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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Talent Development
PRnewswire | July 19, 2023
Lincoln Learning Solutions announced today the release of its Lincoln Content Bank, a multi-modal, educational content library designed with Amazon Web Services and intended to equip teachers with nearly 110,000 rigorous learning assets they can configure and assemble to meet the needs of their students.
"Educators working with pre-K through 12th-grade students need an easy-to-use tool that allows them to personalize learning opportunities," Lincoln Learning Solutions CEO, Bob Clements, said. "Our Lincoln Content Bank gives them the ability to quickly and simply search a huge variety of content to determine the best fit for individual students, small groups of students, or entire classrooms."
The Lincoln Content Bank features a robust search tool allowing teachers to harvest information based on searches of keyword, topic, standard, subject, grade level, modality, and more. Approximately 110,000 learning assets are at their fingertips ready to be incorporated into their courses in Canvas, according to Clements.
Designed by teachers for teachers, the content bank allows them to populate and preview on the same screen and intuitively makes recommendations based on previous searches. It gives teachers the luxury of saving the searched-for educational material in collections for easy retrieval at a later time.
Teachers who provided Lincoln with feedback in the early stages of development said the content bank would go a long way toward helping them close learning gaps, challenge students, ensure alignment with IEPs and 504 plans, and obtain standard mastery, all issues they face regardless of their learning environment.
"A lot went into this launch," Clements said. "The payoff for working with AWS to create this leading-edge teaching tool will come in the form of student success, which is always our top priority.
AWS is proud to have collaborated with Lincoln Learning Solutions on the development of the Lincoln Content Bank," said Annmarie Lehner, K-12 Business Development & Strategy Leader at AWS. "We look forward to seeing how K-12 school districts leverage the tool to personalize student learning in leading Learning Management Systems to improve student success."
LLS designed the tool with AWS so that it seamlessly integrates into the Canvas learning management suite and equips teachers with seemingly limitless access to an immense repository of educational content. Available in Canvas and in the AWS Marketplace, the Lincoln Content Bank will, among other things, provide teachers with: • Perceptive and rapid searching and browsing features • Customizable material for full classes or individual students • Myriad options for supplemental learning • Streamlined access to and application of learning objects targeting different learning modalities • Cross-curricular learning opportunities
School administrators will appreciate the content bank for its ability to streamline and standardize course creation across subjects while allowing individual departments to retain a level of ownership in the scope and sequence of their courses.
About Lincoln Learning Solutions
Lincoln Learning Solutions is a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to collaborating with educators and maximizing their talents to facilitate student success. Based in western Pennsylvania, it is the developer of Lincoln Empowered™, a digitally based curriculum that delivers engaging, standards-based, instruction in online and blended learning environments. Lincoln Empowered™ offers a dynamic array of courses in language arts, mathematics, science, social studies, physical education, and the creative and performing arts. Lincoln Learning Solutions currently serves nearly 100 schools in 14 states, and upward of 20,000 students.
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Education Technology
GlobeNewswire | September 14, 2023
Acuity Insights announces that its One45 product now offers a Canvas Alignment Tool, which streamlines the flow of data with Canvas – one of the most widely-used learning management systems (LMS) in higher education. This new tool allows programs to ensure that their curriculum mapping and facilitator reporting are consistent and accurate between the two systems. As a result, it reduces administrative burden, duplication of effort and reporting inconsistencies, ensuring program reporting meets accreditation standards with ease.
This new tool will improve functionality and productivity for health professions programs that use both One45 and Canvas.
"The Canvas Alignment Tool is an exciting addition to our groundbreaking One45 product. This tool combines complex data from diverse systems, delivering an efficient and effective solution for program administrators," says Rich Emrich, CEO of Acuity Insights. "This is yet another step in our strategy to enable program administrators to harness the power of data easily and effortlessly. We offer seamless integrations with leading education technology platforms in higher education. By doing so, administrators can gain valuable insights, ensuring both program and student success, without the hassle of making sense of data from various disconnected systems."
What is One45?
One45 by Acuity Insights is a comprehensive program management solution that allows health professions programs to simplify complex workflows, streamline accreditation, and enhance program assessment.
Streamlined solutions for health professions programs
One45 empowers programs with a dynamic, all-in-one platform that powers scheduling, curriculum management, assessment and evaluation, and MSPE processes with unparalleled flexibility.
Simplified reporting tasks
One45 solves tedious reporting challenges. It fully supports accreditation requirements in assessment, curriculum, clinical experiences, and Student Affairs, while effortlessly meeting day-to-day reporting needs.
Seamless collaboration
The One45 program management solution facilitates easy information sharing, collaboration, and communication among departments and learners alike.
To find out more about the Canvas Alignment Tool, please read our blog post about integrating Canvas with One45.
About Acuity Insights
Acuity Insights is the leading provider of admissions assessment, program management, and analytics solutions for higher education. The company’s solutions help higher education institutions deliver on their mission holistically, considering the whole student, widening pathways into higher education, and ensuring both student and program success. Recognized as one of Deloitte’s Technology Fast 500 companies for 2021 and 2022, Acuity’s solutions are used by over 600 higher education programs worldwide. Its Casper situational judgment test (SJT), taken by more than 150,000 applicants every year, is the most widely used open-response SJT in higher education and is backed by almost 20 years of efficacy research. For more information, visit acuityinsights.com.
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