The Benefits of Personalized Learning For a very long time, teaching new skills (be it in a traditional educational setting or for professionals) followed a predictable pattern. The instructor would prepare the lesson, deliver the content through a lecture, and then send the learners on their way to study or apply what they had just learned. It is a method used over thousands of years – and of course it is still used today. Today though, we know that a more personal approach to teaching or training often yields better results in regards to learning retention. The great thing is, the tech tools that we have available make personalized learning easier than ever. Blended learning approaches, among other methods, give the learner the opportunity to interact with the content on an entirely different level. For further evidence regarding the benefits of personal learning, have a look at the infographic below created by dreambox learning.
Getting Better At Personalized Learning Here’s a startling statistic: 40% of high school students are chronically disengaged in school. There are enough reasons to go around, and I’d agree that many of them are outside of a teacher’s direct control. But some of them aren’t. How can student-interest and inquiry drive the learning? Out of these questions came my Getting Better Together project focused on pursuing personalized learning and customized instruction. These are big questions. The following videos capture our efforts toward a more personal learning experience: Structuring Personal Learning: A Day in the Workshop One of the first days of our workshop model is captured in Making Learning Personalized and Customized. Grades 9-12 / ELA / Workshop Please enable Javascript to watch this video Customizing Feedback and Instruction Helping students become better writers can feel like a Herculean task. Courageous Conversations to Improve Instruction Your Turn: Analyze and Apply Lessons Learned
Difficult students It means that in every class of 25, we have 3-4 problem students. Children are their parents’ mirrors, as well as our own; students often copy their teachers’ behaviour. J.K. Rowling brilliantly showed it with Harry Potter and Dumbledore on the one hand, and Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape on the other hand. What can be done if we encounter an adult student who is clearly disruptive, or maybe even psychotic? Ten Tips for Engaging the Millennial Learner and Moving an Emergency Medicine Residency Curriculum into the 21st Century Technology in Education – Content Curation for Higher-Level Critical Thinking Technology in Education – Content Curation for Higher-Level Critical Thinking By Susan Fitzell closeAuthor: Susan Fitzell Name: Susan FitzellSite: About: Susan Fitzell is a nationally recognized speaker and author of several educational resource books. She has over two decades of experience with differentiated instruction, teaching youth with special needs, students with behavioral and anger management issues, and students who experience bullying. Pinterest is an example of a content curation site that has become enormously popular with teachers. It seems the answer to that question lies in a teacher’s ability to discern exactly what type of curation meets the educational objectives of the lesson. To add true educational value, teachers need to consider how the collecting and curating process adds to the understanding of the lesson objective. Will there be guidelines to decide what types of content will be collected? Flipboard Scoop.it a.k.a. About the author Susan Gingras Fitzell, M.
Personalized Learning: What It Really Is and Why It Really Matters The authors offer a framework—based on three years of campus visits—for thinking about (1) the circumstances under which personalized learning can help students and (2) the best way to evaluate the real educational value for products that are marketed under the personalized learning banner. Let's be honest: as an academic term of art, personalized learning is horrible. It has almost no descriptive value. What does it mean to "personalize" learning? Isn't learning, which is done by individual learners, inherently personal? What would it mean to personalize learning? Let's just skip to the end this time, shall we? The two of us spent the past three years visiting colleges and universities that have undertaken so-called personalized learning projects, and we talked to the students, teachers, and administrators about what they are actually doing and why they are doing it. e-Literate TV and the e-Literate Blog Personalized Learning as Practice Note the role of the software in this design. Notes
Myths in Education, or How Bad Teaching Is Encouraged | Moments, Snippets, Spirals “Opinions don’t affect facts. But facts should affect opinions, and do, if you are rational.” (Ricky Gervais) I thought I would not have to blog about these fads again but it seems they have the strange ability to be reborn every single year and surface in professional development courses as well as in tweets, blog posts, and conversations within the education community. The reasons are different, ranging from ignorance to vested interests, but the effect is the same: poorer teaching. And no, you are not a bad teacher because you used them but you are a less effective one. Let’s see these monsters in their entire splendor: The Cone of Learning / The Learning PyramidLearning StylesRight-Left BrainBrain GymBrain-Based LearningMultiple Intelligences The Learning Pyramid – a complete bogus Where does it originate? Where did the percentages come from? References: The Learning Pyramid Deception, Institute for Learning Professionals Will Talheimer, PhD – People Remember 10%, 20%…Oh, Really? I know.
Personalizing the Learning Experience: New Insights from Future Ready Schools – Medium When done well, personalized learning has the potential to radically transform how we teach and learn and how we create more equitable opportunities for students. In the 2016 National Educational Technology Plan (NETP), our flagship policy document for educational technology, the U.S. Department Education defines personalized learning: Personalized learning refers to instruction in which the pace of learning and the instructional approach are optimized for the needs of each learner. On Monday, September 12, we are supporting the White House Next Generation High Schools Summit in bringing together six states and more than 20 school districts to commit to redesigning their high schools. Also, as part of the Education Secretary’s 2016 Opportunity Across America Bus tour, on Tuesday, September 13, we are hosting ConnectED Day to celebrate the three-year anniversary of President Obama’s ConnectED initiative and the two-year anniversary of Future Ready.
complexity and social learning As we transition from a market to a network economy, complexity will increase due to our hyper-connectedness. Managing in complex adaptive systems means influencing possibilities rather than striving for predictability (good or best practices). No one has the definitive answer any more but we can use the intelligence of our networks to make sense together and see how we can influence desired results. This is life in perpetual Beta. Get used to it. Preparing for this will require time, social learning, and new management structures. Soft skills, like collaboration and cooperation, are now more important than traditional hard skills. Working cooperatively requires a different mindset than merely collaborating on a defined project. Cooperation, sharing with no direct benefit, is needed at work so that we can continuously develop emergent practices demanded by increased complexity. Work in networks requires different skills than in directed hierarchies. Continued: complexity in the workplace
Continuum of Voice: What it Means for the Learner Voice gives learners a chance to share their opinions about something they believe in. We adapted the Continuum of Voice chart we used from research from Toshalis and Nakkula at the Students at the Center in our post Learner Voice Demonstrates Commitment to Building Agency. We added examples that illustrate each level to support implementation using a design by Sylvia Duckworth. Personalize Learning, LLC designed Continuum of Voice adapted from "Motivation, Engagement, & Student Voice" by Toshalis & Nakkula from Students at the Center @StudentcCntrHub - Visual designed by Sylvia Duckworth @sylviaduckworth The learning environment changes as you encourage voice and can see learners taking more control of their learning. This occurs across the Stages of Personalized Learning Environments (PLE) v4. Stage One: Teacher- Centered Environment Stage Two: Learner-Centered Environments Stage Three: Learner-Driven Environments "Young people want to be heard. Toshalis, E. and Nakkula, M."