2020 Wrapped: Our Top Blogs, Podcasts, and Webinars for Educators

2020 has been a year filled with unprecedented challenges.

While teachers, administrators, students, and parents adjust to new ways of teaching, we continue to focus on providing new digital tools and instructional resources to help educators navigate between in-person and remote learning. Our authors and instructional designers carefully curated our content for distance learning, and we made the Realize LMS even more flexible by introducing a new Distance Learning Toggle and Interactive PDF Creator.

This fall, we presented our “Going the Distance Symposium,” creating a space for educators to understand and reflect on this school year’s challenges and how they may impact teaching and learning in the future.

To put it briefly, a LOT has happened and educators have been busier than ever! So busy in fact, that we expect you probably didn’t have the time, bandwidth, or mental space to find every helpful Savvas resource, attend every virtual symposium, or listen to every podcast.

With that in mind, we pulled together a list of our most popular educator resources of 2020 — the best blogs, podcasts, and on-demand webinars curated just for you.

Without further ado, check out our most popular resources from 2020 that you may have missed:

Top Podcasts:

1. The Science of Reading: Clarifying Misconceptions with Dr. Sharon Vaughn

Dr. Sharon Vaughn describes the Science of Reading and implications for literacy instruction, clarifying misconceptions presented in this latest resurgence. Can a focus on foundational skills and balanced literacy coexist? This podcast provides valuable information every teacher can use.

2. Engaging All Students With Culturally Relevant Instruction with Dr. Ernest Morrell

In this podcast, Dr. Ernest Morrell shares his insight as to why students are not engaged and how we can engage them. Centered around increased representation, cultural understanding, and student voice, Dr. Morrell discussed how culturally relevant instruction offers academic equity by allowing all students to see themselves as valuable members of the classroom community.

3. Breaking the Cycle of Low Achievement and Low Motivation with Dr. P. David Pearson

Follow our Learning to Read: What Really Matters series and listen in on our conversation with educational literacy leader Dr. P. David Pearson as he shares great insight about the “virtuous” cycle of knowledge begetting comprehension, begetting learning as a way to break the vicious cycle of low achievement and low motivation.

Top Blogs on Fresh Ideas for Teaching:

1. Practice & Application with Digital Manipulatives by Esther Park, ELA teacher

Check out these five easy ways to use digital manipulatives to enhance students’ learning of new concepts and skills for literacy development.

2. Free Biology Webinars for Students with Drs. Ken Miller and Joe Levine

Watch our free on-demand biology lessons featuring authors Dr. Ken Miller and Dr. Joe Levine, along with engaging resources from the latest Miller & Levine Biology.

3. 5 Helpful Realize Features for Remote Learning by Todd Cofer

Savvas Realize is ready to support you with the edtech resources needed to implement virtual teaching and learning. Here, we outline five time-saving features.

Top On-Demand Webinars for Educators:

1. Teaching in Physical, Digital or Virtual Spaces by Dr. Frank Serafini

As teachers look beyond 2020, resources, technologies, and instructional approaches that range across physical, digital, and virtual spaces will be essential elements in classroom teachers’ toolboxes. In these uncertain times, remaining flexible, alert, and amenable to new strategies and possibilities for literacy instruction is vital. In this virtual webinar. Dr. Frank Serafini shares teaching ideas, strategies, and resources for classroom teachers that span physical, digital, and virtual platforms. Specific resources and teaching ideas will be shared.

2. Technology Tools to Motivate Students and Improve Math Instruction in the Digital World by Eric Milou

This on-demand webinar examines how to engage, motivate, and teach students in a digital world. Explore digital tools (Desmos, Gimkit amongst others) that can motivate students and lead to deeper mathematical understanding.

3. COVID-19 and Other Dangerous New Viral Diseases: Where do they come from? How can we fight them? By Dr. Ken Miller and Dr. Joe Levine

SARS-CoV-2 is the newest viral threat to humanity, following HIV, SARS, MERS, and flu strains like the one that caused the 1918 pandemic. Why are some viruses so deadly? How do new ones arise and spread? How can we draw from experience to defeat this one? This webinar, ideal for online teaching, puts coronaviruses in context, invoking SEP’s, CCC’s and DCI’s in genetics, ecology, evolution, and immunology.

Note: Fresh Ideas for Teaching blog contributors have been compensated for sharing personal teaching experiences on our blog. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company.