Getting Personal 2/28
I am really glad to see an entire week of assignments dedicated to personalized learning. I feel like personalized learning is coming at me from many different directions--it started with a Socratic seminar in my SED 406 class last semester (when Kelli-Lynne and I had to research and play the role of Don Halquist, remember, Kelli?), I attended the EdCamp professional development earlier in the semester and this was a major topic that was discussed, I have a dear friend who works for the Highlander Institute who is a major supporter of personalized learning, and another good friend is a high school teacher in Barrington and will be presenting at the Blended Learning Conference in April. Needless to say, this is not the first time I'm hearing about personalized learning.
NETFLIXING HUMAN CAPITAL
I tackled the Roberts-Mahoney piece first, and it might be the first time I've read something describing the detriments of big data. And maybe she doesn't directly say that data mining is inherently bad, but reducing students and teachers to the products of data collection seems incredibly short-sighted. She does note that the current way that education is measured and assessed is flawed; NCLB, CCSS, and Race to the Top have proven to be ineffective in improving schools, especially those schools that serve marginalized communities.
Newt Gingrich had a point (can't believe I am saying those words) when he said "most information and knowledge is transmitted digitally and is increasingly personalized" and I believe it does make sense to change the ways in which we educate students. R-M lays out the dangers, however, with moving to a fully digital pedagogy, which would turn teachers into "learning coaches or facilitators," something I fundamentally oppose. I can appreciate the comparison of the potential benefits of personalized education to those of providers like Netflix and Pandora, but the implications of doing that are scary. R-M says, "it is specifically schools and students that become the producers, consumers, and products as they interact with adaptive learning systems."
I'll tell you what, I am extremely uncomfortable with the way that corporations are able to influence standards and the way education systems can be turned into factories churning out workers. Does this start even before the schools? Do companies like Pearson start that influence with pre-service teachers still in college? This all feels far too Marxist for my liking.
BALANCING TALK WITH TECH
In my recent research regarding personalized learning, especially since Gov. Raimondo has plans to implement it state-wide, I find that I am drawn to positions like those of Coiro. In SED 406 we learned about Summit, a personalized learning program that puts the entire control of the learning process into the hands of the student. I was immediately turned off. It takes the role of the teacher out of the equation almost completely. Too extreme for me. As were the descriptions of personalized learning that R&M describe. On the other hand, using no technology to personalize learning at all feels like an ostrich stucking its head in the sand. The idea of blended learning, as Coiro describes, seems to do the best job of combining personalized learning with traditional teacher-led instruction. I can get behind this method.
As Coiro notes, the personalized learning movement is often mistaken for the idea that teachers will just plunk their students down in front of computers and let technology do all the instruction. She points out that blended learning, when implemented successfully, uses a "range of human and digital resources to improve [students' abilities] to think, problem-solve, collaborate, and communicate. The idea of utilizing playlists, where students can work at their own pace, and the more personal learning model, where students and teachers can work one on one.
Something important to note is that Coiro believes a connection between students and the world around them is essential and when she points out four sets of instructional practices educators can implement, the first is to build a culture of personal inquiry. This reinforces the previous readings that show that students perform better when they are studying things that interest them. Point taken.
There's a teaching podcast I really like by Jennifer Gonzales called "The Cult of Pedagogy" and she recently made an episode where she interviewed a teacher who has successfully implemement the "genius hour" program (also called 20% time). I feel like Coiro's blended learning principles fit with the mode of personal inquiry that the genius hour was created for. There's more information here: https://www.edutopia.org/groups/personalized-learning/802456
DEVELOPING TECHY TEACHERS
I loved this article and found lots of links that I have bookmarked. I found this to be completely true in real life! A few months ago I attended EdCamp which was held here at RIC. The first breakout session was all about creating playlists in a blended learning classroom. I sat with a teacher from West Warwick who not only talked to me at length about how she makes playlists work in her English classroom. She successfully uses personalized learning, allowing students to learn at their own pace, and throughout the playlist she requires her students to check in with her on their progress. In this way, she is able to maintain a personal connection to her students as well, even more so than with traditional instruction, since students are able to spend more time connecting with her one-on-one.
Not only was she so excited to tell me all about how she uses playlists and blended learning in her classroom, but she sent me a link to a set of google docs, with a number of her playlists. She shared this with everyone in the conference who asked. I was pleasantly surprised at the way that teachers in attendance were so open and happy to share the ways they use tech in their classroom. I was invited to join teaching twitter conversations and was embraced wholeheartedly by my future colleagues.
Couros describes the importance of veteran teachers modeling ways to bring technology into the classroom for pre-service teachers like me. I'm delighted to see that in practice in the Rhode Island teaching community.
If anyone wants me to share those playlists, let me know! :)
NETFLIXING HUMAN CAPITAL
I tackled the Roberts-Mahoney piece first, and it might be the first time I've read something describing the detriments of big data. And maybe she doesn't directly say that data mining is inherently bad, but reducing students and teachers to the products of data collection seems incredibly short-sighted. She does note that the current way that education is measured and assessed is flawed; NCLB, CCSS, and Race to the Top have proven to be ineffective in improving schools, especially those schools that serve marginalized communities.
Newt Gingrich had a point (can't believe I am saying those words) when he said "most information and knowledge is transmitted digitally and is increasingly personalized" and I believe it does make sense to change the ways in which we educate students. R-M lays out the dangers, however, with moving to a fully digital pedagogy, which would turn teachers into "learning coaches or facilitators," something I fundamentally oppose. I can appreciate the comparison of the potential benefits of personalized education to those of providers like Netflix and Pandora, but the implications of doing that are scary. R-M says, "it is specifically schools and students that become the producers, consumers, and products as they interact with adaptive learning systems."
I'll tell you what, I am extremely uncomfortable with the way that corporations are able to influence standards and the way education systems can be turned into factories churning out workers. Does this start even before the schools? Do companies like Pearson start that influence with pre-service teachers still in college? This all feels far too Marxist for my liking.
BALANCING TALK WITH TECH
In my recent research regarding personalized learning, especially since Gov. Raimondo has plans to implement it state-wide, I find that I am drawn to positions like those of Coiro. In SED 406 we learned about Summit, a personalized learning program that puts the entire control of the learning process into the hands of the student. I was immediately turned off. It takes the role of the teacher out of the equation almost completely. Too extreme for me. As were the descriptions of personalized learning that R&M describe. On the other hand, using no technology to personalize learning at all feels like an ostrich stucking its head in the sand. The idea of blended learning, as Coiro describes, seems to do the best job of combining personalized learning with traditional teacher-led instruction. I can get behind this method.
As Coiro notes, the personalized learning movement is often mistaken for the idea that teachers will just plunk their students down in front of computers and let technology do all the instruction. She points out that blended learning, when implemented successfully, uses a "range of human and digital resources to improve [students' abilities] to think, problem-solve, collaborate, and communicate. The idea of utilizing playlists, where students can work at their own pace, and the more personal learning model, where students and teachers can work one on one.
Something important to note is that Coiro believes a connection between students and the world around them is essential and when she points out four sets of instructional practices educators can implement, the first is to build a culture of personal inquiry. This reinforces the previous readings that show that students perform better when they are studying things that interest them. Point taken.
There's a teaching podcast I really like by Jennifer Gonzales called "The Cult of Pedagogy" and she recently made an episode where she interviewed a teacher who has successfully implemement the "genius hour" program (also called 20% time). I feel like Coiro's blended learning principles fit with the mode of personal inquiry that the genius hour was created for. There's more information here: https://www.edutopia.org/groups/personalized-learning/802456
DEVELOPING TECHY TEACHERS
I loved this article and found lots of links that I have bookmarked. I found this to be completely true in real life! A few months ago I attended EdCamp which was held here at RIC. The first breakout session was all about creating playlists in a blended learning classroom. I sat with a teacher from West Warwick who not only talked to me at length about how she makes playlists work in her English classroom. She successfully uses personalized learning, allowing students to learn at their own pace, and throughout the playlist she requires her students to check in with her on their progress. In this way, she is able to maintain a personal connection to her students as well, even more so than with traditional instruction, since students are able to spend more time connecting with her one-on-one.
Not only was she so excited to tell me all about how she uses playlists and blended learning in her classroom, but she sent me a link to a set of google docs, with a number of her playlists. She shared this with everyone in the conference who asked. I was pleasantly surprised at the way that teachers in attendance were so open and happy to share the ways they use tech in their classroom. I was invited to join teaching twitter conversations and was embraced wholeheartedly by my future colleagues.
Couros describes the importance of veteran teachers modeling ways to bring technology into the classroom for pre-service teachers like me. I'm delighted to see that in practice in the Rhode Island teaching community.
If anyone wants me to share those playlists, let me know! :)
I also like the idea of blended learning! (As we were discussing earlier haha). I think that fully personalized learning is too extreme to be helpful for students. There simply isn't enough face to face time with a teacher. Blended learning is a nice middle ground in which students have time with technology but time to spend with the teacher when they don't understand something about the lesson. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI loved advocating for Personalized Learning in our SED 406 class with you! I thought this was a great assignment and I learned a lot about it then!
ReplyDeleteI also agree that many people think of the most extreme kind of Personalized Learning, like Summit, and there are many different variations of Personalized Learning.
Great post :-)