Monthly Archives: December 2020

Hindsight 2020: A Year Filled with Hope

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Do you remember what you were doing a year ago today? You might have been sending the kids off to school, driving to work, or shopping for Christmas presents. You most likely weren’t running back in to grab your mask, transforming your dining room into a work-study area for your kids, or angling your laptop just right for the light and background in your bedroom to hop on yet another zoom call. A lot can change in a year. And from our perspective, it’s a year that points to the endurance of spirit, the kindness of strangers, and the ability to transform challenge into progress.

We Will Endure

We’ve worked through challenges to overcome everything from zoom bombs to Wi-Fi inequity. Along the way, we’ve learned that teachers are wonderfully committed beyond all expectation to caring for their students – and that they can get pretty creative in finding ways to do just that – like the teacher laying on the side of the road recording an ant hill for his students using a GoPro. Or the teacher who used his stimulus check to pay his students’ utility bills. Or all of the teachers who showed up this fall – in person, online, and both – still ready to give their students 100% every day.

We Are All Innovators

The saying necessity is the mother of invention has never been more accurate. From parking buses in neighborhoods to deliver WiFi to rolling out new technology to make it easier for schools to safely track and monitor student heatlh, innovative solutions have been in abundance to help students, teachers, parents, and schools have a successful year. Nowhere has that innovation been more apparent than from the scientists who have rapidly developed multiple viable vaccines.  

Hope Is Eternal

Throughout this year, amidst the tears, frustration, and loss, there has been an underlying feeling of hope. From a renewed appreciation for the essential workers in our communities to empty pet shelters across the country, good things happened in 2020. Here are some of the highlights:

Vaccines are being distributed as we speak. Our ability to endure, innovate, and maintain hope will see us through to a BRIGHTer 2021.

Are We Ready to Emerge into 2021 and a New Universe?

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by Dr. John Vandewalle

There is no doubt that 2020 has been the test of our resilience and the fight is not over. As leaders in our communities, we set the example by our mere presence and our resilience becomes the resilience of others in our circles. We often have to pinch ourselves to remind us where we are and what we are aiming for and more importantly what we are grateful for. Here are some considerations that may prod us to stay the course and allow others to follow.

For our personal wellbeing: Be mindful of our health and social welfare with considerations

  • Wash our hands as often as possible – it is good practice.
  • Consider a small bottle of sanitizer for instant access.
  • Wear a mask in front of others to show respect for them and our loved ones.
  • Keep a distance
  • Take extra precautions for those in the “at risk” groups
  • Be prepared to listen as we all have our own concerns. This will foster the community trust.
  • Keep our eyes and ears tuned for trends, information, sage input that hovers above the fray and allows us to stay ahead of the game.
  • Gather and use data to make informed decisions.
  • Share our leadership with our constituents to give them confidence and courage.
  • When all else fails, break out of our silos and reach out to our community for mutual support
  • If we are struggling, call a friend or perhaps make a new friend
  • Carry a little gift bag in your car or purse in case someone on the street can savor a small pleasure

For our organization’s wellbeing: Be mindful of our leadership and our team

  • Stay communicating – more than ever
  • Meet regularly with our teams
  • Focus on our vision, mission, goals and values
  • Recreate our plan/s and ensure they infiltrate through out
  • Revisit our plan weekly with our team as the dynamics are in flux
  • Re-recruit our team and thank them more than often
  • Pay special attention to leadership and technology
  • Be more creative and entrepreneurial than ever
  • Brake down our silos and reach out aggressively that makes us uncomfortable
  • Be the example of supporting local on all fronts
  • APPRECIATE THE HEROES OF THE MOMENT -> YOU ARE PART OF THE PARADE

DROP ME A LINE and let me know what 2021 is bringing for you.

Dr John Vandewalle, CEO Lumen Touch. email: johnv@lumentouch.com

2020 – A Year That Has Challenged Our Prowess and Resilience

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Helen Keller said, “A bend in the road is not the end of the road… Unless you fail to make the turn.”

This has been a trying year for everyone, but we at Lumen Touch can’t help but end the year with a very bright outlook. Hats off to our partnering school districts – and educators everywhere – as they continue to make Herculean efforts to ensure that their students are taken care of and receive instruction, while we’ve simultaneously watched the edtech industry pull together to support teachers and schools in ways that were unexpected but most welcome. We all have embraced the bend in the road.

Lumen Touch has been fortunate to partner with several innovative companies, rising to the demands and extending the reach of our platform to provide urgent solutions to new challenges, using our Bright SUITE™ product line. This has dramatically reduced some of the constraints and frustrations that teachers and IT teams were unexpectedly confronted with. Two of these very valuable partnerships have helped us significantly impact schooling as we navigate unchartered waters.

The GG4L Digital Stimulus Package – a must for all school districts

Lumen Touch is proud to be one of the solutions offered in the GG4L Digital Stimulus Package, which gives GG4L member schools immediate deployment of a free, fully integrated digital transformation bundle, valued at over $2,500 per school. In addition to a district-branded portal and 60 days of access to Lumen Touch’s Bright CARE™, schools receive:

  • Reliable single sign-on School Passport across all apps
  • Safe online SchoolTube video sharing for all courses
  • Academic achievement self-diagnostic tools through Gooru’s Navigator
  • Secure GG4L Virtual Classrooms for all courses (60-day trial)
  • Actionable family engagement with native iOS/Android mobile app (60-day trial)
  • Hundreds of free online learning resources available from GG4L’s Catalyst catalog
  • Bright CARE for management of COVID-19

Better Health and Health Monitoring with Lumen Touch and Tesseract Ventures

Lumen Touch partnered with Tesseract Ventures, a fellow Kansas City-based technology company. Using Tesseract’s PRISM™ technology, Lumen Touch can issue badges for students, allowing the necessary tracking and tracing information to be collected while prioritizing student safety and privacy by shielding individual data from anyone without proper authorization.

Bright CARE’s tools include:

  • Temperature tracking and contact tracing
  • Tracking of COVID-19 testing
  • Monitoring of and alerting on social distancing
  • Summary of medical conditions and injuries
  • District-wide summary of immunization error dates
  • Immunization summary report by type and exemption (to include COVID-19 vaccination)

Kansas City is being recognized as a hot spot for education technology prowess. We are all better together to build an education platform that fills jobs with market-value assets – that is, students succeeding in a new learning environment. Lumen Touch and Tesseract are happy together and want to invite others to the table to develop the future in education.

– Dr. John Vandewalle

As 2021 draws near, we are grateful to have partners like these to help us better serve our schools and communities. All of us at Lumen Touch wish you a happy and safe holiday season and a prosperous 2021.