Personalized Learning

Photo by: Alan Levine

This week our assignment included doing some research on learning approaches. It included a list of six different options, however, the one that stood out to me was  personalized learning.

Personalized learning is basically  a student- centered approach where it gives the  students a voice and choice in the classroom. From research, I found that personalized learning is where the first the needs of the students, their interests and aspirations are identified and then the teacher provides learning experiences that are customized to a greater or lesser extent for each student.

The teacher’s role in personalized learning is to create and maintain a learning environment where the learners are free to safely and effectively pursue personal interest. For the students, using personalized learning the courses are self-paced and they can start and finish any lesson regardless of different schedules. This type of learning teaches students to develop self-discipline, as it is up to them to finish lessons according to a schedule.  The classroom set up can also be changed up to meet the needs of students. Some teachers offer flexible seating. In this case, the focus is on the student by giving them a choice and comfort and conveys to the students, “You matter.” Flexible seating is where students may sit on balls,  sit on a bean bag chair or even stand to do their work.  In some classes,  students move their desk or tables to area with other peers, choose to work alone or in a small group with a teacher.

In research I found this great video, What is Personalized Learning. It can be found here. This is a Tedx video with Gary Boehm,  he explains in depth what personalized learning is and how it works in the classroom. He states that with type of learning, it is personal and should come natural for students. Students should be exploring their passions and interests and teachers should be supporting these students. He gave a great example of this in a kindergarten classroom that I want to share. At the beginning of the year, the teacher asked the students what they want to learn. The students shared they had an interest in farm animals. The teacher took this and incorporated lessons in math with counting animals, they attended filed trips to farms and from their the students began to show interest in growing vegetables. They class took it one step further and learned how to grown vegetables, and from the vegetables they grew set up a farmers market. I was excited and encouraged to see how this type of teaching and learning works and I am excited to try this one day in my own classroom.

I found several expert teachers to follow on twitter. These are my favorite finds:

Eric Rush:

Kim Childress:

Personalized Learning

Here is a website that I started following that focuses on personalized learning. This website is called Rethinking Learning with Barbara Bray. On her site, she includes several conversations, podcasts and links to different learning strategies, like personalized learning.

Here is another link that offers several other resources for using personalized learning in the classroom with these sites, they offer games, interactive activities and how to monitor students progress. Check this out for more information.

This website has four examples of teachers and classrooms using the personalized learning approach. You can find this link here.

I was blown away with all the information that is available on personalized learning! I love this idea and how it is being used in the classroom. I like how it gives the students a voice and choice in the learning. Yes, there is additional work for the teacher, but I can see the benefits of personalized learning for both the student and the teacher.