Personalized Learning; Part Two
To start, I'm not against using computers to aid in teaching and learning. But there are huge costs and unknowns and because of the investment of time and finances for this endeavor, parents need to ask hard, hard questions about what this will look like for their child.
I'm almost glad it took this long to get to Part Two because Data & Society put out a very good working paper about the topic: Personalized Learning: The Conversations We’re Not Having. They start with this quote:
Is personalized learning really "new?"The Promise of Personalized Learning
“...if instead of having mass education as we now have, must have, with a curriculum, once we have outlets, computer outlets in every home, each of them hooked up to enormous libraries where anyone can ask any question and be given answers...then you ask, and you can find out, and you can follow it up, and you can do it in your own home, at your own speed, in your own direction, in your own time, then everyone will enjoy learning.
Nowadays, what people call learning is forced on you and everyone is forced to learn the same thing on the same day at the same speed in class. And everyone is different. For some it goes too fast, for some too slow, for some in the wrong direction. But give them a chance in addition to school — I don’t say we abolish school, but in addition to school — to follow up their own bent from the start...”
—Isaac Asimov, Interview with Bill Moyers, PBS, 1988
Even without the use of new data-driven learning technologies, it
Seattle Schools Community Forum: Personalized Learning; Part Two:
