Press Room
Kansas Schools Win as LearningStation and Kan-ed Extend Agreement for State-wide Project
Renewal of LearningStation licenses equips teachers and students to harness the power of the web to advance learning
Charlotte, N.C. — Aug. 15, 2006 LearningStation and Kan-ed, the state-wide network in Kansas, announce the expansion of their successful partnership. Through this partnership, all Kan-ed members, including more than 1,500 public and private K-12 schools, have access to the Empowered Desktop by Kan-ed, a web portal that provides members with safe, personalized access to a host of teaching and learning applications and resources.
“As we move into this school year, we’re thrilled to continue supporting effective, innovative teaching in Kansas,” said Jim Kirchner, president and CEO of LearningStation. “Our partnership with Kan-ed showcases how states and schools can leverage the significant investments that have been made in technology to increase learning.”
One application available through the Empowered Desktop by Kan-ed, Test Builder, supports a key objective of all Kansas schools: increasing student achievement. During the 2005-2006 school year, Test Builder was used by schools across the state to help prepare for state-wide assessments in mathematics and reading. For the coming school year, Test Builder will cover additional subject areas, including language arts, social studies and science, with the total number of test items nearly tripling.
Test Builder helps us deliver fast, accessible formative assessments,” said Laura Smith, curriculum coordinator for Hope Street Academy in Topeka, Kans. “The exciting part is that our teachers are using it formatively, actually using it to differentiate instruction. Our teachers are giving tests, looking at the results, and modifying their instruction to help students improve understanding and performance.”
“We worked hard this past year to stay in tune with the needs of our customers and to ensure that we were providing the services that positioned schools for success,” said Mark Cosby, LearningStation’s vice president of sales and marketing. “In an environment of budget constraints and demands for increased student achievement, we realize that our customers need partners that listen to their needs and deliver solutions that make an impact on their ‘bottom-line.’ The Kan-ed contract renewal demonstrates that LearningStation is hitting this mark and we are very proud of the significance of this state-wide success story.”
Kansas is the first state to provide all teachers with access to a teaching and learning profile system. P.E.T., the only K-12 learning styles system of its kind, was developed by education researchers in order to help teachers identify their teaching strengths, pinpoint their students’ learning styles, and develop strategies for modifying instruction to meet students’ individual learning needs.
Hal Gardner, executive director of Kan-ed, said, “Providing P.E.T. to Kansas schools is an outstanding example of technology having a positive impact on learning. P.E.T., like so many of the other resources that have been integrated into the Empowered Desktop by Kan-ed, supports differentiated instruction and personalized learning. We are thrilled to renew our partnership with LearningStation based on the overwhelming approval of our constituents across the state of Kansas.”
Other popular applications on the Empowered Desktop by Kan-ed include netTrekker, an award-winning academic search engine that provides fast and easy access to more than 180,000 educator-selected online resources aligned with Kansas state standards, and the Education Backpack, an online file storage and sharing solution.
Some new applications will further support schools’ objectives for teaching and learning: Financial Foundations for Kids, developed by the Kansas Council on Economic Education, provides economics and personal finance courseware for K-8 students; HomeworkKansas, made available by the State Library of Kansas, provides Kansas students with online access to tutors outside of school hours.
“The Empowered Desktop provides our district with teaching resources we wouldn’t have otherwise, but resources we definitely need,” said Dr. Milt Dougherty, superintendent of Little River Schools in Central Kansas. “The Education Backpack is a great example of a resource that not only saves money for Kansas districts, but for parents as well by eliminating the need to buy USB drives, floppy disks, and other temporary storage solutions that were previously required to transport files from one computer to another.”
The Education Backpack, along with the entire collection of teaching and learning applications on the Empowered Desktop by Kan-ed, is available free of charge to all 1500+ public and private schools across Kansas. Teachers who do not yet have access to the Empowered Desktop can contact LearningStation at 888-679-7058 or visit http://kportal.learningstation.com to register for an account. Parents who wish to see if their students’ schools have initiated student access to the Empowered Desktop can also visit http://kportal.learningstation.com.
About LearningStation
LearningStation (www.learningstation.com), a leading provider of customized portal solutions, focuses on helping schools authentically engage students in learning through innovative applications and web-based learning tools. LearningStation has been honored as a 2005 and 2006 SIIA Codie Award finalist, a 2003 Media & Methods Magazine Awards Portfolio recipient, and a recipient of the EdNET 2002 Pioneer Award for significant contributions to the growth of education technology.
About Kan-ed
Recognizing that every Kansan should have access to the global digital revolution in information technology, Kan-ed provides the tools to influence and expand the roles of education and health care in communities throughout the state. By connecting schools, libraries and hospitals to a private high-speed network, Kan-ed is creating an education/health-care coalition to vastly increase Kansans’ access to information, institutions and each other. Through aggregate purchasing, Kan-ed is able to negotiate rates for databases and services that will shape a marketplace where entities large and small can exchange resources. For more information, contact Hal Gardner, Kan-ed executive director, at 785-296-0843 or hgardner@ksbor.org.