All learning should be personal – we are teaching individual students, after all – but when advocates talk about “personalized learning” they are often describing programs and teaching methods that look unlike the typical school. They envision school as a place where students have more control over their own studies; where they are not constrained by age or grade level; where children can move through subjects as fast or slowly as they need.
Educators, researchers and advocates still quibble over the precise definition of personalized learning, but most agree on this much: In these classrooms teachers don’t pass out identical worksheets and tests to every student.
Achieving personalized instruction is one of the challenges cited in a new report from two organizations, the New Media Consortium and the Consortium for School Networking. Their annual report, produced by 59 leading experts with online input from others, plots the five-year look ahead for education technology. The Horizon Report, as it is known, began in 2004 and is one of the longest-running publications of its kind.
“It’s a complete rethink of our industrialized model of schools,” said Keith R. Krueger, CEO of the Consortium for School Networking, a nonprofit organization serving K-12 school technology professionals.
What can a local school district do with this information? Does every school need to buy software that promises to “personalize” learning, lest they be left hopelessly behind the trends? Should educators incorporate all 18 topics mentioned in the report into their classroom?
[For more of this story, written by Nichole Dobo, go to http://hechingerreport.org/stu...ve-pace-suits-needs/]
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