Some of the benefits of personalized learning appear to be:
If successful, it offers the potential to allow those rising above the bar the opportunity to learn at a faster pace, and avoid being held back to the average comprehension ability.
Conversely, it could allow those struggling to get more time to increase their understanding of what they have difficulty with.
Difficulties, even if implemented correctly include:
Possibly more time consuming for the educators
Possibly requiring more staff
A large learning curve – for the educators
Even more parental buy-in required
My thoughts:
Even though I am teaching in a small school and that is in itself a version of personalized learning, I have very little personal experience with personalized learning, with that said, I thought the article made some fantastic points about using caution when making the decision to implement a version of personalized learning.
The article really read like a short “how to” manual for those contemplating adopting one of the many approaches to personalizing learning.
With so many things to consider prior to tackling an animal like personalize learning, it appears as though most would probably benefit from a significant amount of education in the subject itself.
Anything that requires more parental buy-in throws red flags everywhere for me. I am still looking for the perfect parent teacher relationship, with few prospects in sight…
In general the article leads me to think there are probably some benefits to personalized learning, but rather than jump on board with the program, there are many questions that should be answered first. The most important and first being, “why”? Then, if it is deemed appropriate, continue through the list, and make sure the other questions in the article have been addressed.
I feel like in small doses, when appropriate, I would like to explore implementing aspects of personalized learning such as student designed learning.
neatoday.org/2017/06/09/personalized-learning/
In the article at that above address, a glowing review is given to a school in Pennsylvania, that has completely adopted personalized learning. They do note smaller class size, which I can only assume requires more educators, and ultimately more money. They also mention that children can no longer hide within the classroom, because they are involved in every lesson. This didn’t do much for convincing me of anything, mainly because I am already involving all the students in each lesson. My largest class is 11 and there are two teachers.