How can educational technology support competency-based learning (personalized learning)? Technology can play a big role with competency-based learning (personalized learning). A big part of personalized learning is that the learning is happening because it's personalized, so students' skills and levels are met. Through competency-based learning students can feel successful working and learning at their level. Educational Technology Technology offers tools and ways for students to focus their learning based on their needs and provides aspects to exploration that at times can't be found solely in a book or through a whole group lesson; which may not be at their level of instruction. Some educational technology tools that come to mind that can be used for personalized learning are Khan Academy, online leveled book libraries or sites like newsela; which offer leveled and engaging content for students. Technology in education can offer students access to content that triggers curiosity and gives students relevant material, which is important if they are to engage in a culture of learners. That in itself is another thing that makes me think, creating a culture of learning is not a simple task. A Culture of Learning There are a few things that come to mind after reading the article on competency-based learning. “Student agency begins with the culture…” One of my questions is, how can we create that culture of student agency in the classroom so that students are actually learning? In the article, Robin Kanaan’s explanation is cited as he explains that “Students co-determine with the teacher what learning targets they need to accomplish and how they could show evidence of their learning.” My concern is how do we start this and make sure we are assessing progress effectively? More specifically with the limited amount of time we have available. If we are going to teach and have all students learn at different levels and at a different pace, then we need to assess students differently and there needs to be a change around a lot of different areas In a way, I feel that there are aspects at our school that are similar to this model. Whole group lessons are not where all the direct instruction is happening, students are learning specific needs in the leveled small groups, at least in language arts. But we are far from what the article suggests. Yes, there are specific cases where the teacher makes accommodations and has a plan set in place for students based on their needs, but when thinking about the whole class... This brings up many topics in need of change. How students learn best, how we teach at school, and how we assess our students are only a few. These are all big conversations which I feel take time and work. Just like creating that culture in the classroom, the same needs to happen in the whole school.
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Jose G. CerdaArchives
May 2018
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