In the early weeks of ETEC 522 the emerging market poll prophesied that personalized learning (PL) is in demand in education; our OER hopes to substantiate these claims. As you join us in our venture through PL, you will find out that it is not about whether PL will hit the main stage, it’s more about when. Also, you will notice that PL is scattered throughout many different markets. In fact, you may recognize many of the technologies in this OER from previous OERs. This broad scope of PL makes it difficult to pin down specific areas to focus on; therefore, in our OER we demonstrate its wide range through a look at technologies that support PL, artificial intelligence (AI) and PL, and look at how the market may take a while for its supporting technologies to catch up and make PL viable within education’s market.
There are plenty of videos in our OER to accompany most of our written content. Although we have tried to use shorter videos, please consider increasing the playback speed so that you can listen to the videos at a speed that best meets your time needs. We have offered a couple of games that you get to play as well, so enjoy!
Finally, throughout our OER we offer discussion questions in each of the sections. Our hope is that through these discussions we will get a better grasp of your understanding of where PL stands in education now and into the future; thereby giving us a clearer view of where this ubiquitous EdTech technology sits on the educational market continuum. We would suggest that you take the time to respond to another colleagues discussion point so that we interrelate each others ideas on this vast subject of PL.
Below are the discussion questions that you will see in the OER; however, please consider them before you enter:
What do you know about personalized learning? Please describe your understanding of the term before proceeding.
What do you think about AI driving PL?
What other technologies from previous OERs do you see as supporting PL?
What are your thoughts on the personalized learning technologies discussed?
Now that you understand where PL is in its current state, where do you think it’s going, what challenges do you see for it to hit the stable marketplace, and/or when do you see this rolling out into the mainstream, if at all?
Thanks in advance from Fiona, Ryan and Neal. We are looking forward to our discussions together in Week 11’s OER on Personalized Learning.
Hi team! Loved your OER! It was unified, clean and flowed well. I’m glad that you did a piece right at the beginning on personalised learning vs differentiation vs individualization, as I think that was very necessary to all be on the same page. On that note, I offer a few minor suggestions for the purpose of proofreading and development.
1) Double check the links on the Genially. When I get a question wrong it sends me back to the beginning and I would think should just link to the same question to try again. There was also a small typo on one of the first few slides (can’t remember exactly what it was)
2) I was a bit confused about the purpose of the content in the Classroom Management section. The introductory video seemed more to be about how teachers can control the use of technology in the classroom and though it was good quality content, if not a bit long, it didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the OER or the rest of the section. The videos below were about tech that improves classroom management and the link between the first video and those was a bit unclear to me. Also, I didn’t understand why McGraw-Hill Connect was here as it didn’t seem to really improve classroom management from a behaviour POV. It seemed more LMS or AL?
3) The Questions section towards the end seemed a bit awkward. Even with the text descriptor I was still confused with what to do on that page (I didn’t know where to click and then I thought there were more questions to answer). I figured it out, but it wasn’t a smooth process. Yes, a lot of it was user error but you might be able to design this so that it is easier on the tired user.
4) Some breakdown at the beginning of what’s to come and timing. It was quite difficult for me to guess at how long this was going to take me to complete. Each section was a nice and compact, but I found myself occasionally anxious at how many more sections there were and how long it would take. A quick statement at the beginning of the OER would help with this.
Awesome use of Google Quick Draw. Very simple, engaging demo.
Lastly, a question to the class: Has anyone tried the full LMS-compatible paid version of Articulate Rise 360? I’ve only tried the free 60-day trial version, but was lobbying hard for my school to adopt it. Not only do you curate responsive and device-friendly content right in the course, but you can also embed interactives and quizzes, and then share all quiz and course completion data with your LMS. I personally think that this is the right way to go for schools. Simplify all the tech into one platform. All content is embedded. It’s an interactive textbook and LMS all-in-one. If you could do something like this that also had an AI tutoring function, I think this would be the holy grail of course authoring software. Just curious if anyone has been able to make use of this feature?
Dear Jessica,
Thank you for your comments. I was hoping someone would breach the subject about categories and I’m glad it didn’t take long.
In researching various platforms we came across different articles that categorized applications in different ways. However, it is very important to remember that in almost each case you will find attributes that could warrant it being placed in another category. I would agree Mcgraw Hill could be placed in the LMS section, however, they see themselves as more of a course building tool that can seamlessly integrate with other LMS. Some would argue, with good merit, it could be placed in the adaptive learning section as it undeniably has adaptive learning built in. It is often placed in the classroom management category though as it contains certain organizational elements that are unique in motivating students.
In any event you hit on a good point. We did preface this in the “Technologies that Support PL” section but it is worth repeating.
With regard to the questions at the end my, apologies if that was confusing. It is there so that students can review their responses in case they missed anything. We looked at various different options and felt using the same program and format as our class discussions was the best of them as everyone will continue to have access with their UBC login.
The timing suggestion is a good one, and appreciated.
Thank you for the feedback
Hi Ryan, Neal, and Fiona,
I was impressed by the amount of information that you were able to fit in to each category without getting too far in and academic. You rightly point out that personalized learning can be considered adaptive and other types, and I’ve struggled with that too. One example that I am very familiar with in your adaptive learning section is Knewton Adaptive Learning. I worked with Knewton in my role at Pearson Education Canada from 2013 until the partnership phased out in 2017-18. Knewton entered the market with good marketing for adaptive learning, but their approach to business was weak and their algorithms turned out to be less unique than they and their publishing partners imagined. It is a fine algorithm that maps content, but not a unique one. A student performs a task within a learning objective and the performance registered by the system uses a knowledge graph to assess pre- and post-requisite knowledge before offering up a recommendation. It’s not unlike Amazon’s recommendation engine. Knewton’s secret sauce was not so unique, but the allure of a personalized and/or adaptive learning engine in higher education was highly sought after.
After amassing $180 million in venture capital, Knewton went rather bankrupt and was sold to Wiley for parts in 2019: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/05/07/wiley-buys-knewton-adaptive-learning-technology-company. There was nothing particularly wrong with their software, but the company did not share user data with its partners which restricted the co-development of a really strong ed tech solution. In the end, Knewton’s early partners simply developed better solutions based on their understanding of the potential of the algorithm and the failures of the business partnerships. So what’s the lessoned to be learned with personalized learning technologies? I think it has something to do with the transparency of the system’s mechanics both for educators who fear “black box” recommendations (fueled by out of date academic papers threatening the demise of human instructional interventions) and for the institutional and potential for-profit partners. In this particular case, perhaps the venture capital investment was excessive too early in the company’s performance history. That, combined with an inflexible corporate vision may have led to the demise of an otherwise quite serviceable solution for personalized and adaptive learning. It’s an interesting example to reflect on when thinking about opportunity forecasts.
Thank you Ben,
Knewton’s demise is definitely interesting. I’m sure you know far more than I do about it but to me it serves as a good example of what not to do. I don’t know if I should say it as it dates me quite a bit but Sony made that mistake a few times with good products they decided not to collaborate with. When betamax came out its quality in many ways was superior to VHS but it didn’t matter when every other electronics company was working on improving VHS. They made the same mistake with mini disks many years later.
My impression of knewton was that they were cutting edge but I think you are 100% correct that they were inflexible and in some ways sabotaged themselves. Its definitely a worthwhile lesson for those looking at opportunity forecasts.
Hey there! Great job. I really liked the balance of information, it wasn’t an overload. Also, not only do I appreciate easy access to look at the responses, which comes in handy to see other people’s responses, but I also like the the style, as I find that it allows for more discussion compared to other possible formats. The one issue I had was with that quiz at the beginning, it was a little frustrating when you get a question wrong it brought me back to the beginning, which started to make me just want to skip it.
On a side note, when I saw that part on DI it reminded me of a funny video a team used to show DI, hope you enjoy it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxtCw_ucqOQ&authuser=0
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the feedback. Our hope was to keep all of our discussions in one place so that we can access them easily, and go back if we wanted to see other comments that we made; however, WP is not super intuitive when it comes to navigation. In fact, and you’ll notice this with this site as well, “previous” actually means newest. Not too sure how to fix that. We have fixed the quiz at the beginning, thank you. We figured that it wouldn’t be that much of an issue; plus, you had the added bonus of re-learning and consolidate your understanding.
Maybe after this course we could have ourselves a distanced DL party; differentiate within our own homes, and make it much easier because we only have to accommodate for one. Thanks for sharing.
Neal
Hi Jessica and Michael,
Thank you for your feedback on the quiz and we have just uploaded a new version. Welcome to try it out.
Hello Team PL,
I must say you have done a truly excellent job. This is my favorite OER so far. I was impressed right from start with the tips you provided in you launch. Your OER is easy to follow, flows smoothly and never became tiresome. Some of the highlights for me were:
1) the EDUCAUSE video introduction to PL was a perfect appetizer for rest of your OER. It hit the right tone and conveyed the importance of this topic right at the start.
2) Google Quick Draw – fun, engaging a brought home the point of the important role AI will have in the development of PL.
3) Your approach to the technologies connected to PL this was very well organized and provided very useful information.
4) I appreciated your critical approach to your conclusion. The EdWeek video at the end addressed some of the concerns I had about the efficacy of personalized learning tools.
My only suggestion (that hasn’t been mentioned already) might be to include some mention of gamification in personalized learning. Adaptive learning and personalized learning is one of the key strengths of serious games.
Once again – great job team. Now I have to go back and add more to the discussions.
Hi Jamie,
Thank you for your kind feedback, and you have raised a good point on gamification. We were thinking to put it in but instead we put Special Education in that category. In many articles discussing technologies applied in personalized learning, gamification is a significant component. We thought that since many applications have gamification embedded into their design, so we didn’t include it explicitly in our OER.
Great job on your OER!
Your website is very easy to follow, and I appreciate the mixture of text and videos. I liked that you gave technology examples to each topic that you talk about. I also like the way you ask us to participate by having discussion boards. Thank you!
Thank you very much Emily,
We though a lot about it and came up with all kinds of ideas to interact. However, it occurred to us the simplest way to interact is to use the same format we do in the course. This way classmates can respond using their own avatars and info.
Very happy to know you enjoyed it and we appreciate the feedback.
Hi Week 11
The layout for personalized learning was attractive, easy to navigate, and concise. I like the interactive nature such as quick quizzes, open-quick draw, 3 videos for each topic. As a teacher, I am learning about multiple resources I would like to share with my fellow co-workers. For the section on Special Education, it would be better to have more recent statistics. The data table posted is from 2005-06. The discussion forum for each question is well laid-out. I enjoyed this week’s OER.
Good job!
Hi Amanda, thank you for your feedback and we are really glad that you enjoyed our OER. You are right the data table at the very beginning on the Special Education should be more recent, in fact we had the same thought as you when designing the OER. It seems, however, that Stats Canada only published this table for 2005-2006 as we weren’t able to find more recent data anywhere to compare provincially. From other accounts, we are sure that the number of special needs students has increased since then as schools, teachers and parents have paid more attention, but we just couldn’t find the data. So we thought instead that we would provide a basic idea of the distribution of special educations in Canada.
No worries, Feng.
Hi Ryan, Feng and Neal,
Thanks for that informative OER. The content and the layout was impressive. The discussion questions were well framed to reiterate learning. It was good to reflect on the role of AI in personalized learning. This gave me a fresh perspective of the concept. However, it would have helped to detail further on limitations of using these technologies for personalized learning at different levels, like at the elementary, secondary and post secondary or higher education. Over all, I enjoyed going through this OER!
Hi Vijaya,
Thanks for your feedback. We did focus on K-12, with a couple of post secondary examples here and there. Through designing this OER I often felt that PL, especially our emphasis on machine driven PL, may be best kept to later K-12 years, namely closer to secondary grades ~8-12. I felt that the younger grades wouldn’t be able to usefully take advantage of a learning path being laid out for them; moreover, if their learning was machine led, I felt that it might be a concern because they cannot appropriately advocate for themselves and how the AI in the PL was driving their learning path.
Neal
Thanks Neal. I do agree with your thought. Machine driven PL best suits the secondary grades students and even the post secondary students.
I really enjoyed your post. The summary of questions was a great place to double check that the user did not miss any of the section in your OER. My only thought is that some of the questions may need to be re-worded so that you get more depth in the answer as we were just rhyming off lists or definitions, however if this was the intent then they are good as is.
Hi Sarka,
PL was such a broad topic, that the intension of the questions was to tease out thoughts that could help pin down this comprehensive subject. For instance, the question on PL at the beginning of our OER is to help us identify how others see PL. The AI in PL question is similar in scope in that being such a novel EdTech idea we wanted to find out what concerned you most about algorithms driving learning paths. The third question on the different products offered to address PL in a variety of ways was to make you think about the products that we have seen in previous OER’s, and how they can fall into, again, the broad market of PL. The fourth question on the market is meant to have you recap what you have learned about the poorly defined product in PL, and try and place it somewhere where it is viable. It’s not easy to pinpoint PL’s position in EdTech’s market; however, from the discussions it seems that many of us agree that it is not a matter of if, but when it will hit the market; and that when it does, it will be a game changer.
Thanks for reading through our OER, and for your feedback.
Neal
Thank you very much Ryan, Feng and Neal for your very well organized and designed OER. I liked the first quiz but I wish if you make a mistake to move on not to start from the beginning. I also likes the discussions at the end of some pages. Do you think you can imbed the discussion in the same page? The summary of all the discussions was a very good idea. Also, I appreciate that you explained each video. One more suggestion, It will be nice in the introduction to mention the main topics and the activities presented in each topic.
Again, thank you very much 🙂 I honestly learned a lot from your research.
Dear Raafa,
Thank you for your comments and suggestions. I agree completely about embedding the questions. This is actually what we originally did. However, when doing so we found out there was no way to submit answers using our UBC logins, which would require people to create another login. We loved the idea of incorporating the same blog format as the course but I do wish we could have done so without having to open another tab.
We are glad to know you enjoyed the experience and appreciate the suggestions.
Great work Ryan, Feng, and Neal! Your OER was well put together and very easy to follow. Although it had a lot of videos, they were all very informative and enjoyable. I thought your quickdraw activity was great too, something different but very fun and engaging. Your discussion board format through WordPress was a good idea and I prefer it to some of the other discussion boards, even though it opened up a separate tab. Just a few minor things I noticed were:
Activity 1 (question 1 and 3) spelling mistake (peasonalized) learning
The Quiz makes you start from the beginning again if you get the answer wrong. Not sure how you fix this but it was just a minor annoyance.
Overall, this was one of my favorite OERs. Great job!
-Grant
Thanks, Grant. Glad you enjoyed it!
Neal
Hi Week 11,
Thanks for the excellent OER, I think it provided a great overview of PL and some of the leading technology in that space. I would like to offer some feedback starting with the positives.
I enjoyed the layout of your OER and that way you chose to keep each page focused on a single topic. I also really appreciate the blog integration for comments. Its a simple and effective solution that is (in my opinion) much better than clunky external applications like padlet or mentimeter. Secondly, I thought your discussion questions were very well thought out and garnered some really interesting discussion. Finally, I found the “market” analysis quite good. I really appreciate the time put in to give your own perspective on the matter and backed it up with excellent sources.
This brings me to my constructive criticism. While I found the videos in the “Technologies that support PL” section quite informative I would have liked a bit more analysis from your group. As it stands that section feels a little more like a collection of videos rather than a robust exploration of the topic by a group of interested educators/researchers. My final piece of constrictive criticism is that the header image of the robot and human arms is very badly pixelated. Changing this out for a higher resolution image could make a big difference in the appearance of your OER and give it a more professional feeling.
Overall I really enjoyed my time with your OER and I learned a lot about PL!
Hi Adrian,
Thanks for your comments here. Yes, I found the market very interesting to research; especially because PL has so many moving pieces delaying it to reach market steadiness. Which leads to your analysis of our Technology that support PL section. We felt like there were so many supporting technologies that we thought it would be easier to demonstrate this through the number of videos of the different options out there. In hindsight, we also feel like maybe we could have focused on a topic within PL.
Thanks for reading, and your feedback.
Neal
Initial Response to Discussion Questions:
1) According to my school district #48, personalization is the way to reach students.
Future-ready students will need to develop and exercise agency in their own education and throughout life. Agency is supported by a personalized learning environment focused on empowering students to design their own authentic learning projects and processes. Students and teachers co-develop individual and group learning plans to build on students’ interests, goals, reflections, and learning needs. Personalized learning also encompasses place-based, experiential learning influenced by the local environment, local protocols, and an individual context. As an SD48 teacher, I need to strategically design for personalized instruction, assessment, and structures to include each student and enhance the benefits that diversity offers everyone.
2) What do you think about AI driving PL?
I think artificial intelligence is an efficient and effective way to drive personalized learning. I think the use of A.I. for personalized learning needs to be done ethically. I need to learn more about how AI could be used ethically to set up personalized learning.
3) What other technologies from previous OERs do you see as supporting PL?
I see how digital textbooks have used self-refection tools to create personalized learning assessment options. I have also seen how the co-creation of a digital textbook by a professor and students uses a personalized learning approach to give students choice.
4) What are your thoughts on the personalized learning technologies discussed?
I’m not sure if I understand this question. Do you mean the personalized learnings discussed in other OERs or in the cartoon “The Personalized earning Elephant in the room”.
Now that you understand where PL is in its current state, where do you think it’s going, what challenges do you see for it to hit the stable marketplace, and/or when do you see this rolling out into the mainstream, if at all?
5) I think it has already rolled out as a goal in mainstream BC pubic schools, but I am not sure if I know enough yet about the digital marketplace to see if it has rolled out in to the online mainstream market. I hope I learn more in this OER so I can better answer these preliminary questions. Thank you for sparking my interest!
Hi Tara,
Thanks for answering these questions up front. Gives you a base point before answering them in the OER itself. Hope you have additional takeaways from our OER.
Neal
Hi team,
Congratulations on your OER. I can tell a lot of work was put in! I wanted to commend you on your great definitions throughout the website. It was very helpful to compare PL to differentiated learning and individualized learning. I was able to see that my original definition was too general. The small quiz at the end also gave me further clarification between the three terms to avoid any grey area. I also actually liked having the discussion questions pop up on a new tab, rather than within the website, because I could reference the website easily to review information.
Great job!
Hi Kathleen,
We are happy that you have had a good experience with our OER. We learned a lot from the previous teams which helped us to construct our OER, that’s one of the good things about being a later group I guess 🙂 Differentiated, individualized and personalized learning are three terms we heard often, but I admit that I often mixed them up. By doing this project, I got an opportunity to really look in-depth through these terms and compare the concepts. I thought it would be nice to get all of us on the same page before getting into the main topic of PL. Your feedback on the quiz and website formatting are appreciated as it is as important to know what did work versus what didn’t.
Hello Fiona, Ryan, and Neal,
I can see that you put a lot of work into this week’s OER, as it was very thorough.
I found the start and end to be particularly strong with the Personalized Learning Introduction, Market, and Conclusion.
In the middle, I feel there was a bit too much emphasis on digital tools for personalized learning that rely on data and AI, just hitting on personalized learning at rudimentary level, missing out on exploring the aspects of digital tools that lead to the heart of what Montessori, IB, Waldorf Schools, and Makerspace Classrooms envisioned for personalized learning, which involve more of the ‘personal’ aspect in the form of collaboration, troubleshooting, monitoring progress, and personalized feedback. I would love to see more on those digital tools and / or mention of teachers and students working in partnerships with digital technologies to craft such learning environments.
While you laid your site navigation out well, the site itself posed accessibility issues for me – triggering my post concussion syndrome. The elements that did that were the header banner and small font that alternated over white and black backgrounds (it was a bit easier to read over the white background). You may also want to add alt text to your images to make them accessible through accessibility tools. I like that you made mention of accessibility tools, but I’d caution you on using the term ‘Special Education’, as many in the disability community do not like that term as it tends to go hand in hand with the term ‘special needs’ which has been used in a derogatory way in the past.
All in all though, you did a great job. Thanks for an interesting week.
Hi Erica,
Thanks for your feedback. The middle (Tech that supports PL) has been painted with broad strokes; however, this is where we find that PL is currently situated in the EdTech market. After all, this is why we added the “Personalized Learning Elephant in the Room” to our launchpad; sort of a premonition of what you might gather about PL as you go through our OER.
Neal
Love that analogy of the PL Elephant in the Room. Great little poke at the issues within opportunity.
Great OER!
I think starting off by explaining the differences between the 3 types of learning (personalized, differentiated, individualized) as you did was very necessary, to get everyone on the same page and eliminate misconceptions throughout the activities and discussions. I also thought it was clever the way you summed it all up with a genially quiz (to ensure the info sinks in perhaps?)!
I also thought your OER was nicely organized; the layout and structure was very visually appealing. Content was well laid out and had a nice balance of images, text, diagrams, stats, and videos.
I did think of something ironic when looking at the technologies listed as supporting PL… many schools are currently already using these technologies (to meet other goals), yet why then does PL still seem so far off? When I say far off, I am talking about far off for the average student; not a student identified with a special need. I think the success of PL will depend on proper teacher education/ training- doesn’t matter if the teachers have all the technology in the world, if they don’t know what to do with it, right??!!
Thank you for an informative OER!
~Tamara
Hello Tamara,
You are quite right that the technologies listed are utilized in many schools and districts.
You ask a great question, which can be linked directly to the issue we found throughout this project and other scholars have brought up. PL is very difficult to pinpoint. By this I mean it is not a specific technology but rather a concept relying on the development of many other technologies.
Without a doubt, technology means nothing without teachers who know what to do with it. However, the hope with PL is that true AI in combination with adaptive learning through data analytics will take it to a far higher level than what we now know as PL.
So, while PL is alive, moving forward and well utilized it is at the same time something we are watching closely to see an evolution into a potential game changer.
Hi Tamara,
Thank you for your comments. I would like to address your last about why PL is so far off. In our opinion, even though there are many technologies already in place that support PL it is a matter of having them come together in some way to organize them to truly function as PL. This may take an LMS that incorporates cognitive tutors along with adaptive learning; we were unable to come across such a product. Furthermore, there are other supports that we do not directly address in our OER such as blockchain, perhaps robotic telepresence, and learning analytics to name a few, that have yet to hit mainstream, and are essential for PL to become technologically driven, and sustainable. Finally, I think you hit the nail on the head when you suggest that “PL will depend on proper teacher education/ training- doesn’t matter if the teachers have all the technology in the world, if they don’t know what to do with it…”: no questions asked!
Thanks again,
Neal
Thank you for the clear and informative OER. I truly appreciated how you explained the differences between personalized learning, differentiation, and individualized learning. I also found the technologies that support PL to be well laid out, organized, and filled with incredible examples. I found the market page incredibly informative, especially how it expained, ” PL is based heavily in three of the five scenarios that HolonIQ proposes: Robo-revolution, Peer-peer, and Global Giants. The Robo-revolution would be a champion of the AI in PL.” I would have appreciated to expand on this topic. Why will global giants be the ones to introduce P.L. to the mainstream? I also found it slightly confusing how the OER focused on K-12 population (which in my opinion is very mainstream) while at the same time arguing that P.L. has not reached the mainstream yet. In my teaching experience, P.L is a goal of every school district in every public school system in Canada and the U.S. that I’ve worked in. Whether or not P.L. has been effectively implemented in these systems is another topic not yet addressed in this OER and may be valuable to expand upon. In other words, the idea of P.L. is very mainstream but it has yet to go into effect in a meaningful way in every classroom. Perhaps your OER can better define “mainstream” and if it applies to consumers/students outside of the K-12 public school education system.
Hello Tara,
I can see how that may seem confusing. I would say the pursuit of PL has been mainstream for a very long time. The issue is not whether we are focussed on it right now, but rather how far the technology can go. As PL is heavily reliant on the development of other technologies there is a a spotlight on it. With the continued development of adaptive learning and the creation of true AI what we come to know as PL could become radically different.
Thank you for the feedback. You identified a problem in PL that many researchers before us have found, which is that pinpointing it is very difficult and subjective when you consider all the sub technologies it relies on.
Great job on the OER, I learned a lot. I appreciated the explanations of the various types of learning. Is adaptive learning just a subset of personalized learning? That is the only form that I had actually heard of before, and I also think I have heard the term used interchangeably with some of the other types of learning you described, but that must have been wrong.
Hi Ryan,
I wouldn’t say its wrong. I would say Adaptive Learning is a very important part of PL. PL is driven by many technologies and Adaptive Learning is certainly one that will be integral to its success.
Thank you Ryan, Fiona, and Neal!
While I have used PL in the past either as a tutor or working individually with students, I have never used (or in some cases heard of) many of the technologies you discussed in your OER. So for me, while the concept of PL is not new, this OER was a learning experience not only about the technology, but where PL is in terms of development and its place in the market.
And, as others have already noted, I particularly enjoyed Google Draw and was surprised at how well it recognized what I was drawing (got all except ‘toe’ but I added an arrow pointing to it so perhaps got thrown off). I agree with Jamie that adding more games/gamification would be one suggestion, as with all the work on A3 and current course content as well as the regular daily workload, the game not only provided a break in the grind, that little bit of fun helped me focus and enhanced learning.
Thanks, team, for a well-organized, succinct presentation that was informative and creative. PL is an underlying thread in many recent K-12 curriculum revisions, particularly in BC with its emphasis on skill competencies; the content is now the secondary consideration. Do you think that PL is still a long way off due to the lack of integration of various technologies within one product or platform? Is there a space for a robust, flexible LMS that will be more than just a vehicle for an instructor to place their materials and become a tool to 1) assess a learner’s current skill competencies (maybe awarding microbadges afterwards), 2) adopt a set of learning activities specific to that learner, 3) analyse their progress and adapt the activites on the fly, continually assessing the learner, and doing so in an engaging, encouraging and perhaps even fun way…kind of like a teacher does!
What has struck me so far in this process has been how each of these technologies that we have been exploring the past few weeks are not, and should not, be considered siloed technologies, but that all of them can be integrated to some degree into useful tools for improving learning, and making learning more accessible.