The University of California Davis School of Education has opened a new PowerSchool and Microsoft Digital Learning Lab on campus.
The lab features screens and audiovisual equipment that use learning management systems that mix both in-classroom and remote classroom technology.
“For many teachers, there has been minimal exposure, training and access to classroom technology to prepare for new models of teaching such as hybrid learning and data driven personalized learning plans that are now needed more than ever before,” said PowerSchool Holdings Inc. CEO Hardeep Gulati, in a news release from UC Davis. Gulati serves on the UC Davis School of Education Board of Advisors.
Folsom-based education software company PowerSchool (NYSE: PWSC) provides schools with cloud-based personalized teaching aids and online learning technology, and centralized and online administrative, management and reporting technology.
The new lab at UC Davis is the first of its kind for PowerSchool. It's an initiative of the PowerSchool Education Fund, a $1 million fund the company announced when it went public this summer, said spokeswoman Jenna Mills.
PowerSchool and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) shared the $100,000 cost of upgrading a former computer lab on campus, Lauren Lindstrom, dean of the UC Davis School of Education, told the Business Journal. She said PowerSchool separately also funded $100,000 in scholarships to low-income students in the program at Davis.
The university started working on the concept of the new lab even before the pandemic, mostly as a result of student requests, she said. The school didn’t have the money to make the upgrades to the former computer lab, which was last upgraded in the 1980s. The new lab is outfitted with access to new software, screens, computers, audiovisual equipment and new furniture.
The lab allows university students access to digital learning tools, ranging from virtual classrooms to digital administration tools, which they will be working with at many K-12 schools when they graduate.
The School of Education has, on average, about 120 students a year enter the one-year program for teacher credentialing. It also has students seeking their two-year master’s degree, as well as doctoral candidates. UC Davis also has about 360 students in its undergraduate education programs.
Davis teaching students will be able to attend learning in person, and campuses in other parts of the state can attend remotely. All have access to a variety of webinars.
