Technology can accelerate personalized learning.
The premise — technology enables the scaling of more student-centered, personalized education. In this blog post, for example, a group of districts in Massachusetts network with one another to share how they are personalizing learning for their students.
But that also is balanced with the philosophy that personalized learning looks different in different schools and classrooms because it cannot simply be implemented top-down, but rather designed from the bottom up. This is why I found this blog post intriguing: “Why Every School’s EdTech Department Should Make Themselves Obsolete.”
We still see predictable mistakes in our approach to technology at the classroom level. This picture and related blog from author and consultant Silvia Tolisano captures these concerns.
And this can be confused with personalized learning.
In our upcoming e-book (due out end of March 2018), Jill Thompson and I make the case that, “Proliferation of technology without direct and frequent connections to the overall vision can be harmful. In many cases, the strategic focus becomes the ratio of device per student and frequency of use rather than growing the quality of the learning experience.”
So this newsletter talks about how technology and personalizing learning can go hand-in-hand to make learning more relevant, interesting, and impactful.
- Matt Oberecker writes a second blog post for us on Helping Students Find Their Voice.
- Michael Kiefer writes two blog posts on how to grow students capacity with technology around them both as consumers and producers of information.
- Jill Thompson offers readers a self-assessment quiz to gauge use of technology and meaningfully grow it on behalf of the learners.
- Finally, Ryan Ely shares how coding can be used to help students create and inspire.
Thank you, as always, for reading and commenting!
Sincerely
Allison Zmuda
Educational Consultant and Founder of Learning Personalized