TALENT DEVELOPMENT
PRnewswire | June 01, 2023
Spark Math, an award-winning interactive math learning program for Pre-K through elementary students, recently received STEM accreditation from STEM.org, a recognized authority in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This is a testament to the curriculum design and teaching quality of Spark Math, highlighting the program's commitment to preparing students for success in STEM and beyond.
Math is the foundation of STEM learning
Spark Math was founded by parents with successful STEM careers. With technology developing rapidly, as demonstrated by the recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), it has never been as important for students to be prepared for STEM learning. Math is a foundational subject that helps prepare kids for life and the challenges of the future. However, it is a subject that many kids and even adults' dread.
Spark Math focuses on the learning experience demonstrating that outcomes for math can be significantly improved with technology and building a love for math by making it fun and engaging. The online courses connect abstract math concepts to real life, helping students prepare for STEM in a unique and enjoyable way.
"In our math courses, we embed the STEM philosophy into our program by injecting critical thinking and logical reasoning skills into our curriculum," said Tan Boon Leong Jeremy, head of teaching center in Southeast Asia Region.
Spark Math excels with distinct advantages in STEM education helping students to:
• Develop problem solving skills: Spark Math focuses on critical thinking and problem solving, empowering students to apply concepts learned to various scenarios. The goal is to provide young students with the building blocks of STEM education and methodology so they can continue to thrive in the future.
• Learn with the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) method: It connects real life to math, relates abstract math concepts such as equations, fractions, and numbers, to real-life objects that kids can relate to and easily grasp, and subsequently represent those objects with a picture, and eventually mathematical representation.
• Connect Math to real life: Each class has a storyline and adventure for the students to go on together with animations, songs, and games helping kids stay engaged and learn.
• Practice made fun with gamification: By gamifying math concepts and questions, students can learn in a more enjoyable and interactive way. They can play games by clicking, dragging, matching, and interacting which helps to keep them motivated and engaged. With gamification, Spark Math makes learning and even practicing math fun.
About Spark Education Group
Founded in 2017, Spark Education Group is headquartered in Singapore. Its portfolio of education brands aims to combine research-based pedagogy with technology to improve the learning experience and education outcomes for students around the world. It was recently awarded "Best Interactive Learning Experience" at EdTech Asia and recognized as a Parent and Teacher Choice Award Gold Medal Recipient.
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EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY
PRnewswire | March 23, 2023
Procare Solutions is pleased to offer a new way for child care centers to bolster their educational offerings by including integrated assessments within Procare's classroom management capability.
With the release of Vine Assessments™, Procare Solutions has become the only provider of child care management software to offer integrated proprietary early childhood assessments for children from birth to 5 years old at no additional cost.
Vine Assessments is an integrated framework that gives early childhood educators and staff a way to clearly articulate the growth and development of children in their care. It includes clear and easy childhood assessments that align with all 50 state standards and provides developmental continuums with 21 goals that apply to children from birth to age 5 as they prepare for kindergarten.
"When early childhood educators can provide a robust assessment to their children and families, it elevates the learning and development of the children in their care and helps transform their businesses into true early childhood education programs," said Jon Pollock, chief product officer of Procare Solutions.
With 91% agreement rate among child care professionals, Vine Assessments are easy to use and understand.
Child care centers are leading providers of early childhood education and are at the forefront of addressing delays to help young learners recover from setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Children born during the pandemic are scoring lower on average on tests of gross motor, fine motor, social and problem-solving skills compared with those born before COVID-19, studies have shown.
In addition to learning delays, many of these children are talking, walking and interacting later and less frequently.
"Children need age-appropriate assessments well before entering kindergarten, as well as assessments that teachers of all experience levels can conduct accurately and without additional stress during their already busy days," said JoAnn Kintzel, CEO of Procare Solutions. "We are continually looking for ways to help centers foster the growth of children in their care, which is something Vine Assessments can help achieve."
"The list of 21 goals is a solid list that providers will find familiar and useful. The numbering system is very intuitive and helpful for navigating the instrument," said Dr. Kristen Burmester, director of administration and operations of the early childhood education program at the University of California at Berkeley.
Teachers using Procare will be able to tie their lessons and observations directly to the appropriate Vine Assessment indicator from the web-based software and Procare child care mobile app.
The simplicity of the Vine Assessments for teachers is what won over Melissa L. Hood, director of early childhood education at the Calvert School in Baltimore.
Her center uses Vine Assessments for all 150 kids at their two centers.
"Assessments provided by the state were too cumbersome and more suited to elementary school-aged children," she said. "They sometimes were 15 pages long and too difficult for parents to decipher."
A childhood assessment conducted through Vine Assessments offered a better alternative.
"It's to the point, it's accurate, it relates to age-appropriateness," she said. "Our teachers like Vine Assessments much better than the state-provided assessments."
About Procare Solutions
For more than 30 years, Procare Solutions has been the leading provider of child care management software, family engagement, integrated payment processing, technology and services. Procare is used by two out of three child care businesses that use child care management software. The company supports more than 37,000 child care centers, preschools, daycares, after school programs, camps and related facilities with comprehensive software that has the power to manage every aspect of their business, enrich classroom and family interactions, and automate the payment process. Procare offers web-based, on-premises and cloud-hosting solutions and supports customers of all sizes from single-center operations to complex multinational enterprises.
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TALENT DEVELOPMENT
Businesswire | April 19, 2023
PowerSchool ,a leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, today announced two new features coming to the PowerSchool Personalized Learning Cloud. Starting in May, all schools and districts using Schoology Learning, part of the Personalized Learning Cloud, will be able to access a robust lesson planning tool to expedite creating and delivering lesson plans. PowerSchool is also launching a new standards-aligned assessment database, making it easier for educators to use Performance Matters in the Personalized Learning Cloud to build assessments and access meaningful results to guide instruction.
Designed to simplify the task of creating and managing lesson plans, the new lesson planning feature accessible in Schoology Learning will provide teachers with customizable templates to create detailed lesson plans that can be shared with colleagues and students. Teachers can attach resources, such as videos, articles, and assignments, to their lesson plans, making it easy for students to access all necessary materials in one place. Combined with a simplified calendar view to help teachers see all their lessons and assignments in one place, the Personalized Learning Cloud provides teachers with even more tools to create engaging and effective learning opportunities for students.
“We’re dedicated to providing turnkey solutions for educators so they can properly manage any and all tasks related to curriculum planning, personalized instruction, and student performance assessments,” said Jean Teillon, Group Vice President, Product, PowerSchool. “We're confident the updates to the Personalized Learning Cloud will provide teachers with the tools and data-backed insights needed to effectively plan for and deliver quality instruction to students."
With these enhancements, the Personalized Learning Cloud will provide educators building and delivering assessments in Performance Matters with access to numerous standards-aligned items that can be used to support personalized learning efforts. It also helps teachers easily access appropriate assessment items based on state standards and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) that can be used to build both formative and practice comprehensive assessment versions. Now instructors can identify student performance gaps and indicators of learning loss, while also providing educators with the proper support to easily monitor student academic progress. School and district administrators who want to expand their access to pre-made content can also upgrade to the full subscription-based PowerSchool Item and Assessment bank, which consists of an even larger collection of ready-made items, common formative assessments, and summative benchmark assessments built to inform instruction.
The Personalized Learning Cloud is designed to help educators efficiently personalize instruction and learning to support better learning outcomes for all learners. The newly available features are intuitive and will help provide teachers with more time back so they can focus on providing high-quality instruction to their students.
“Educators have made it clear they need access to tools and content so they can create more personalized lessons to meet the unique learning needs of all learners,” said Marcy Daniel, Chief Product Officer, PowerSchool. “The new features within the Personalized Learning Cloud will not only provide teachers with time back but also provide them with clearer oversight of student performance.”
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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