Personalized Learning: What The News Isn’t Telling You
Recently, a spate of articles have appeared in major news sources shining a light on personalized (competency-based) learning. While it’s nice to see these topics being talked about in the mainstream press, they aren’t (shocker) telling you what you really need to know.
Take the claim found in the New York Times that Silicon Valley tech moguls are remaking America’s schools:
“Mark Zuckerberg,” the Times tells us, “is testing one of his latest big ideas: software that puts children in charge of their own learning, recasting their teachers as facilitators and mentors.”
There’s no question that Silicon Valley executives like Zuckerberg are playing a major financial and development role in current ed reforms, but let’s not give credit where credit isn’t due (especially to Zuckerberg, who already gets way too much of that). The idea of software that puts children “in charge of their own learning” has not only been around for well over sixty years (watch this video of B.F. Skinner explaining how it worked back in the fifties) – it’s also been actively advanced by our very own Departments of Education Personalized Learning: What The News Isn’t Telling You – Save Maine Schools: