Ed Tech Blog
During COVID times, schools all over the country moved online to offer remote learning opportunities to students. This happened very quickly, and it made educational institutions undergo rapid digital transformations. As with anything that is done rapidly, thoughts about security comes last. In this post we will go through a very reliable security framework for K-12 institutions called Zero Trust.
What is Zero Trust?
Zero Trust is a security model in which every access to the entire organization’s network is monitored continuously. So, in this security model, every attempt to access a school’s network is firstly verified and approved. This Zero Trust security model is a requirement for Federal government IT teams, and the Pentagon has an aim to make the entire agency operate on the Zero Trust architecture by 2027.
In simple terms, Zero Trust believes that every single traffic, every single user, and every single system connected to the network is a potential threat that should not be trusted. Zero Trust gives equal opportunities to outsiders and insiders to access network services, but only the ones with the correct credentials will be allowed in. This is done so by using strong authentication, device posture checking and other contextual information, such as time of day and geographical location. With Zero Trust, it is highly unlikely that even someone with stolen credentials will be able to break into the system.
Zero Trust and Ransomware?
Ransomware is usually delivered as a payload of an email, and/or by tricking users to download malware. Zero Trust can also help your educational institute to fight ransomware by reducing infection, blocking lateral network movement, blocking exfiltration of stolen data, and alerting suspicious network activity.
Zero Trust reduces infections by including posture checking to verify that state of the client, ensuring software patches, OS updates and...
Would you love to live in a building that could communicate with you? Buildings that could tell you when it is too cold, knows when to turn on the lights, and that can be controlled by your phone. These buildings are the exact type of buildings we will consider in this post about smart campuses for educational institutions.
Advantages of Smart Campuses
Smart buildings can help educational institutions improve the learning experience by creating a comfortable, and personalized learning environment. Students and faculty would experience digital, and fully connected classrooms that would make the classrooms easily accessible to all students equally.
Smart campuses with sensors to measure the structural integrity of the buildings would also identify and prevent disasters from happening. There are sensors that measure water pressure in water pipes to identify damages in pipes in the buildings. All these sensors will help reduce maintenance costs.
Smart buildings are also fully monitored, so the security of the campus would also be improved. All buildings would be monitored in real-time, with access controls, alerts, and emergency response capabilities.
Smart buildings that control heating and cooling, lighting, water, and other preferences will also make the campus environmentally friendly by reducing its...
Read more: Exploring the Role of Technology in Shaping the Campus of Tomorrow
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not what the Terminator made it out to be. Currently, all AI agents are neatly nestled in a webpage which is connected through the backend to millions of dollars’ worth of computing hardware. If the AI agents right now go rogue, all we have to do is cut the cords and they will stop. On a more positive note, in this post we will be looking at how AI can be used to ease the most tedious part of a teacher’s life, grading.
Traditional Grading
Traditional methods of grading have long been a cornerstone of the education system, relying primarily on human judgment to evaluate student performance. These methods typically involve educators assessing students' work based on predefined criteria, such as accuracy, completeness, and adherence to guidelines. From handwritten exams to essays and projects, traditional grading encompasses a wide range of assessment formats across different subjects and grade levels.
Let us look over some challenges faced by traditional grading. First of all, it is heavily subjected to subjectivity, and bias. Some might argue that gradings that are subjected to personal preferences, mood, and sometimes even unconscious prejudices are unfair. To solve this problem, a grading method...
In a world where screens dominate our daily lives, the call of the great outdoors is more alluring than ever. But what if we could combine the wonders of nature with the power of technology to create an educational experience like no other? Welcome to the realm of outdoor education with a digital twist, where students step out of the classroom and into the real world armed with smartphones and tablets, ready to explore, learn, and be inspired.
Why Outdoors?
Outdoor education isn't just about taking students outside; it's about immersing them in an environment rich with real-world examples that transcend the confines of textbooks and classrooms. It's about engaging their senses, stimulating their minds, and fostering a deep connection with the world around them. After all, there's only so much you can learn about a tree or a river from a picture in a book.
One of the key principles of outdoor education is recognizing the unique characteristics of the environment in which it takes place. Whether it's the rugged terrain of the mountains, the lush greenery of the forest, or the vast expanse of the desert, each location offers its own lessons to be learned. From rocks and...
Read more: Exploring the Great Outdoors: Merging Education with Technology
Are you looking for something cheap, durable, and specifically made for the classroom? Well, Chromebooks are all the rage in the classroom right now, and there are multiple good reasons for it too. In this post we will go through all the reasons to consider buying Chromebooks for the classroom, reasons to not consider buying Chromebooks for the classrooms, and other alternatives to consider.
The Good
The first reason to consider Chromebooks for the classroom is its cost. You can get a good Chromebook ranging from $250 to $300. Chromebooks also have an excellent battery life for a day filled with learning.
All Chromebooks come with a special operating system known as Chrome OS. It is a light-weight operating system designed by Google that revolves around the internet. It’s light-weighted nature also helps with increasing the battery life of the device.
Chrome OS comes pre-equipped with all common applications that is required by students. Apps like Google Docs, and Google Slides are used by almost all students to write reports and create presentations.
Students can easily log into Google Classroom to create a collaborative environment with other fellow students and their teachers. There are other apps that are available in...
On the 30th of November 2022, a chatbot was released by a company called OpenAI. By January 2023, it became what was then the fastest growing software application by gaining 100 million users. This chatbot caused a hurricane of other competing chatbots that were all trying to do one simple thing, make sense of the world of information found on the internet and every written media on Earth. This chatbot is the Chat Pre-trained Transformer or as it is commonly known, ChatGPT.
In this post, we will go through some of the most imaginative ways in which ChatGPT can be used by teachers and educators alike.
In the Classroom
There are a lot of ways in which you can use ChatGPT in the classroom to enhance the learning experience for students.
You can use ChatGPT to create a teaching assistant for each and every student in the classroom. The teaching assistant could be a sounding board for each student, and it can give constructive criticism when required. ChatGPT can help the students round out their reports or arguments by making sure that their work covers all relevant aspects of the topic. ChatGPT can function as their debate partner, or an...