School Safety and Digital Learning: 2023 Graduation Season Education News Trends

A look at the education news from PR Newswire in May and June that you might have missed.

 

Education News Trends, May-June 2023

 

By Toney Palumbo | Published July 11, 2023

 

Ah, graduation season – a time to celebrate exciting new beginnings and proclaim hope for the future with inspirational anecdotes, and/or to assess the lamentable prospects of a traumatized new generation thrust into the stark realities of working life. Fear not, Class of 2023; there’s plenty of advice to go around.

As this year’s graduates walked across innumerable stages to receive hard-earned diplomas, we at PR Newswire processed and distributed 1,753 education press releases in May and June in the U.S. and Canada. While graduation itself was a common subject, we’ve also identified “safety” and the ubiquitous post-COVID “online learning” as buzzworthy topics of the preceding two months.

Before diving into these trends, here’s a sampling of some of the most-viewed education press releases in May and June:

 

 

Education News Trends

Here’s a closer look at the trending areas we’ve identified among education-related press releases in May and June.

Graduation Season

With late spring functioning as the traditional season of “pomp and circumstance” for students everywhere, it was inevitable that we would see a plethora of news pertaining to graduation. In fact, more than 130 of the education releases we published in the last two months contained a mention of “graduation” or “commencement.”

While many press releases were straightforward announcements of forthcoming ceremonial speaker lineups or institutional celebrations of the latest graduating class, a handful offered tips for graduates or analyzed the Class of 2023’s future prospects.

Some commencement speaker announcements included:

  • Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass addressing the UCLA Anderson School of Management Class of 2023
  • Hologenix CEO And Co-Founder Seth Casden speaking at his alma mater, Viewpoint School, in Calabasas, Calif.
  • Motivational speaker Gaby Natale's keynote at the Ultimate Medical Academy's graduation in Tampa, Florida
  • Fortune 500 chief marketing officer Alicia Tillman delivering the Lycoming College commencement address

Several releases named individuals receiving honorary degrees at commencement ceremonies, including:

Also, not to be upstaged by the stuffy goings-on of academia, Party City provided some recommendations for throwing the best graduation bash possible. Carpe diem!

Safety

The subject of safety, particularly within the classroom environment, was another trending topic in the waning months of the school year, as even educators report feeling less safe than in previous times. Incident response solutions provider CENTEGIX published a "School Safety Trends" report highlighting the urgency of the issue, which was also identified as a primary parental concern by a National PTA survey. Accordingly, we saw 176 press releases mentioning “safety.”

Classroom Safety

A notable amount of releases pertaining to safety specifically addressed ways to protect classrooms and campuses from the unabating scourge of gun violence in the U.S., where some of the most high-profile shootings have been in schools.

For example, AI gun detection software platform creator ZeroEyes distributed multiple releases during this time, including the announcement of its products’ deployment in Ohio's Berkshire Local School District and a contract with Utah-based safety solutions provider AEGIX. Other school-safety tech company news included a Rank One Computing (ROC.ai) pilot program launch in West Virginia and HavenLock's Guardian Angel program, in which the smart lock system startup will donate one of its devices to a school or daycare for each unit sold to a business.

Other tech companies focused on school safety that issued releases in the last two months include STOPit Solutions and Raptor Technologies.

Several organizations applauded the ratification of Alyssa’s Law in Texas, mandating silent panic alert technology in classrooms, including:

Although distress about the threat of violence in classrooms and on campuses is a dominant focal point in the broader conversation about student safety, there are several other areas of attention where the protection of youth is concerned:

Road Safety

With summer approaching and licensed teenage drivers preparing to hit the road more frequently, National Road Safety Foundation teamed up with youth organizations to mount a massive social media campaign targeted at reducing teen traffic fatalities.

Water Safety

Likewise, for younger children, the summer months – marked by more time spent in and around pools, lakes, and other bodies of water for recreational swimming – necessitate an emphasis on water safety.  Press releases distributed in May outlined the observation of “Water Safety Month” by industry leaders like Foss Swim School and Streamline Brands, widely known for SafeSplash Swim School. Other announcements describing efforts to reduce childhood drowning included the following:

Online Safety

Physical protection of children is only one aspect of safety, as evidenced by press releases touching upon the potential harms encountered in cyberspace. California’s Legacy Health Endowment provided parents with informational guides pertaining to social media and video games in an effort to shield children from threats that can arise in those respective environments, while the McCain Institute detailed “shortcomings in communication between caregivers and teens about internet safety” in a report entitled "The R.E.A.L. Talk: What parents and teens know they should be talking about, but aren't."

Safety for children in developing nations

While the majority of PR Newswire education releases distributed to U.S. media pertained to American students, Education Cannot Wait – the United Nations' global, billion-dollar fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises – sent several press releases about projects dedicated to establishing safe learning spaces for children in developing nations ravaged by instability:

Online Learning

Online learning, remote learning, virtual learning – by any name, the internet-based learning tools and practices implemented during the peak of the COVID pandemic are here to stay, despite students returning to their brick-and-mortar schools. In May and June, nearly 100 releases included the phrases “online learning,” “virtual learning” and/or “remote learning.” Edtech companies like edX and Scale Computing continue to regularly introduce new products and updates to their digital offerings, while educational institutions increasingly introduce courses providing an alternative to physical classrooms.

Miller-Motte College, for one, has been somewhat rapidly expanding its catalog of online courses, announcing the availability of Bachelor of Science degree offerings in Cloud Computing and Software Development in early May, followed by Data Management and Computer Science programs in June.

Other press releases about institutions rolling out online courses included:

Some online learning companies have introduced solutions intended for implementation by learning institutions. At its "Visual Solution Forum" presentation in May, ViewSonic Corp. introduced UNIVERSE by ViewSonic, a 3D virtual campus designed to optimize online learning, providing a dynamic and interactive environment for students.

Others have designed their own courses for direct use by consumers, like LingoAce's Math and Music classes for preK-12 kids, or StraighterLine's transferable credit-bearing courses for early childhood education and care professionals.

Not to be left out, even hardware manufacturers like Hackboard are emphasizing new products’ "versatility ideal for remote learning."

Several announcements described partnerships between edtech companies and institutions of higher learning. For example, D2L, a global learning technology company offering modern and integrated online learning platforms, touted contracts with The City University of New York (CUNY) and Missouri State University (MSU). Harvard- and MIT-affiliated edX has continued to expand its partner network, connecting with fintech platforms like Intuit, as well as faraway institutions like the University of Cape Town.

Finally, the EdTech Breakthrough Awards, which named winners in early June, featured victories for online learning companies, honoring Agora, Inc.'s Flexible Classroom with its "Classroom Technology Innovation of the Year" and presenting Gale with the "Ongoing Education Solution Provider of the Year" for its Gale Presents: Udemy platform.

Conclusion

Now that we’ve properly sent off the graduates of 2023 and examined both the ever-growing online learning boom and our increasing collective attention to student safety, it’s time for summer vacation. In the meantime, the education team at PR Newswire will continue to monitor developing trends. For now: pencils down, class! See you in September.

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About the Author

Toney Palumbo headshotToney Palumbo has been a member of the nocturnal Cision PR Newswire team since late 2017. In his leisure time, he is a prodigious consumer (and sporadic creator) of music.