Can we make the change to personalized learning?
I strongly believe in allowing people to learn whatever they want to learn. Personalized learning can produce tremendous results. It is definitely the way for the future.
Most education systems are not yet practicing this. It is tough. I have been at it like a madman for the last 4 years. While it is really good for the kids, it is really challenging for the teachers as it is highly inefficient. It is easy to hand out the same multiple choice exam to everyone in the class and then run it through a scantron after. Assessment done in 20 seconds. Enter it into the grade book. Add up all of those quizzes and that is the student’s grade. Just about the worst form of learning and assessment out there, yet, that is mostly how it is done.
As this was created 150 years ago, of course, we need to make the switch. Personalized learning is a huge part of that. After practicing it for years, there are systems and processes that need to be established early. I don’t believe that there is one specific way to implement personalized learning, but from my perspective, initial structure is critical.
The reason being is that each individual kid is on their own path and needing personal, authentic assessment is a huge task. Much more difficult than running the scantron. In terms of assessment alone, this is what I have set for tomorrow:
- Discuss an inquiry on Terrorism and comparing it to traditional warfare. Help the student develop his academic writing. He has improved so much with this one on one attention. His communication and writing abilities have made noticeable improvement.
- Discuss in depth the book, “No Bankers in Heaven” about the the history of the NDP party. I will be assessing this learner’s historical and political analysis.
- Compare cults and religions and their effects on society. This learner is doing great inquiry into this area. Tomorrow, we discuss Dianetics by Ron L Hubbard, the founder of Scientology (I just assessed a journalistic piece on the origins of Scientology from her last week. Crazy stuff, I learned a lot). I will be assessing her research skills.
- Do a run through of a video game being created in Unity to ensure its quality as we will be showing it to a local gaming studio next week to try and get this learner an internship.
- I could go on and on. I have so many more things, but I think you get it.
It sounds exciting — changing all the time. And it is interesting, but it leaves the teacher with having to be so nimble, switching gears constantly. I have personally found it difficult on the brain. Rarely do I get to focus on one thing at a time. Most days, I am rapidly going through multiple lines of inquiry, one after the other. It leaves me mentally exhausted. Way more exhausted than doing 20 seconds of scantron.
However, this has made me an expert facilitator. I feel that I can facilitate any learning that any student wishes to pursue. This is one of the keys to being able to do personalized learning system wide. Teachers have to be taught to not be siloed inside of one or two subject areas, but have the skills to take on anything that the learner wants to tackle, even if that is way outside of their areas of expertise. The teacher should be the chief learner. That is their role now. It is a paradigm shift that may take a considerable amount of time to change, but is absolutely necessary to move the system forward.
Many think that personalized learning is self-directed. It is not. It is co-constructed with a teacher. That is an important difference. It is why changing teacher training is at the heart of transforming the education system to personalized learning. There is a lot of weight to push against and to be honest, after trying to do this for years, I am not sure if it is actually the most effective way forward. The best way might be to just go school by school. Grassroots instead of top down. Train teachers in these schools that are riding on the edge. Let that learning trickle back into the middle. It might just be a more plausible approach to change.
