Software & Online

ABSOLUTE TO INTEGRATE WITH MICROSOFT SCCM AND SIEM
(www.absolute.com)

Absolute Software Corporation announced new security functionality that extends IT oversight to include the status of Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) on each device as well as the integration of Absolute alerts with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions. Microsoft SCCM enables organizations to manage the deployment and security of devices and applications. If SCCM is not properly working on an endpoint, IT can no longer manage the device. Leveraging Persistence technology by Absolute, IT can monitor devices on or off network and receive an alert if SCCM is corrupted or removed. This early notification allows administrators to take corrective action so the device can be promptly returned to management. The new SIEM connector allows customers to consolidate security data within their SIEM environment. If an Absolute security alert is triggered, the event details will flow into the customer’s chosen SIEM application where the incident can be examined in the context of the broader security landscape.

ADOBE CAPTIVATE PRIME
(www.adobe.com)

Adobe announced the introduction of Adobe Captivate Prime, a new self-service Learning Management System (LMS) that enables learning professionals to easily and efficiently setup, deliver, and track any form of learning. The cloud-based platform includes the new Fluidic Player, offering a unified playback experience for virtually any kind of content, so users can seamlessly play videos and access PDFs, PPTs, DOCX, SCORM, and AICC-compliant packages, all without having to download plugins. Fluidic Player also allows learners to bookmark or add explanatory notes at any point in their content, which they can quickly reference later. Furthermore, the Adobe Captivate Prime app downloads learning content onto a tablet, makes it available for offline access, and auto syncs when the learner is back online. learning experience for learners while maintaining control of the learning environment.

ASCEND MATH LIVE STUDENT TRACKER
(www.ascendmath.com/live_student_ tracker.html)

Ascend Education announced the addition of a Live Student Tracker to its Ascend Math intensive math intervention product. The Live Student Tracker is a real-time report on individual student progress within an Ascend Math class. The tracker provides critical information for each student, including the objective, unit, and level currently in progress; attempts at post-assessment; the next objective in each student’s mastery plan; and a link to the Class Dashboard for more detailed information.

BOARDMAKER ONLINE
(www.boardmakeronline.com)

Tobii Dynavox, creator of Boardmaker, a symbol-adapted special education software, recently relaunched Boardmaker Online. Designed for special needs educators, speech-language pathologists (SLPs), assistive technology specialists, and parents, Boardmaker Online is a comprehensive solution for creating and managing special education instruction. New features to the online tool include a PCS sign language feature, new symbols offered bimonthly, instructor usage monitoring, and a multiple administrator option for student privacy. Boardmaker Online enables users to quickly find, create, organize, and deliver materials, making time spent with each student more productive. The personalized learning system also provides integrated data tracking and allows educators to measure their students’ progress toward academic, language, social, and behavioral goals.

DRAGON ANYWHERE
(www.nuance.com/dragon-home)

Nuance Communications announced Dragon Anywhere, a cloud-based mobile application available this fall for iOS and Android that delivers Dragon’s voice dictation and documentation productivity capabilities to mobile devices. Dragon Anywhere brings professional-grade continuous dictation to smartphones and tablets, enabling users to create and edit complete reports and documents, capture detailed notes, and more, while on the go. Dragon Anywhere creates a consistent, cross-device experience, enabling Dragon users to quickly and easily access documents saved to a preferred cloud service from their desktop. Customized vocabularies and auto-texts are also shared across an entire Dragon experience with Dragon Anywhere’s ability to sync with Dragon Professional Individual and Dragon for Mac.

EBACKPACK PARTNERS WITH TURNITIN
(www.ebackpack.com)

eBackpack, Inc., a cloud-based learning management system provider, has partnered with Turnitin, LLC, a provider of originality checking and plagiarism prevention software. The eBackpack learning management system enables teachers to assign, annotate, grade, and review assignments and assessments on any internet-connected device. Teachers using eBackpack will benefit from the integration with Turnitin by using the plagiarism detection and grading tools inside of the eBackpack program.

ECOACH BETA
(www.ecoach.com.au)

Futura Group released eCoach BETA, a cloud-based, drag-and-drop course builder that enables high school teachers to easily transform their course content into online courses. The builder includes over 20 easy to use eLearning templates to ensure that students have a great educational experience online. The eCoach is a cloud-based solution and courses are smartphone compatible and BYOD-ready, giving students access to courses at home, on the go, or in the classroom.

EDMODO SPOTLIGHT AND INTEGRATION WITH OFFICE 365
(www.edmodo.com)

Edmodo announced Edmodo Spotlight, a content marketplace for educators. Designed to empower teachers, Edmodo Spotlight enables the collection, sharing, and discovery of valuable educational resources to improve student learning. Through Edmodo Spotlight, educators can share helpful resources, review resources from all over the Web, curate collections of their favorites, and sell and purchase original material from educator peers, as well as from third-party publishers. The ability to search by grade level, subject, resource type, and price point makes it easy to find specific types of resources. Edmodo also announced they will integrate Office 365 into the Edmodo platform. Now, when teachers and students create and collaborate in Edmodo, they will do so using Office 365’s suite of online productivity tools including OneNote, PowerPoint, Excel, Word, Sway, and Office Mix. OneDrive integration will let users store and share their work from within Edmodo. Finally, the integration affords schools who have adopted Office 365 to log into Edmodo with their secure Microsoft accounts.

EDUCATION GALAXY ALIEN EXPLANATIONS
(www.educationgalaxy.com)

Education Galaxy recently announced the release of over 10,000 instructional videos, called Alien Explanations. These videos provide question specific instruction every time a student clicks an incorrect answer on a question while using Education Galaxy. Education Galaxy provides online assessment, instruction, and practice for elementary students to help master state standards and prepare for standardized test. Alien Explanations focus on helping students set up their problem or how to find the answers they are looking for without providing the answer. The student is then directed back to their problem and is required to get the correct answer before moving on to the next question. Each Alien Explanation is a short video ranging from 30 seconds to two minutes in length.

EXTREME NETWORKS CONNECTIVITY SOLUTIONS
(www.extremenetworks.com)

Extreme Networks, Inc. announced new customers and increased adoption of its connectivity solutions in the K-12 education market. In addition to equipping school districts across the country with reliable Wi-Fi access, Extreme Networks is helping education IT administrators improve network access, bandwidth control, application connectivity, and analytics with its solutions platform. Using Extreme’s infrastructure, school districts nationwide have been deploying Chromebooks to enable personalized learning, increase collaboration, and to help facilitate online testing.

INSPIRE SCIENCE
(www.mheducation.com)

McGraw-Hill Education announced Inspire Science, a new core elementary science curriculum for K-5 students designed to address the requirements of the Next Generation Science Standards. Developed in partnership with Filament Games and Concord Consortium, the program aims to help teachers improve student results in STEM by motivating students to become curious and creative problem-solvers. Inspire Science blends science and engineering practices with problem-based learning to engage students in STEM while improving literacy and math skills. With hands-on and problem-based learning activities, Inspire Science fosters student learning progression and collaboration.

KIDS A-Z
(www.kidsa-z.com)

Learning A-Z, an online provider of PreK-6 education solutions, launched its new student learning environment and teacher management hub, Kids A-Z. The online portal and mobile application is available to all Learning A-Z customers who subscribe to a product that contains online learning materials for students. The portal’s kid-friendly learning environment has been optimized to enhance students’ learning experience and make it easy to access student eResources across multiple Learning A-Z websites. In addition, the online portal contains all the classroom management tools and reporting features teachers use to monitor individual and class-wide learning progress. The Kids A-Z mobile application currently provides access to all Raz-Kids digital reading content, which access to additional online learning resources underway.

LIGHTBOX
(www.school.follett.com/lightbox)

Follett released Lightbox, a fully interactive, multi-dimensional interface for PreK-12 teachers looking to improve student engagement, comprehension, vocabulary, and literacy development. Lightbox supports instructors with varied approaches to teaching topics, while its built-in tools create a student-centered learning experience for even the most disengaged students. Lightbox is easy to use, affordable, aligned to state standards, and can supplement any science, social studies, or reading strategy/literacy program. Its objective is to stimulate students’ immersion in a topic to encourage deeper mastery of the subject. Lightbox delivers multimedia content from multiple sources in a single interface available on any device. For instance, if a class is studying glaciers, all elements of the lesson on the topic are aligned to the standards and built right into Lightbox, including high-quality narration using an advanced text-to-speech system, embedded high-definition video clips, printable PDFs that can be emailed and graded, carefully curated links to external, child-safe resources to enhance learning, and more.

MOBYMAX TOUCH CURRICULUM
(www.mobymax.com)

MobyMax, a provider of personalized and blended learning curriculum for K-8 students, released Cognitive Skills Science, a new Touch Curriculum subject that uses more than 20,000 cognitive skill manipulatives to deepen students’ mastery of science concepts. MobyMax’s Touch Curriculum technology makes science engaging and captivating as students use problem solving and critical thinking skills to learn science. The Cognitive Skills Science curriculum is perfect for both personalized learning and the blended classroom. The curriculum creates a solid STEM foundation in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) domains—life, physical, earth, and space science.

MYON
(www.myon.com)

myON announced a redesign of its personalized literacy environment for PreK-12. myON 3.0 includes new student and educator interfaces, advancements in content recommendations based upon individual student interests and Lexile reading level, gamification, and improved enhancements to the monitoring and reporting functions. All schools and district currently using myON will gain access to these new tools at no cost. The addition of the new writing tool further enhances the myON Literacy Toolkit, which includes a suite of close/active reading tools. Using the new writing tools, educators can create assignments—complete with their own writing checklists—that direct students to write essays integrating their reading journal entries, graphic organizers, and myON’s embedded dictionary, within the myON platform.

NETSUPPORT SCHOOL V12
(www.netsupportschool.com)

NetSupport has released the latest version of NetSupport School, its classroom and student device management software, to coincide with the availability of Windows 10. The company also released the NetSupport School Tutor Windows Store app, which delivers seamless orchestration of classroom activities from any Windows 10 tablet. The Teacher’s Launchpad feature facilitates remotely launching cloud-based Office Mix presentations, OneNote, or any other online curriculum content onto every student’s screen. NetSupport School also extends its support to include integration with the new Microsoft Edge browser, providing launching of websites, as well as monitoring and blocking of all student web activity. In addition, closer OS integration allows NetSupport School to deliver the same functionality for both desktop and Windows Store apps within the classroom. Approved and restricted lists for both Apps and Websites are also provided.

PBS LEARNINGMEDIA AND THE SMITHSONIAN SCIENCE EDUCATION CENTER
(www.pbslearningmedia.org)

PBS LearningMedia and the Smithsonian Science Education Center (SSEC) have teamed up to bring new digital resources to teachers and students. The professional development series Good Thinking! is now available on PBS LearningMedia. This animated series, designed by the SSEC and FableVision Studios and geared toward all K-12 teachers, brings viewers into the classroom of science educator Isabella Reyes as she explores “the science of teaching science.” In addition, the SSEC collection within PBS LearningMedia also features games and digital series for students, including Shutterbugs: Wiggle and Stomp (a game that teaches kindergarteners movement and motion concepts, Showbix Safari (a game that teachers students in grades 1-2 about the diversity of plants and animals), and Bumper Ducks (a game that teaches students in grades 6-8 how mass impacts the acceleration of an object). Additional content will be added throughout the year, and content created specifically for students is also available through the new Smithsonian collection, which can be found at http://to.pbs.org/smithsonian.

SCHOOLDUDE MAINTENANCEESSENTIALS PRO AND EVENTESSENTIALS PRO
(www.schooldude.com)

SchoolDude launched two Collaborative Operations Management platforms, MaintenanceEssentials Pro and EventEssentials Pro. Now, SchoolDude’s solutions are available in two comprehensive platforms, helping educational institutions collaborate with their peers, boost efficiency, and increase responsiveness, communication, and transparency. Leveraging educational data and collective best practice insights from SchoolDude’s 6,000 educational institution clients, MaintenanceEssentials Pro, a Facilities Management platform, and EventEssentials Pro, a Facilities Event and Community Use Management platform, will enable institutions to communicate, collaborate, and complete operational work more efficiently.

SMART SPARROW
(www.smartsparrow.com)

Smart Sparrow introduced an instructional design platform that incorporates new templates into the company’s adaptive lesson authoring suite, making it easier for educators to create rich, interactive, adaptive courseware and receive faculty feedback along the way. A new dedicated space called “Classes” lets instructors manage a single cohort of students across multiple lesson deployments, and better enable collaboration between the instructor and instructional designer. Smart Sparrow also offers data analytics tools that enable administrators to track student progress.

Hardware

Christie (www.christiedigital.com) released the Christie Captiva Series projectors, offering 20,000 hours of high performance lamp-free operation with the ability to achieve full brightness within seconds and move instantaneously into standby mode with no cool down period. Available with a 0.25:1 ultra-short throw lens, the Christie Captiva Series can be mounted within inches from a screen or wall – in portrait or landscape (tabletop, inverted) mode – without shadows obstructing the image. The high definition Captiva DHD400S offers native 16:9 aspect ratio matching up with the most common signals used today. The ultra-wide Captiva DUW350S brings a new captivating and creative wide canvas for tight spaces and, simultaneously, offers a unique, but practical workspace for everyday activities. Both the Captiva DHD400S and the Captiva DUW350S are ideal for fixed installations including classrooms and spaces where quiet operation is vital.

Sphero (www.sphero.com/sphero-sprk) launched the new Sphero SPRK Edition - the robot designed to inspire kids to become inventors and innovators. The new, clear-shelled Sphero is powered by an all new app experience (for both iOS and Android devices) that allows users to execute programs with visual blocks representing Sphero’s own C-based coding language called OVAL. Sphero SPRK Edition and the SPRK app are designed to inspire a love of robotics, coding, and STEM principles while teaching the power of cause, effect, and conditions in programming. The clear shell allows users to see the immediate connection between the program they created and how the guts of their Sphero work.

Trident Case (www.tridentcase.com) announced its all-new Krios Prism Gel Case for the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge Plus. The transparent case offers lightweight, slim protection and a stylish prism design. Constructed with transparent shock-absorbent Thermoplastic Polyurethane (TPU), the case protects against casual drops and skids while a slim design minimizes the bulk added to the smartphone. Open ports at the case’s base allow for easy access to the device’s charger and audio outlet. Additionally, raised edges that wrap around the front of the device provide security against bumps while an anti-skid coating allows the device to slide in to and out of pockets freely.