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.
4 Comments
An Truong
1/30/2018 10:03:27 am
I am interested in incorporating more technology in P.E. I will definitely check out Khan Academy. It would be great to have students utilize these apps in class. That's a really good issue you pointed out about assessing students with different levels. In P.E., some students are not highly skill in physical fitness. There is the Ca. Fitness Standards that provides the age group where students must meet the goals for example, a male at age 12 must be able to run the mile in 10:30 minutes, and 14 years old must run it in 9:30 minutes. There are some boys who can only run the mile over 12:00 minutes. I try to grade on student's progression. But I am very interested to see how other teachers assess their students.
Reply
Scott Marsden
1/30/2018 02:37:09 pm
I like how you mention Khan Academy, which is a powerful tool for personalized learning. I am interested to learn more about how to use it successfully. You are right to focus on culture for personalized learning. How do we develop that kind of agency in our students?
Reply
Benjamin Scinto
1/30/2018 04:25:43 pm
Time. Yes. Outsiders seems to think we have all the time in the world to collaborate and develop said instructional models with fidelity, but we all know the truth and when comparing to other more academically successful countries we see how the US falls short in providing teachers time to authentically collaborate and grow the profession.
Reply
Jeff Albertazzi
1/30/2018 05:57:00 pm
Funny, time seems to be a common thread through out the blogs and I agree with you on "student agency begins with culture..."
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Jose G. CerdaArchives
May 2018
Categories |