Personalized learning has been a buzzword in education since the turn of the century. But what does it really mean? This past fall, I met with several education leaders to discuss this very topic and codify what it looks like in the classroom.

Technology is associated with personalized learning for a variety of reasons. As we can’t truly be a one-to-one ratio teacher to student, using devices becomes important to help student learning be genuinely personal. Lindsey Blass, an education specialist at Adobe, mentions that it’s much more than students plugging into devices while following some self-guided playlist. “We see personalized learning as students really having agency and ownership in their learning experience,” she shared.

Differentiation plays a role in the definition of personalized learning as well. Zareen Poonen Levien, the director of digital learning at San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD), suggests that technology can be leveraged to fully engage a student to give them choice and creativity. “A really important part of it is that students feel like they belong and have a place in the classroom,” she shared. Studies do show that deeper learning happens when students have this sense of being understood.

Student agency also plays an important role in personalized learning. Students thrive when they have a choice in what they learn and how they engage with the content, such as “having a way for them to demonstrate their learning that makes the most sense for them,” adds Rebecca Hare, a community engagement manager at Adobe. Identifying all these different pathways for students to demonstrate their learning is the basis for high-quality personalized learning.

Read the full article about technology in personalized learning by Carl Hooker at EdSurge.