What Should School Leaders Be Asking About Their EdTech?

Answering Education Leaders’ Questions on Student Soapbox.

With so many great tools on the market, it’s a challenge in-and-of-itself to find the right edtech for your students and educators. Moreover, edtech that empowers both students and teachers alike is essential in this new era of education. To that end, Digital Promise has published an excellent guide for school leaders considering new edtech solutions for their schools. This guide asks insightful questions to ensure school leaders are adding tools that not only are supported by their school community, but also fit the overall learning and infrastructure goals necessary in evaluating successful edtech products. Our solution, Student Soapbox, serves as an all-in-one lesson voting platform that provides students with ownership over their education while giving educators valuable insight to support a more engaging, relevant learning experience.

Below, we take a look at how Student Soapbox supports learning goals, its implementation, and more:

Which Learning Goals Might Student Soapbox Support?

Designed with students and teachers in mind, Student Soapbox actively addresses several learning goals that educators find valuable. Student Soapbox effectively addresses achievement and learning gaps by encouraging schools to share high-quality instructional materials across districts, states and more. It allows teachers to explore quality content, collaborate and connect with other expert teachers to help modify those lessons for their own students, and exposes students to a variety of ways in which educational standards can be achieved through different lesson options

For teachers, and school leaders especially, Student Soapbox provides real-time insight and data into student engagement with the invested curriculum. Dashboards for the teachers and administrators highlight which lessons students are voting for, which teachers are uploading and utilizing primarily more supplemental curriculum, and how active student voters are. This empowers educators to ask the right questions about curriculum and learning materials, as well as to make well-informed decisions about the kind of support their students may need.

Student Soapbox’s community-oriented lesson library becomes a wealth of knowledge for the school. It grows with plenty of excellent lesson plans, materials, and resources added in by teachers, schools, and student requests. This feature also encourages teacher collaboration by allowing educators to share best practices, ideas, and more.

Student Soapbox’s student-centric design addresses major pillars of pedagogy - including student choice, motivation, and engagement. Furthermore, the model of Student Soapbox reinforces and encourages real-life civics skills that many schools lack. Students can see how they can have an impact, providing practice and a framework that will ensure their preparedness for civic duty once they turn 18.

Student Soapbox undeniably aligns itself with teaching practices and learning goals. The platform streamlines education with efficiency to deliver an engaging educational experience, easily implemented into online, in-person, and hybrid teaching models. Now, let’s unpack how Student Soapbox is informed by pest practices and research.

Was Student Soapbox Informed By Best Practices and Research?

Student Soapbox was designed with teachers and students in mind. Essential to that development of course, is understanding what best practices and research say about learning goals. First and foremost, Student Soapbox builds off of a major pillar of learning: student choice.

As outlined in Mike Anderson’s Learning to Choose, Choosing to Learn, student choice addresses major learning challenges like differentiation and apathy. When students wield the power of their own education, it leads to more engaged, learning-hungry students through ownership of their education. Student Soapbox’s model fits right in with this philosophy. Students will routinely engage with their learning and their classmates through a model that is designed to inspire motivation from within. Moreover, the intrinsic drive for learning improves when learning becomes personalized.

Per research from the RAND Corporation, personalized learning “prioritizes a clear understanding of the needs and goals of each individual student and the tailoring of instruction to address those needs and goals.” Additionally, the research identifies that learning profiles, personal learning paths, and flexible environments contribute greatly to students’ success.

With that in mind, it is clear to see how Student Soapbox’s model works in line with our research and best practices. With the aforementioned real-time insight and lesson library, classrooms receive tailored education experiences all at their own flexibility. Students, with guidance from educators, make personalized yet informed decisions about the course of their education.

Of course, it’s worth mentioning that Brazen Learning’s CEO Girija Ramapriya is an educator herself. Therefore, her firsthand experience as a teacher informs the effectiveness of Student Soapbox to a great extent.

Do Students Have Agency In Their Learning While Using Student Soapbox?

One of Student Soapbox’s major focuses is that of the student experience. The platform is an excellent tool for educators and administrators, and actively caters itself to the needs of students, giving them agency in their learning process.

One of the many key features of Student Soapbox is its lesson-voting platform. As we mentioned above, personalized learning and student choice are a proven methods of improving academic engagement and performance. Students make informed decisions about the course of their academics. By placing the decision-making power back in the hands of students, it allows for differentiation recognition from even a class by class basis taught by the same teacher. As every students’ needs are different, educators can use real-time data on student progress to adjust lesson plans and materials. Of course, these elements help to drive personal and classroom goals, granting students’ agency in their learning.

Lastly, our framework envisions students’ ability to passionately rally behind their lesson plans using Student Soapbox. The platform goes much deeper than simply just voting. Students can debate, run campaigns, and garner support from classmates on the course of their education. They can also consider outside sources and request lesson ideas that can be fleshed out by other teachers. Not only does this empower students to take control of their education, but it reinforces crucial democratic values important for future citizens.

With Student Soapbox’s one-of-a-kind voting platform, customizability, and opportunity for engagement, this tool undeniably gives students agency in their learning. Once Student Soapbox is fully implemented, the possibilities are abundant.

How Will Your Team Implement Student Soapbox?

Like with any new educational technology, software implementation is just one part of the process. These products, as powerful and efficient as they are, require training both within and outside of the technology to optimize the educational experience. So, how does Brazen Learning implement this product?

Our approach is two-fold. First, we start with the technological implementation at your school. This includes installing the required packages and optimization of the product for your system. Of course, Brazen Learning is able to provide service and assistance in whatever step of your school’s implementation.

Next, as mentioned, there is going to be some training required for the product. These training sessions are not intended to upend the way you teach, but to supplement your profession with tips and expertise that can help you take your classroom to the next level. With the right training, you can unlock the full potential of Student Soapbox.

Furthermore, Brazen Learning is happy to offer continued professional development services through partner organizations. By encouraging Student Soapbox professional development services, we can share continued best practices, updates and teacher hacks that work well, identify and redesign features that can be better, and allow schools to grow as abundantly as they can. Whether it be in-person or virtual, Brazen Learning is always available for technological and professional support. 

After considering these questions, it’s clear to see how Student Soapbox measures up against other educational technology on the market. Our unique lesson-voting platform, collaborative lesson library, and Salesforce-powered insights give educators the edge they need to provide the best educational experience possible. Moreover, Student Soapbox upholds teaching philosophy with its devotion to student engagement and empowerment.

Learn more about Student Soapbox, and reach out to us to talk about how your school can take its education to the next stage.