Most of the schools in the Diocese of Brooklyn have one class per grade level. Over the past 10 years, the organization has seen increased enrollment of students with special needs and learning disabilities. While a recent report from the National Catholic Educational Association found that 7.8 percent of students at Catholic schools nationally self-reported a diagnosed disability, including a learning disability, that number is around 10 percent for students at the Catholic Schools of Brooklyn and Queens. Across its 64 schools, “none of our rooms are tracked by ability level, so every room ..read more

In the Consortium for School Networking’s 2024 Driving K–12 Innovation report, the organization lists generative artificial intelligence among the current tech enablers in schools. CoSN defines a tech enabler as a tool that schools can use to surmount hurdles — roadblocks forcing schools to slow down or make a leap — and leverage accelerators, the “mega trends” that motivate and increase the speed of innovation. Generative AI has taken the tech world by storm, making news headlines and sparking federal policies since OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in November 2022. Its prevalence has impacted ..read more

To address the rising tide of school violence, K–12 school districts need advanced security technologies to augment their thinly stretched staffs. Upgrading physical security, prevention, cybersecurity and emotional wellness solutions — which constitute the four pillars of physical safety — can protect staff and students. Unfortunately, physical safety solutions, especially those that connect to a district’s network or integrate artificial intelligence, can be costly for K–12 districts. For those schools whose budgets can’t support the needed safety upgrades, grant funding can h ..read more

Schools are taking initiative to update their physical security systems for the modern era. In some cases, legislation has spurred the changes. For example, several states have adopted Alyssa’s Law, which requires public elementary and secondary schools to have a silent panic alarm that contacts local law enforcement in emergencies. In other instances, schools have decided to upgrade because their surveillance cameras, access control systems and other safety technologies are outdated. Many school districts rely on analog camera systems that don’t connect to their networks&n ..read more

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Seventeen years ago, the biggest concerns for a K–12 IT department were adware, popups and viruses. Today’s security threats are much more complex. We have to worry about scams, phishing emails and malicious code embedded in emails or even images. People see education as an area where you may not need heavy security, but the truth is quite the opposite. Schools house sensitive data, including students’ personal identifiable information. On top of that, IT departments are often small teams wearing multiple hats. We get involved with a little bit of everything: infrastructure, classroom ..read more

Modern classrooms in today’s K–12 education environment often call for interactive displays that allow students to collaborate and engage with the material. Choosing the right interactive display, however, can be daunting. IT leaders and administrators must know exactly what their classrooms need and how different displays will align with the teaching and learning in their districts. Micah Shippee spent 22 years in the classroom teaching American history to middle school students. His time there led to an interest in cutting-edge educational technology. Now, Shippee is the director of ..read more

Concern about digital equity in schools hit its zenith during the pandemic. However, its importance certainly has not declined. Recently, the topic received renewed attention in the 2024 update to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Educational Technology Plan, which underscores its continued importance. The plan delves deeply into shrinking three types of digital inequity: the digital use divide, the digital design divide and the digital access divide. Click the banner to unlock complimentary resources from CDW for your modern K–12 classroom ..read more

When Fresno Unified School District purchased new digital whiteboards, district leaders strategically placed them on mobile stands in the middle of each classroom. “We purposefully put the interactive displays in the middle so teachers would know they were mobile and easy to move,” Soyinthisane says. “Otherwise, if we put them in front, teachers could assume they were supposed to be there, and they might have stayed there forever.” The strategy worked. While some teachers still put the whiteboards in front, some redesigned their classroom layouts, parking the whiteboard on a corner or a side ..read more

K–12 schools looking to adequately prepare students to participate successfully in a rapidly changing 21st century economy can no longer avoid artificial intelligence. There is an increasing consensus that teaching students to use AI is more than just a nice-to-have — it will make them competitive job candidates later in life. Harvard Business School professor Karim Lakhani, who has long studied AI and machine learning in the workplace, says, “AI is not going to replace humans, but humans with AI are going to replace humans without AI.”   The Department of Education's Office of Educationa ..read more