The Green Chalk Blog

This survey, part of the Open Doors report on international educational exchange, provides data on international students in the U.S. by leading places of origin from 2011-2013.

The infographic lists 12 rules of smart EdTech procurement, provides 6 ways to modernize procurement policy and offers advice on creating customized technology bundles.

Good comprehensive list when districts and campuses are buying tech. The assurances and testing of the software for proper fit in your environment should be high on the list.

The U.S. Education Department must experiment with alternative models, such as stackable credentials and competency-based programs, as part of broader reforms of the nation’s postsecondary-education system, according to a report published on Wednesday by the Center for American Progress.

“One of the things that really enables competency-based learning is the ability to use technology to keep track of what people have learned and can do with what they have learned,” 

A quick look into the VUSD Anti-Discrimination Policies show a good plan and process for threats and complaints relating to harassment and bullying within the district.

The Bullying Prevention Plan is specific in respect to intervention. We think VUSD and Superintendent Vodicka should consider the following.

1. Collect real-time threats and complaints from students and teachers using technology. This will allow data to aggregate and summarize trends with specific threats along with the students that are creating the most issues. In addition, by integrating technology to collect this data, there's less dependence on staff leaving and entering the district. The data is independent of relationships. It's important to collect and intervene.

2. Less reliant on students reporting actions (self-reporting). More reporting of actions by teachers, staff and parents using technology. An early warning system that allows wellness staff to intervene quicker.

3. As mentioned, aggregated data and trending information will allow the district to drive additional policies to make meaningful change.

When districts are this diverse (summary of student breakdown below), it's essential to have the data collection part of the prevention program in place.

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VUSD Overview

Vista Unified School District - California

With 29 schools serving more than 22,000 students from preschool to 12th grade, Vista Unified School District is one of northern San Diego County’s largest educational agencies. The district stretches 39 square miles across most of Vista, a large portion of eastern Oceanside, some unincorporated areas and small slivers of Carlsbad and San Marcos. In addition to the campuses district administrators oversee, Vista Unified also includes one of the county’s largest adult-education programs with about 20,000 enrolled each year and another 3,000 students in four charter schools sponsored by the district.

The district serves a diverse population of students, including more than 3,000 in its special education programs and more than 6,000 who are learning English as a second language. Enrollment has declined over the last several years from about 26,000 students in 2000 to more than 22,000 in 2012.

Student demographics breakdown:

After a couple of years of experience, a New York college has reported back on its use of a student retention program to enhance the work of its at-risk committee and other campus student advising resources.

Nice article by Dian Schaffhauser in Campus Technology showcasing how software can assist with retention intervention. After reading through the article, there are 2 gaps that should be considered:

1. Retention software should be coupled with recruitment software/activities. This becomes important if the campus has issues retaining students. The recruitment/admissions staff need to know this and adjustments made. 

2. The software mentioned in the article 'pings' the faculty over set periods of time when there are retention issues. Retention intervention should occur the moment the student misses the class. The big issue in this case is most vendors pull data from the schools management system which limits the flexibility.

The National Center of Telehealth & Technology (T2) is developing a suicide prevention app for active-duty service members and veterans.

As 2.4 million Americans who fought in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan prepare to return from combat, U.S. military entities are struggling to tackle the rising number of suicides, according to an NPR report. After experiencing war-related trauma, active-duty service members and veterans often face debilitating mental-health issues — including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and suicide ideation.

The article discusses creating a self-managed 'hope box' app. 

We just updated 2 apps (Suicide Prevention Reporting App and the Bullying Prevention Reporting App) with a single sign-on. What does this mean for schools and students using both apps?

* Enter either app from the other and streamline access. * Remember only one username and password account. * One profile data - enter less redundant data * Cross connect data from both apps for a specific student, grade, school or district.

Honestly, we received a 'wish' request from a teacher that was using both apps in beta form and she asked if we could connect her accounts for both apps. After looking further and the overall data benefits beyond just the login, we thought it was a great idea. Now the school cross-connects bullying and suicide prevention data - surprisingly, there are trends.

Increasing time in school is one of the best ways to narrow the achievement gap between rich and poor students, education advocates say.

California State Auditor conducted an audit of 3 school districts in California - Fresno, Los Angeles, and Sacramento City Unified School Districts. 

Most obvious highlights were: * 80% of the agencies within CDOE have policies and procedures in place relating to student wellness and data to handle specific issues like discrimination, bullying, harassment, etc.

* Schools in the 3 districts received overall low marks for the speed at which student data is collected and aggregated. 

* Needs to be an overall statewide data evaluation plan for cyberbullying.

After a long month of final preparations and working through some of the finer points, we finally launched our Bullying Prevention Reporting App.

This makes our second health app next to the Suicide Prevention App. We're really proud our app relies on evidence based assessment models - 23 to be exact and they are listed here

A paper prepared for the Carnegie-IAS Commission on Mathematics and Science Education that arguably launched Common Core Standards initiative.

Written by David Coleman, now president of the College Board and previously funded by Gates Foundation (75MM) for this piece 'math and science standards that are fewer, clearer, higher'

Read the full 2008 research

Schools and campuses implement district/campus wide initiatives and programs every year. As programs come and go, we're concerned that the largest contingent that makes up what we call education (the student) is pushed to the side. 

STUDENTS: Share your thoughts and ideas to improve learning in your class/school. USE THE HASHTAG #S4BE

Faculty members at Penn State University are objecting to an employee wellness plan that asks them to disclose medical and other personal information.

As many of the faculty have pointed out, (and we have learned at Green Chalk) it's very important to consider educating the users before implementation of an application or initiative. Optional submission of data with financial incentives tied directly to the amount of personal data could have made the biggest difference in attaining a majority support. 

Another option for increased buy-in from faculty may have been to weave the program locally on campus. If the data stayed on campus instead of pushed out to the secondary and third layers of vendors, there might be less friction with implementation.

This challenge seeks technology-based products to decrease the acceptability of and engagement in high-risk drinking among college students.

Syracuse University wins the Challenge Post Award for technology products that aim at preventing excessive alcohol use on campus. We congratulate the student services department for their $60K award to tackle this important issue.

Where Syracuse University misses the mark: The specific campus initiative - 'Bewise' focuses entirely on a web based awareness campaign. http://bewise.syr.edu/. The standard on campus is continually wrapped around students engaging with available services. The growing gap is how to shorten the reporting and preventative intervention for the alcohol related use cases.

Opportunities exist in educating and providing campus wide interface apps that allow all parties to report, aggregate and proactively route intervention to the appropriate party. Currently, it continues to be a reactive and lagging responsive process. 

Learn more about the SAMHSA Challenge Post 

Learn more about Syracuse University Student Services Program - Bewise

Learn more about Green Chalk and student safety/wellness apps

A few tweets that showcase our data related to one of the major gaps in the admissions process. The application.

It begs to ask - what if a student could complete a live 'life portfolio' that all college campuses could connect to? Lending itself to the elimination of an application entirely. Would you support eliminating the application? 

@inukeyou Yes, you would need to reapply. Go ahead and fill out your application here: http://t.co/hkO47cjk9o

— KennesawStAdmissions (@KennesawAdmit)

August 16, 2013

Two of my schools aren't on the common app so I have to do those separately... great.

— 2Explicit (@exoticlameshit)

August 15, 2013

Funny how like all the colleges I'm interested in don't even do the common app so it's going to save me literally no time

— Kelsey Hampton (@thtgingergirl)

More than 250 Institutions of Higher Education Embracing the Administration’s “8 Keys to Success”

On this episode of Admissions Live, host Ashley Hennigan discuses about trends and hot topics surrounding international recruiting

The live broadcast touches on many of the areas and struggles with international recruiting campuses are faced with. One of the growing trends related to this market (after the pipeline to recruit is in place) is what happens to the student pools that are queued up.

A campus must have an active way to monitor and measure new activity to keep the process moving along. A platform that allows this management is ideal. It creates less work as you move outwards into semesters.