalists and winners were narrowed from the larger field and judged based on various criteria, including: pedagogical workability, efficacy and results, support, clarity, value and potential.
"A very big congratulations to all The EdTech Awards 2023 finalists and winners—and congratulations to all who endured the upheavals of the last few years only to come through stronger, more experienced, resilient, and resolute in laying out the future of learning," said Victor Rivero, who as Editor-in-Chief of EdTech Digest oversees the program.
Rivero continued: "It's far from perfect but across K-12, higher education, and workforce learning sectors, an accelerated digital transformation has left in its wake hybrid schools, rapidly changing postsecondary models, and an increasingly remote-based workforce. The world has truly changed—and we will never be the same again."
About Teaching Strategies
Driven by research that shows a child's first eight years form a critical foundation for success in school and in life, Teaching Strategies has been an advocate for the early education community for over 40 years. Today, Teaching Strategies connects teachers, children and families to inspired teaching and learning experiences, informative data, stronger family partnerships, and professional learning through the leading early learning platform and resources. Its products, including the most widely-used curriculum and assessment solutions The Creative Curriculum® and GOLD®, are found in over 250,000 classrooms and reach over 4 million children each year. To learn why thousands of early childhood programs and many states choose to partner with Teaching Strategies to help ensure children's success in school and in life.
About EdTech Digest and EdTech Awards
EdTech Digest, a leading source of cool tools, interviews, and trends showcasing the future of learning, annually honors the best and brightest people, products and groups working in edtech with The EdTech Awards. Cool Tool, Leadership, and Trendsetter honorees span the K-12, Higher Ed, and Skills & Workforce sectors.
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