Exploring Personalized Learning
This is a pre-reading and studying post. Perhaps my blueprint for action research in an area that I find to be fascinating, exciting, and elusive all at the same time. Personalized learning.
To me, personalized learning experiences are exciting because of how quickly and completely they engage the student. Content is devoured. Time flies. Fun and Joy blaze into the classroom. Flow!
But then I’m faced with that “C” word. Curriculum. The “must knows.” The final exam that pretty much every human resource department head asks us for. (If you’re inside a school system, then replace that last bit with school board or district or principal etc.)
We live in a programed world don’t we? We grew up in and under the big C and we’ve been trained to reproduce it and expect it in all other “learning” experiences/environments we encounter.
My questions around curriculum largely remain the same: Is Curriculum bad? It’s push technology. It’s a broadcast that all of our students must tune into, or face failure. It’s a broadcast that teachers have to transmit, or they too shall fail. Is that kind of setup incorrect? Have our times changed so much that “the way it’s always been” no longer applies?
I’m thinking that the answer to that question is yes, but I have no idea what it really means. I admit to being in a state of ignorance around an updated educational model, where the power of personal is released.
So I embark on an exploration. Over the next few posts I would like to learn more about Personalized Learning. I have some towering questions that I would like to echo and ask. This post from Stephen Downes really helps frame my questions:Stephen’s Web ~ by Stephen Downes ~ Personalisation and Digital Technologies
“The logic of education systems should be reversed so that the system conforms to the learner, rather than the learner to the system. This is the essence of personalisation. It demands a system capable of offering bespoke support for each individual in order to foster engaged and independent learners able to reach their full potential.” Good stuff, and I support most of it, though I note (and this is a small criticism) that the authors can’t quite let go of the reins, as evidenced by their suggestion that students take merely “joint responsibility” for learning choices and able only to “co-design” their own curriculum. When two people - one with power, and one without - are sharing “joint responsibility” and “co-design,” the person without power is inevitably overruled by the person with power. Status quo.
1. How do you let go of those reigns?
2. Should their be reigns of any kind?
3. Shouldn’t there be some kind of…framework set out around what is to be covered in class? A curriculum that is, but isn’t at the same time? It’s hard for me to get my words around this one. I think J.M. over at Palimpsest redux really hits this one well: Curriculum as guide not a gavel.
4. How do you get co-design that is really equal? Should it be all student? If it is all student centered course design, what happens to society when these students graduate? Will we be failing to reach key and important learning targets that are required to live and work outside school? Will unleashing self-directed learners…those who learn in a “just-in-time” fashion be able to fit in to our world successfully?
Lots of questions, and exciting directions to explore. As always, the floor is happily yours!
