Conclusions: Thank you all for participating in our presentation of Personalized Learning Tools. We are so pleased with the amount of discussion, analysis and healthy debate that occurred this week. We hope that you were able to learn more about the types of tools that are being used in classrooms around the world. There are […]
Continue reading Thank you from Week 8 – Personalized Learning Posted in: Week 08:
Hello and welcome to Week 8 of ETEC 522, where our topic will be Personalized Learning Tools. We hope that you enjoy the information and activities provided. We have tried to address different learning styles throughout the blog, so that you are able to choose which way you can best acquire information and show your […]
Continue reading Hello and Welcome to Week 8 Posted in: Week 08:
Great job on your intro video. The questions you posed have been on my mind for some time now. I look forward to seeing what types of answers or solutions you feel Personalized Learning will provide.
Thanks! We hope our answers and solutions help you with some of your questions.
Great opening video, it reminded me of Sir Ken Robinson’s video on a similar topic, this is the link:
Thanks for linking the video. It provides us with a great illustration of Sir Ken Robinson’s take on the need for our education system to facilitate learning environments that support divergent thinking. I do wonder whether or not the move towards a personalized learning education system would bring about change to the current approach to standardized testing? – James
Outstanding opening video with some really powerful and relevant questions. I look forward to learning more about personalized learning this week. As someone who likes the ideas in the BC Ed Plan I am excited to hear more about real examples that could be implemented in BC to give the Plan some “legs”.
Does anyone know which schools are being referenced in the BC Education Plan video?
Good question. I searched the Principal’s name and found the institution that he’s in, but I am not sure if it’d be appropriate for me to post the school’s name here because of privacy concerns. – James
Great job! When taking the Emerging Markets Poll at the beginning of this course, I did not rate personalized learning positively. Your site has changed my mind. There is definitely a lot of potential in this market.
Great introduction and quality video! I recently heard about a school group in Sweden that is really focusing on personalized learning – getting rid of traditional classrooms and grouping students not by age but abilities and interests. Here is a link for more information: http://www.businessinsider.com/a-group-of-schools-in-sweden-is-abandoning-classrooms-entirely-2012-1?op=1
Thanks for the link. I can see how the philosophy behind Vittra schools reflect Sir Ken Robinson’s views on divergent thinking (see tomwhyte1’s video link above), and sets a good example for public schools in North America to follow. – James
Great links guys! On a side note, I was recently at a Pro-D on Saturna Island where they use an interesting approach to Personalized Learning as their program is an Ecological Education experience. They are very careful about their uses of technology and only use it to support their classroom and outdoor experiences. A bit of a different approach, as it does not have technology at the center, but very valid nonetheless. http://seec64.ca/index.php?//programs/seecsemester_overview
Agreed! Powerful questions challenging the status quo. In the week I look forward to some practical and budget-friendly ways in which we can provide personalized learning to our students.
Although I am not a pessimist, I am yet to find an educational institution where pedagogy drives the business as usually its the other way round (for fair reasons). For instance, in a recent LMS upgrade that I was part of, among other functional requirements, PLE was ranked high by faculty and students, however we ended up implementing a standard LMS not much different than the status quo as it made more business sense (you know what I mean?)
Unlike private institutions such as Knewton, K-12 schools have limited budgets. Unless a technology is reasonably priced (if not free) and can be easily integrated with the existing systems, there will be limited uptake. With the popularity of social media, many new LMS have emerged in the market that have integration with FB, Twitter and other similar sites. Sadly, they all lack “meaningful adaptive capabilities” that will give the learner all the controls of his/her learning. I recently completed a Gamification course on Coursera and thoroughly enjoyed it. Games are all about Personalized Learning where the game is on the hot seat, in control of the game and learns based on his/her actions and corresponding feedback…
Perhaps a good starting point would be to get a good understanding of what personalized learning is? Maybe get some cues from Games…Finally, is it just the ability to change the layout, colour scheme, perhaps content on learner page on the LMS/ website or is it little broad … perhaps a different approach to teaching and learning?
You made some very valid points, Ranvir. And I see what you mean about the challenges that exist in the implementation of PLEs being mostly related to limited budgets. With the way the economy has been going, educators might have to wait a while for hardware/software prices to drop before real personalization can begin to take shape in the education system.
Gamification, now that’s something worth thinking about! Have a look at Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk on how gaming can make a better world at http://www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html
– James
Hi Ranvir I do not think that money is as much of a limiting factor where the implementation of modern technology at school is concerned. To make a case for this point the open source movement has provide many free software alternatives to expensive commercial software yet most schools do not capitalize on these. Even with heavy investment in commercial a lot of these schools have still not been able to get minimum benefits from them.
I think the problem is a collective mental one in that we are living in a ‘renaissance’ period as far as thinking in education is concerned and the world is virtually bursting at the seams as far as ideas and technologies for this field. The old guards at the top are just overwhelmed as to how to cope with all these new concepts. So at the end of the day they just go for what they feel comfortable with which means the old ways of doing things. With the passing of time as our students who are more comfortable with the technology occupy decision making positions in education we will see the implementation of more of these ideas
Great into Week 8 – awesome video. I agree with so much of what you included. Ever since the (correct, I feel) push toward differentiated instruction I’ve come more & more to see the apparant fallacy of expecting every student in a grade to master the same set of outcomes in the same restricted time period. How does that promote differentiation and individualized learning?? I’m looking forward to some great information this week. I’m already off to learn more about Newton for my meeting tomorrow with our division Coordinators & Superintendents!
Peggy
If you could share with us some of the feedback you received regarding Knewton from your meeting tomorrow that would be very much appreciated, Peggy!
– James
Great video introduction and questions to ponder while going through the module. I have been through your first module on Personalized Learning and my perception that this type of learning is labour intensive for the instructor has been challenged.
Doug.
Great Video. I am looking forward to this topic. In my experience learning centred environments and projects have always facilitated the greatest amount of engagements from students.
I agree, the challenge is finding relevant and useful ways of finding and maintaining engagement with all different types of learners.
Amen
Great video! I really enjoyed watching it and appreciated that the questions were so relevant and thought provoking. Some of it started to make me thing of past discussions I’ve had about the pros and cons of Montessori schools.
Great opening vid! You posed a lot of interesting and poignant questions about the existing status quo infastructure that we all operate in. I’m interested to see what options you’ve proposed to us?
I can’t wait to engage with this topic group 8. Thank you for the inspirational introduction. As I was thinking about your questions from the video I kept orbiting back to the same answer……
$/C
Hello Personalized Learning Tools team.
I am confused about this week’s structure. Can you please what you expect and if there are missing pieces (2-4?), when they might be up?
Thanks.
Hello Frank
Did our page launch for you? The link is above – hyperlinked where it says ‘Homepage’ but if that isn’t working for you, here is the link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/personalizedlearningetec522sep12/
Here are all of the activities, we ask that you complete 3-4 of them:
Activity One – Create your own program (link and instructions on project weblog)
Activities Two, Three and Four are polls located on the project weblog
Activity Five and Seven are discussions (post on course weblog)
Activity Six is a SWOT Analysis (post in course weblog)
Hope this helps and please let us know if you have any more questions.
Cheers
Coral
Thanks Coral. No, I hadn’t seen your homepage, and going through it now. Really Excellent Stuff!
Thanks for a great intro video. I agree that these questions are very relevant. I’m including a video that I made (although please don’t think this is the usual quality of my videos, as I had no microphone available). However, it was filmed during a 3-day intensive course this summer: Recurring Questions of Technology
A Brief History of Consciousness and Learning
In it, you will find that BC Educators speak about some of this week’s topic. Feel free to scroll through to find those parts. It’s a bit long (and, as I said, quality is not great).
Looking forward to the activities. I already did a poll.
Great opening video! As was mentioned earlier, it brings up the same questions that educational philosopher Ken Robinson poses in his talks. I think most educators would agree with the points that were brought up, the thoughts that came into my head upon watching it was why not? However, as was stated earlier in the course in a quote by Neil Postman, education as an institution exhibits the most resistance to change. Even when change is accepted, it progresses at a snails pace. I look forward to playing around with these ideas this week and look forward to participating in your activities.
I think it is already happening at the grassroots level in classrooms all over the world. The challenge is taking personalized learning mainstream. Educators that are seeing first hand personalized learning increasing achievement and outcomes will need to be the advocates of change in education.
It seems to me that most of the questions you posed in the video come down to economic issues. Obviously, it’s no coincidence that the modern education system closely resembles the Lean Manufacturing systems of Eli Whitney and Henry Ford. But manufacturing hasn’t changed a whole lot since then either. I recently visited the Hong Kong Electronics Expo and spoke with manufacturers from all over Asia and learned a bit about their factories. They do things the way they do to minimize costs, maximize production and reduce defects. The fact that few of our students work on farms anymore would indicate that the system is sorely out of date but economics will always be the determining factor behind what initiatives happen and which ones don’t. On the ground, it feels like common sense that the student ought to be at the center. But at the top, it will always be numbers. Programs like Khan Academy and The Rosetta Stone may present some great potential to reshape the landscape a bit and tailor programs to individual students but this only happens when it can equally be justified by numbers. And these numbers will still come from highest test scores for the least money.
That is a valid observation, Ben. At times it does feel like the people up above liken teaching to an assembly line. The most kids who can read well with the least amount of dollars spent. Even that view of “defects” or, as they are often labelled (on the graphs they show at the end of the year), “outliers” is very present. Another determining factor is public opinion, and if enough people recognize that the system we have is out of date (and in itself can be quite costly), is personalized learning the next step?
It would appear that personalized learning is indeed the next step, but primarily because it is cost-effective. It looks good on paper because the computer can do some of what the teacher used to do.
Check out this great scene from the most recent Star Trek movie that depicts automated personalized learning on Vulcan. You can imagine that this is where we are headed–Khan Academy on steroids:
I was just looking at government spending over the last decade and you can see a clear trend. Not only do education and health care make up more than half of provincial spending, but with an aging population, health care has increased significantly year after year. The money has to come from somewhere. While education funding has increased as well (almost a billion a year over the past 3 years) the language of the document is not unlike cost/benefit analysis you see in any other industry. Here’s a publication from the Ontario govt:
http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/ontariobudgets/2009/sectors/educationsh.html
Here’s a pie graph showing government expenditures:
http://www.sse.gov.on.ca/medt/investinontario/en/Pages/oomp_601.aspx
Here, you can see that health care went up from 29.4 billion in 2003-4 to 42.6 in 2010.
http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/en/budget/ontariobudgets/2009/sectors/healthsh.html
Given the fact that purchasing usually happens a couple steps over the teachers’ heads (at least when i last worked in public education) the people that need to be convinced of the efficacy of your new product are the penny pinchers at the board level. I would be interested to hear how much influence everyone here has on spending in their schools.
Armie Carabet is the founder, director and CEO of ClickN KIDS Inc. He is a unique leader with extensive knowledge, understanding and capability, which he has strengthened through his experiences as a business owner, franchisor, franchise, marketing director and general manager. For more than a decade, Armie owned and operated many successful companies like TyRyMow […]
Continue reading Armie Carabet is the founder, director a… Posted in: Week 04: Entrepreneur Bootcamp
These are the type of solutions that people probably envisioned entering the 21st Century Learning. Where you able to see how some of the games were played? Were the innovative or simple games?
We are always looking for new solutions to implement inside the primary realm.
— Cheers,
Jonathan
Hi Jonathan,
The countless games they offer are all really amazing because they are all animated and interactive making it really engaging for the learner, but they also range in content from simple to complex depending on the age and level of the user. I also really like that the approach they used in designing the steps the user moves through was so well-thought out. For example when a child is just starting to read, the program offers many lessons on teaching the basic sounds of letters and then after much practice they are automatically taken to the ‘listening cube’ to hear and see how those letter sounds fit into various words.
If you are interested in learning more about it, the website is http://www.clicknkids.com.
I found ZDnet report very concise and therefore useful to me. I would recommend it, it gave me opportunity to look things up that I didn’t know about, and explore them on my own (some hyper links are provided).On the contrary, someone looking for a research report that is more in depth might find the […]
Continue reading I found ZDnet report very concise and th… Posted in: Week 02: The Edtech Marketplace
lesson learned: copy and pasting from Word may cause the beginning of the post to look like hell
Hi Mike:
Yes I found that as well but manged to delete the coding before I posted it live. You can go in and edit your post later to delete the excess stuff.
Doug.
Doug.
nice…thanks doug
Hi Mike, I agree with that a 1 year prediction window is too small when determining future trends. I think it would take several years for most of his predictions to happen.
Hi Mike,
I too have wondered what approaches could be taken to ameliorate the divide between those who have access and benefit from new technologies and those who cannot. Or better yet, what alternatives can be implemented so as to make those students feel a little less marginalized? What suggestions would you put forward?
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the post; it inspired curiosity and I delved into several web pages to check things out. It turns you are right in taking the information from ZDNet cautiously, but not only because Adam Garry works for Dell, but because of who ZDNet is. It turns out ZDNet is quite a profitable company presently owned by CBS Corporation; they even accept advertising. Knowing this explains why the major predictions this guy makes are promoting tolls owned by major companies: Dell’s platform; Live@Edu (Microsoft); Journ(i)e (Blackboard); not one mention is made of OERs other open sources. When I couple this with the OECD information about how schools are failing to integrate technology and really make a change in education, I wonder if it’s not because we’re working backwards; instead of educators saying this is what I do and so I need this type of tool, we’re allowing companies to create needs that are not there.
Perhaps where his predictions are correct given the statistics provided by the OECD report on ‘Trades Shaping Education 2010’, is the need for personalized learning; however, I’m not sure this necessarily means LMS systems will disappear, rather we will see more open sourced options. The context of differientiated instruction is that of a community of learning, while that of personalized instruction is a solo act, and there’s room for both. His prediction on tablets and etextbooksis also right, but we need to find more ways to exploit this ability to become mobile learners and educators.
Adriana
Mike – I read the article initially with the mindset with a critical eye, as I would for our coursework, however, I found myself quickly relaxing my stance as I shifted my viewpoint to one of a fan of technology. I became less critical and was just enjoying the article as a general consumer. I couldn’t agree with you more on the Dell involvement. I thought it was fishy and I chuckled with the plug for their own product. His mention got me curious about the product, but I wasn’t able to find too much about the platform other than some general information. Do you have experience with it? I’m well aware of the Dell Duo Netbooks.
Adriana — Thanks for doing the extra research. I took it an extra step further to dig into Dawson’s previous predictions and found that while he was involved in ZDNET Education articles, he is just an informed writer, sharing opinions and thoughts. Naturally he’s catering to a wider audience and he does have yearly predictions. What is interesting about ZDNET and many of these firms as you’ve mentioned is that they are all intricately tightly wound together. I’m more hesitant with regards to some people reviewing products now because of this. Often reviewers feel inclined to give positive ratings just so they can continue to receive products. It’d interesting to know if this is a collegial friendship or one that was setup by ZDNET and advertising itself 🙂
I also enjoyed the hyperlinks in this report and the NMC 2012 Horizon report. I think that I would not rely on one of these reports. I would be more likely to check out a few. Having the links would allow me to go from one report to another and gather the information I want without being bogged down with extras.
I reviewed the New Media Consortium 2012 Horizon Report for Higher Education. At first glance of the website, I was impressed as they have the report not only in English but also in four other languages: Catalan, German, Japanese and Spanish. Also, they have two shorter documents: The Project Preview and The Project Short List. […]
Continue reading Opportunity Horizon: Perhaps the Horizon reports are overly optimistic ….. Posted in: Week 02: The Edtech Marketplace
Hi Doug,
You’ve done a very thorough job, and it was a great idea to go back to previous reports to see if their predictions come about. They do actually say it is “not a predictive tool”, but rather it is meant to “highlight emerging technologies” (p.7). However, when I read predictions thrashing the Kindle Fire and writing wonder of Ipads, I knew there was something more. I checked them out, and though the NMC is a non for profit organization, it was nevertheless founded by Adobe, Apple, Macromedia and Sony, because the realized that “realized that the ultimate success of their multimedia-capable products depended upon their widespread acceptance by the higher education community ” (NMC.org). They concluded “that a community of innovators embedded in leading colleges and universities would amplify the impact of their tools in a wide range of disciplines” (NMC.org).h They went on to identify institutions and schools where their investment could “bear fruit”. So are these predictions of what the market or educators will need or what they hope they will buy? Either way, there is some truth in what they write. Like the OECD, they recognize a changing world of work and roles. People work anywhere and collaboratively, opening way for the need for clouds and collaborative communication tools. And I think the other thing they may be right with is the growth in tablet computing and Apps. We’ll have to wait and see.
Adriana
I was also interested to see that they were a bit optimistic in their reports about what would be in use down the road. I think that the report is helpful in looking at what might be a resource to watch for. I also don’t blame them if their predictions were a little off. The technologies have been in place for say Mobile Apps long enough to have been “adopted”. Adoption though is up to the institutions and policy makers. I’m sure that the learners and many educators have been waiting for some of these tools to be adopted.
I also found that the timelines to adoption may be a little ambitious, but I focused more on the ideas than the time to adoption. The technologies and ideas provided are get at inspiring thoughts about future technologies and potential technologies to follow and keep an eye on. Several of these technologies have popped up here and there over the years, but have yet to become a staple in every institution. ‘Adoption’ is hard to pinpoint, but it is interesting to observe the examples and see which institutions have adopted various technologies with success and failure.
A dream of educators forever, Personalized Learning is reaching a tipping point in terms of the technologies available for realistic implementations. This marketplace opens to data-driven evaluation enabling learning experiences that cater to individual students learning styles and needs. Opportunity Statement While the venture prospects for Personalized Learning are awesome in the long term, short- and medium-term […]
Continue reading Personalized Learning Posted in: Emerging Markets Poll
While I understand the design challenges personalized learning may bring, I believe that adhering to different learning styles is important, especially in an online environment because it better allows the learner to move through the content at their own pace and to successfully gain the intended knowledge and/or skills.
I have mixed feelings about personalized learning. On the one hand, we are catering to students’ needs in order to better prepare them in the construction of their knowledge. On the other hand, we are encouraging one-dimensional learning as some students become dependent on a learning style and cease to develop some skills that would allow them to learn using different approaches. Is it best to develop finely tuned skills using one particular approach or is it better to have many lower-level skills that can be used to propel students further on their learning path? Or is there some magic mid-level point that maximizes knowledge construction while employing a variety of learning techniques?
Yes, there may be design challenges; however, I support personalized learning technologies for the opportunity they present to motivate, challenge, engage and empower learners with learning disabilities/challenges. I believe that they can also be designed to exploit the affordances of web/learn 2.0 technologies so that learners can engage with others, as needed.
I think this is an interesting venture in educational technology because students will be able to pinpoint the challenges in their learning and have personalized instruction to overcome such challenges. This would be an interesting topic for further investigation, and it ranks as number three on my personal opportunity poll.
This is extremely relevant to me as this is a very hot topic within all public schools in British Columbia right now.
This is also something that is encourages by the Calgary Public Board.
I agree for the same reasons Bryan, this is very much an “imminent” issue
I will always be in favor of Personalized Learning as it gives the opportunity for all styles of learners to be able to achieve their best potential at their own pace . However it will need strong commitment on parental involvement, smaller class sizes, more one-on-one teacher and student interaction, and attention to differences in learning styles. It must be difficult to implement this type of learning in a public school with a large class size.
The ability to analyze individual student performance data to present the most relevant activities and optimize learning represents the biggest and most exciting shift we will see in education in my opinion. This is number one on my personal opportunity poll.
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Doug Connery 8:43 pm on October 29, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thank you Week 8 – Personalized Learning for your great research and work.