Giving Compass' Take:

• Personalized learning instruction in Chicago has incorporated more technology in the classroom, which can help with customization for students, and help educators with time management.

• What are the negative impacts of technology and personalized learning on students? 

• Read about how educators are changing classroom culture by adopting personalized learning. 

On a recent day at CICS West Belden elementary, six primary students sitting in front of teacher Kelly Pollack listened raptly to her describing Native American techniques for building homes, hunting, and creating pottery.

Nearby, their classmates reclined on beanbag chairs or sat on brightly colored carpets, quietly doing history or science lessons on iPads. Pollack may not have had her eye on them, but her laptop was recording each one’s progress and tally of correct answers.

Personalized learning harnesses technology to provide tailored lessons and hands the nitty-gritty of instruction over to computers. Teachers say that lightens the load of lesson planning and allows more time for them to work with small groups to reinforce learning.

As personalized learning has spread nationwide, philanthropic grants and enthusiastic district officials have turned Chicago into its epicenter.

Teachers like Pollack welcome it as a needed change to the classroom.

“I see it in the students, how excited they are,” she said. “It would be really hard to go back to a traditional way of teaching.”

About one-sixth of Chicago’s 600 public schools participate on some level in personalized learning — whether from attending training to converting entire classrooms to the method.  The district budgeted $2.8 million for personalized learning initiatives this school year, about a 10% bump from last year’s spending, to train teachers, bring in new software and analyze education technology the district uses.

Personalized learning also raises bigger questions about the utility of learning online and the consequences of long periods spent on computers.

Diana Sharp, a former education researcher at Vanderbilt University and now an analyst with the New Hampshire-based think tank RMC Research, says customization is a positive.

Read the full article about personalized learning with ipads by Yana Kunichoff at Chalkbeat.