Blog - Five Star Technology Solutions

Your school has a shiny new PyxisEdu subscription. Congratulations, you’ve taken the first step in providing your teachers a personalized approach to professional development! As a building leader, you understand the powerful benefits that PyxisEdu provides for your teachers. You know about the resources rooted in strong pedagogy, the professional growth tracking, and the digital badging that helps your teachers display their strengths and interests. You can’t wait to see how your staff uses this new program to amplify their professional learning.

One way to upgrade your school network infrastructure is by tapping into the dollars available via the federal E-Rate program that is administered by the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC). E-Rate provides discounts to eligible schools and libraries in the United States in order to ensure access to affordable telecommunications and information services.

Ah, the life of an eCoach. You are the cheerleader, the champion, the confidant, and the caretaker. At the beginning of the day, you're a hero for fixing a Kahoot crisis, but by lunch time, you're sorting through emails of frustration about the district's new LMS. Your day is a wild roller coaster ride of highs and lows, of twists and curves and near misses. Many of you were classroom teachers before stepping into this role, and you experience the same cycles of frustration and pride that you did in your own classrooms.

With the availability of easily accessible attack tools, everyone is at risk - including school districts. New vulnerabilities and exploits are discovered on a daily basis. Incidents are on the rise and a substantial percentage of cybersecurity incidents involving schools are due to the actions of school staff and/or students of those schools - sometimes resulting in criminal charges.

New network vulnerabilities and exploits are discovered on a daily basis.  The protection that was adequate just a few years ago doesn’t even come close to protecting your school district today.  Mid-sized and small K-12 districts used to feel a certain amount of safety in security through obscurity - meaning a feeling that you don’t have anything hackers want - they’ll leave you alone.

Beginning in kindergarten, students are taught how to be good citizens.  We teach them the importance of being honest, trustworthy, kind, respectful, responsible, and safe.  Students read books, analyze characters, watch videos, and act out scenarios to discuss and practice each of the skills needed to help make the world a better place.  

If you support technology in schools, then you know that the beginning of the year is a chaotic and stressful time of year.  Our experienced crew of onsite technicians, engineers, trainers, and directors take great pride in the work we do to partner with school districts to calm the storm, train on the new tools/devices, and place the focus on what matters most - creating awesome learning experiences for kids.  For this blog entry, we humbly share some of the comments that warmed our hearts at the beginning of this school year.

As teachers head back to the classroom for the 2018-19 school year, many are still wondering how they are going to get everything accomplished on their massive to do list. Standards? Technology Integration? Real life application? Engaging learning? How can students get the best of each of these while learning in a meaningful way?

It has been our absolute joy to share the power of individualized professional development with teachers at conferences all over the country. We had many conversations with teachers who wanted to use PyxisEdu but felt their school district didn't have the funds to purchase the program for all of their teachers. We heard you loud and clear, and we are proud to introduce the PyxisEDU Individual Premium Plan. This plan allows individual teachers to access all of the awesome resources and collections inside Pyxis, earn any/all badges, and automatically track their progress using Pyxis Points. Whether you are looking for new ways to engage your students or seeking fun and practical tips for license renewal, you can now secure an individual PyxisEDU account for $5.99 per month or $60 per year. 

In just three short days, ISTE 2018 will kick off in Chicago, Illinois! Educators from all over the world will gather to learn how to utilize technology in their classrooms and transform learning for their students. We are so incredibly excited to announce that Five-Star will be attending, presenting, and exhibiting at this conference! This is our first time officially attending as a company, but many of our team members have had the chance to experience this conference in the past. Since we are new to the ISTE world, we gathered some tips from our ISTE-veteran friends for maximizing our time at the conference.