This Time It's Personal

Website: thejournal.com

This article takes a new look at personalized learning, defining it as "a student-centered teaching and learning model that acknowledges and accommodates the range of abilities, prior experiences, needs, and interests of each student--with the goal of moving every student to a higher standard of achievement." Noting that that this is not at all a new theory, it suggests that its implementation might really be possible for the first time with the proper use of the technology tools that are available today, including social networking, search engines, and resources such as Netflix, and involving parents, peers, and topic experts as well as teachers and staff.

Personalized instruction is not individualized learning, where students share the same goals but progress through the material at their own rate, or differentiated instruction, where students share goals but receive instruction that is tailored to their learning needs. Jennifer Demski, a freelance writer from Brooklyn describes it as an approach that includes both differentiation and individualization, but is also flexible in content or theme to match the specific interests and prior experiences of learners. Illustrating with examples, she presents an interesting case for why this might be the time for truly student-centered school reform, maximizing the student's interests, abilities, learning styles and experiences to provide a diverse educational experience to help prepare them "for their future, not our past."