Giving Compass' Take:

• The author outlines important attributes of personalized learning, ways that teachers can help engage students in personalized learning, and how administrators can support personalized education. 

• Can teachers and administrators form coalitions to better evaluate and enhance personalized learning practices and teacher development?

• Read about the benefits of personalized learning. 

There are five important attributes of Personalized Learning:

  1. Whatever is best for that learner at that time. 
  2. Extended challenges. 
  3. Individualized skill building. 
  4. Anywhere, anytime learning. 
  5. Social and emotional learning.

When you do these things, learners build agency, a sense of identity as a learner, they begin to own their own learning. These are lifelong dividends. There are (at least) five ways teachers make learning personal.

  1. Recognize and celebrate jagged profiles 
  2. Help every learner build a plan. Teachers in Cajon Valley help every student build a plan based on their unique strengths, interests and values.
  3. Plan extended challenges. To boost engagement, application, integration and critical success skills, learners need periodic community-connected challenge (we call this HQPBL). Do it with a partner, or a grade level team, or make it a school-wide endeavor for a week.
  4. Leverage smart tools. Don’t try to grade every edit of every paper yourself, use automated writing feedback systems, use adaptive math systems, give learners the chance to manage their own progress.
  5. Collaborate. Personalized learning is a team sport: it’s difficult, complicated, the tools aren’t good enough to fully support these ideas.

There are at least 10 ways school and system heads can support personalized learning. Here are five:

  1. Build a collaborative vision. Share your own personal story of personalized learning. Help others tell their story. Weave them together into a shared vision–a concise, compelling picture of powerful learning.
  2. Define success. 
  3. Help teams grow into the frame. Thoughtful district leaders build an academic framework and allow schools to grow into that framework in their own way.
  4. Support teacher leadership. Thoughtful leaders Identify and embrace teachers leading the way.
  5. Build a fast lane and slow lane for change management. Look for ways to support teacher teams ready to move as well as those that need more time and support.

Read the full article about personalized learning at Getting Smart