Saturday, January 14, 2017

A Case for Personalized Learning

Personalized Learning. It's quite a topic in education right now. But, personalized learning is not new - it has taken on a new life as our need for differentiation has grown. A colleague asked me to consider the challenges of the one-room school house and consider it as a model of personalized learning.
 Today's classrooms look very different than the one-room schoolhouse, but the challenge is similar - full classrooms of students at varying levels with one teacher trying to figure out how to push students toward mastery. Our teachers today have the additional challenge of standards, state testing, and school improvement measures. We also have an amazing opportunity to use digital tools in our classrooms and to use those tools as a way to reach the goal of truly personalized learning.

Personalized learning isn't just about digital tools. It is about knowing your students, knowing their data and the strengths or gaps in their learning, knowing effective standards-based instruction, and knowing how to build student ownership of their own learning. Education Elements, who are some of the foremost thinkers about personalized learning, define the core four elements of personalized learning as Targeted Instruction, Data Driven Decisions, Student Reflection and Ownership, and Integrated Digital Content. 
From Education Elements - Core Four Elements of Personalized Learning
With all of the work we have invested in using data to drive our instruction, it seems like everything points to the Core Four Elements of Personalized Learning as a logical step. Using data to drive your instruction ultimately leads to personalized learning - and the right digital content can ensure that students are engaged in effective, standards-based learning. 

Digital tools do not replace teacher actions - they should enhance the effective, standards-based instruction that is happening in classrooms. Classrooms might feel like the old one-room schoolhouse with the levels of necessary differentiation, but today's classroom should look much different. Today's personalized classroom reflects the availability of technology and information and is rooted in individualized goal setting and personalized growth. If we are truly committed to providing our students with a high-quality education that prepares our students for college and career, this level of personalized learning is the next step in our journey. Digital tools, in combination with data driven instruction, effective standards-based instruction, and students involved in setting their own goals and monitoring their own progress are changing the way our classrooms look and the way our children achieve. 

1 comment:

  1. Awesome post! Love the line, "Personalized learning isn't just about digital tools. It is about knowing your students..." So good!

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