Personalized Learning News

District Race to the Top Appropriately Prioritizes Personalized Learning

Tue, 22 May 2012 20:52

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today announced a new federal Race to the Top District competition, providing nearly $400 million in school district grants to “personalize and individualize” to “take classroom learning beyond a one-size-fits-all model and bring it into the 21^st century.” The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) has long been a leading voice for redesigning education to personalize learning, and applauds the Obama Administration for providing this leadership.

Nearly two years ago, SIIA, in collaboration with ASCD and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), released Innovate to Educate: System [Re]Design for Personalized Learning, based upon the insights and recommendations of some 150 visionary education leaders convened at a 2010 Summit in Boston, Mass. The report provides a roadmap (and examples) to accelerate the redesign of the current, mass production education model to a student-centered, customized learning model that will better engage, motivate, and prepare our students to be career and college ready. At that time, CCSSO Executive Director Gene Wilhoit noted: “The industrial-age, assembly-line educational model � based on fixed time, place, curriculum and pace � is insufficient in today�s society and knowledge-based economy.”

The Summit attendees�identified the following top essential elements and policy enablers of personalized learning:

Essential Elements
1. Flexible, Anytime, Everywhere Learning
2. Redefine Teacher Role and Expand “Teacher”
3. Project-Based, Authentic Learning
4. Student-Driven Learning Path
5. Mastery/Competency-Based Progression/Pace

Policy Enablers
1. Redefine Use of Time (Carnegie Unit/Calendar)
2. Performance-Based, Time-Flexible Assessment
3. Equity in Access to Technology Infrastructure
4. Funding Models that Incentivize Completion
5. P-20 Continuum & Non-Age/Grade Band System

Ninety-six percent of Summit attendees identified access to technology and e-learning as a critical or significant
cross-cutting platform to implement personalized learning and bring it to scale.

SIIA is pleased to see many of these ingredients included in the draft RTTT guidelines, including to:
- “create student centered learning environment(s) that are designed to: significantly improve teaching and learning through the personalization of strategies, tools, and supports for teachers and students”
-�“allow students significantly more freedom to study and advance at their own pace – both in and out of school”
- “create opportunities for students to identify and pursue areas of personal passion”
- “use collaborative, data-based strategies and 21st century tools”
- “deliver instruction and supports tailored to the needs and goals of each student”
- Provide “The opportunity for students to progress and earn credit based on demonstrated mastery, not the amount of time spent on a topic”
- Provide “The opportunity for students to demonstrate mastery of standards at multiple times and in multiple comparable ways.

SIIA had called for similar priorities in the original State RTTT, proposing then “that the RttT be leveraged to further incentivize a shift from a seat-rime, assembly-line education model to a more flexible, student-centered model built around individual learning needs and pace, anytime-anywhere learning, and differentiated instruction . . . that goes beyond the education reform infrastructure of the four assurances and emphasizes further the transformative reengineering of education service delivery models needed for our students to compete in this digital age and global knowledge economy.”

SIIA is pleased to see education leaders in Washington, DC recognizing the opportunities of a student-centered learning model, and for providing the resources and leadership to support and scale up dozens of locally designed programs that are empowering students and improving student engagement and outcomes. SIIA looks forward to reviewing the proposal details and providing comment on program improvements, as well as to working with education leaders to design and implement personalized learning that leverages technology.

Mark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

Leveraging the New Normal in Ed Tech

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:00

As outlined by�U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan more than a year ago, the�New Normal in education is the challenge of�“doing more with less” in our pK-20 education system. But as Duncan — and others�including SIIA would respond –�“this challenge can, and should be, embraced as an opportunity to make dramatic improvements . . .�[E]normous opportunities for improving the productivity of our education system lie ahead if we are smart, innovative, and courageous in rethinking the status quo.”

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) continues to support our education system’s efforts to reimagine and retool by personalizing learning�and leveraging technology and digital learning. SIIA’s latest effort is�the March 7-8 Ed Tech Government Forum, which will bring SIIA member technology and education entrepreneurs together with national, state and local education leaders to dialogue about the policies of the New Normal digital age in education.�

The following�keynote speakers will share how at the local, state and college levels, they are removing outdated�policy barriers and modernizing practices to better meet the individual needs of their students through digital learning:
- Jorea Marple, State Superintendent of Schools, West Virginia Department of Education
- Kaya Henderson, Chancellor, Washington DC Public Schools
- Jay Box, Chancellor, Kentucky Community and Technical College System

We will share examples of how agencies and institutions are�Doing More w/Less through Technology and eLearning, featuring Michael Casserly�(Council of Great City Schools), Amber Winkler�(Thomas B. Fordham Institute) and Todd Wirt�(Mooresville, NC Graded School District) which was recently featured in the NY Times.�

And senior officials from state agencies in TN, OH, KY, GA and UT will share their initiatives in�digital and open content, online assessment, virtual learning and data systems to meet the goals of Race to the Top and other state policies and ensure students�meet the Common Core State Standards.

Throughout, this members-only SIIA forum will support two-way dialogue, enabling technology and digital learning providers to understand the needs of our pK-20 education system, while also providing learning opportunity for education leaders to understand the vision and innovative learning technologies coming from the private sector.

SIIA members not yet plannign to attend, please review the full agenda and speakers and register.�For all, SIIA will be sure to help attendees and presenters�leverage the results of this discussion to further support all stakeholders in Leveraging the New Normal to improve education and our students’ college and career readiness.

Mark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

Vision K20: Achieving Personalized Learning through Public-Private Partnership

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:29

[This blog was also published January 26, 2012 by the Alliance for Excellent Education, sponsor of�Digital Learning Day.]

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is pleased to be among dozens of education and technology organizations partnering to promote Digital Learning Day (DLD), 2/1/12, sponsored by the Alliance for Excellent Education. SIIA is promoting DLD to its high-tech member software, digital content and online services companies, and asking them to promote DLD through their networks.�

For those with the vision and successful use of digital learning, the idea of a DLD awareness campaign — showcasing how technology supports students learning and teacher instruction � may seem unnecessary.� But the reality is that too many of our educators and education leaders have not been provided the support they need to understand what is possible, nor the resources to make it happen.� This shift is not simply about replacing print with digital or giving every student a computer.� This shift is about reimagining how we teach and learn, and creating more customized, engaging, and productive learning made possible through technology and through public-private partnership with high-tech innovators.

SIIA has developed a series of resources to assist education stakeholders in this process, including:

Vision K-20 Survey:� SIIA�s Vision K-20 lays out how we can utilize modern technologies to create a world-class teaching and learning environment that prepares all students as global citizens capable of leading the world in innovation. Educators can review the means, take a benchmarking survey, and review examples and evidence.
Personalized Learning: Innovate to Educate: System [Re]Design for Personalized Learning�is a roadmap for education leaders to restructure our education system around the unique needs of each student.� Developed in collaboration with state (CCSSO) and local (ASCD) education leaders, the report, resource page, and symposium archive provide descriptions, practices, policies and examples for personalizing learning.
Educator Guidance: SIIA�s Software & Technology Guidance for Educators include an implementation toolkit and best practices in use of serious learning games.

For SIIA member and other high-tech companies, we encourage you to support Digital Learning Day:

Sign up and be counted in this effort
Add the DLD button to your website, and promote DLD to your customers and partners
Provide access to your online teaching and learning resources for the day
Showcase success stories of how teachers and students are using technology
Visit the DLD toolkits�for more ideas and resources.�
Promote SIIA resources for educators, including Vision K20 and Software Implementation Toolkit
Use your imagination and creativity to promote education technology and Digital Learning Day

Thank you to the Alliance and all DLD partners for this important effort and for including SIIA and the high-tech industry. We look forward not only to A successful day on February 1st, but more importantly to THE day soon when all students will have access to the most relevant, engaging and effective learning opportunities that meet their personalized needs anytime and everywhere.

Learn more about Digital Learning Day at http://www.digitallearningday.org.

Mark Schneiderman is Senior Director of Education Policy at SIIA.

Digital Learning Now!

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 21:03

SIIA is pleased to be a part of today’s announcement of the Digital Learning Now! campaign led by former Governors Jeb Bush (R-FL) and Bob Wise (D-WV) to advocate for state policies aligned with 10 Elements of High Quality Digital Learning. The 10 elements were identified by a Digital Learning Council of education leaders, including SIIA’s Mark Schneiderman and senior executives of several SIIA member high-tech companies.

Announced Bush and Wise: “We are grateful to the council members for forging a path for education’s historic shift from print to digital, from age groups to individuals and from seat time to competency. . . . Digital learning can transform education. Technology has the power and scalability to customize education so each and every student learns in their own style at their own pace, which maximizes their chances for success in school. It offers teachers an effective way to overcome challenges and better educate students of all learning needs. Digital learning is the great equalizer. It holds the promise of extending access to rigorous high quality instruction to every student across America, regardless of language, zip code, income levels, or special needs.”

The 10 policy recommendations include both access to technology infrastructure, digital content and online courses as well regulatory reforms to shift from seat-time to competency-based learning and remove many policy barriers to online learning. They focus on the opportunity to personalize learning through technology and include among key resources the SIIA-ASCD-CCSSO report on Education System Redesign for Personalized Learning. And they call for enhanced support for digital-age teaching through data systems, online assessment and professional development. As such, Digital Learning Now is perhaps the most comprehensive set of such policy recommendations in recent times, and represents a growing recognition among education leaders and stakeholders that transformational systemic change through technology is needed, including in light of the nation�s educational funding, teacher and performance shortages.

SIIA appreciates the leadership of Governors Bush and Wise, and the opportunity to be part of this important effort. We look forward to supporting the campaign’s next steps of helping states benchmark against these 10 elements and make changes to state policies and practices needed to advance this comprehensive vision for digital learning.

Education Leaders Identify Top 10 Components of Systemic Redesign to Personalize Learning

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 18:41

The nation’s education stakeholders increasingly recognize that the fundamental redesign of our preK-12 system around the student is required for our future success. Calls for (e.g., Secretary Duncan) and examples of (e.g., Kansas City) innovative, personalized learning models are growing.

To help give voice and support to this movement, SIIA – in collaboration with ASCD and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) – released�“Innovate to Educate: System [Re]Design for Personalized Learning,” based upon the insights and recommendations of some 150 education leaders�convened at an August Symposium in Boston, MA (See archive of presentations, summaries and videos). The report provides a primer on personalized learning with definitions and examples and identifies the following essential practices and policies as voted on by Symposium attendees:

CCSSO’s Gene Wilhoit explained the challenge: “The industrial-age, assembly-line educational model – based on fixed time, place, curriculum and pace – is insufficient in today’s society and knowledge-based economy.” ASCD’s Gene Carter explained the alternative innovative model: “that a student’s educational path, curriculum, instruction and schedule be personalized to meet each child’s unique needs.”

Ninety-one percent of education leaders at the Symposium very strongly or strongly agreed that “we cannot meet the personalized learning needs of students within our traditional system – tweaking the teacher/classroom centered model is not enough, and systemic redesign is needed.”

Ninety-six percent of Symposium attendees identified access to technology and e-learning as a critical or significant cross-cutting platform to implement personalized learning and bring it to scale.

The time is right for a true paradigm shift. Education leaders at the Symposium left with a sense of responsibility and opportunity to move beyond the current mass production and marginal reforms. With bold leadership around the Symposium-identified roadmap for change, personalized learning opportunities are within reach for all students. Most importantly, this shift is needed to respond to what students themselves believe their education could and should look like to engage, challenge and prepare them for college, career and citizenship.

SIIA Events Reflect Evolution of Ed Tech Industry

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 15:41

In planning two education-focused conferences this summer for SIIA, I was struck by similarities – and of course the differences – in the two events. This week we host, “Innovate to Educate: A symposium on [Re]Design for Personalized Education.” After returning to DC, we go full steam ahead planning the 2010 Ed Tech Business Forum, which will focus on “Re-Inventing Business Models.”

First, the obvious differences: The former conference is our first major component of SIIA’s new initiative on Personalized Learning and is being held in collaboration with ASCD and CCSSO. Two-thirds of the invited attendees represent leadership within the K-12 education sector – school districts, state agencies, professional associations, the federal government and education foundations. Attendees will focus on the policies, practices and technologies needed to enable the redesign of our education system from an industrial-age structure to one that is student-centered to meet each student’s personalized learning needs.

The Ed Tech Business Forum will be 10th annual and has become part of “Education Week” in New York, taking place each year the first week after Thanksgiving. Attendees are primarily from the industry, and represent ed tech platform companies, publishers, and financial firms. They’re there to learn and share information about the shifts they see in their business models.

The similarities: Some of SIIA members will be attending both conferences. While the purpose of the Symposium is to look at system re-design, the Forum will be looking to re-design their business. There’s a cause and effect, and hopefully, they’ll happen in tandem with each other. Our members do react to customer needs … and Personalized Learning is a major one right now. By working with industry colleagues at the Forum, they will gain major insights to Re-Inventing their business models.

Posted by Karen Billings, Vice President, SIIA Education Division

Design Fix

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 01:24

[From a Symposium on Personalized Learning interview series by New Media Partner edReformer.com]

Joel Rose, CEO of School of One in New York City, addresses how personalized learning provides equity of student outcomes, and the need to address the design flaw of the traditional classroom model with with personalized systems and technologies.

Where does technology fit into [personalized learning]?
I think we need school designs that accomplish that personalized vision by integrating, instruction, professional development, leadership, options and technology. It’s one of the necessary components of an integrated design that serves that need. It doesn’t end or begin with technology, but technology is a piece of it.

What are some of the challenges being faced by the effort to bring personalization into the education system?
There is one big challenge, and that’s how nearly impossible it is for an individual teacher to personalize learning for 28 kids, during five periods a day. Even if we do that, it’s not enough. We have to complement the work of great teachers with systems and technologies that can enable personalized learning. It’s a design challenge. [Challenge is] the way we designed our schools, by putting 28 kids in a room, calling that sixth grade and putting one teacher in that room. And making that assumption that a kid can make that one year of growth . . . that’s a design assumption that is incredibly flawed. We are so accustomed to think of school in this way, the idea that there’s a different way of doing it doesn’t really enter into our minds. How we narrowly redesigned roles in school that have kind of calcified how we think about school. A lot of things we have done have just cascaded on top of this system. Until we fundamentally get to this design question . . . “This is where we want kids to be at the end of the year,” “This is the best way of doing that,” until we start asking these fundamental questions, we are going to stay where we are.

Read More from Joel Rose on how personalized learning and technology can address the design challenge of our school model, a roadmap for redesign, and how personalization flips the pursuit of equity from inputs to outcomes.

Personalize and Deliver

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 03:32

[From a Symposium on Personalized Learning interview series by New Media Partner edReformer.com]

Harvard professor Howard Gardner shares his vision for personalized learning in an age of education reform which grows out of his theory of multiple intelligences. Gardner believes the educational world of the future belongs to those educators and technologists who can create robust ways to present important but challenging concepts.

What is your vision for personalized learning?
My vision of personalized learning grows out of the theory of multiple intelligences, which I developed thirty years ago. Personalized learning involves Individuation and Pluralization. Individuation means that each student should be taught and assessed in ways that are appropriate and comfortable for that child. Pluralization means that anything worth teaching could and should be taught in several ways. By so doing, one reaches more students. Today, we live in a computer age. For the first time in human history, individuation and pluralization are potentially available to any young person. And so the ideas of non personalized, remote, or cookie-cutter style teaching and learning will soon become anachronistic.

What are the challenges being addressed and the opportunities being leveraged?
The major challenge is a system that has proceeded for centuries on the basis of ‘uniform’ schooling and uniform learning: teaching everyone the same thing in the same way. That tack has seemed fair, because all are being treated in the same way. But it is actually unfair, because school is being pitched to a certain kind of mind–in my terms, a mind that is strong in language and logic. Added to that is our system of standardized assessment, which focuses on particular bits of knowledge and which often simply presents a set of choices. Once we have more personalized education, we can provide far more realistic assessments and allow students leeway in how they approach the problems and puzzles that they are presented.

Read More of Dr. Gardner’s views on the intersection of personalization and equity, the research on personalized learning, and the role of technology.

Personalized Learning Central to Whole Child Approach

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 19:38

[Guest blog by Judy Seltz, Deputy Executive Director for Constituent Services, ASCD — Symposium Partner)

In April, the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee made a whole child approach to learning part of the ESEA reauthorization discussion when it heard from a series of speakers about the importance of thinking beyond a narrow definition of academics and accountability in designing an education program for the future. ASCD believes that each child, in each school, in each of our communities deserves to be healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged. That’s what a whole child approach to learning, teaching, and community engagement really is.

These 21st century demands require a new and better way of approaching education policy and practice — a whole child approach to learning, teaching, and community engagement. We need to redefine what a successful learner is and how we measure success. It is time to put students first, align resources to students’ multiple needs, and advocate for a more balanced approach. A child who enters school in good health, feels safe, and is connected to her school is ready to learn. A student who has at least one adult in school who understands his social and emotional development is more likely to stay in school. All students who have access to challenging academic programs are better prepared for further education, work, and civic life.

Personalized learning is central to this approach to learning. We talk about each child, not every child. Each child learns differently; personalized learning supports differences in talent, interest, style and pace.

ASCD is pleased to collaborate with SIIA and CCSSO in bringing together a unique group of thinkers from policy, practice, government, and business to learn from and listen to each other about the promise and challenges of making personalized learning a reality for each student.

Mass Customization for Student Success

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:20

[From a Symposium on Personalized Learning interview series by New Media Partner edReformer.com]

Symposium speaker Roberta Selleck, Superintendent Adam’s County School District 50, Colorado talks about her district’s shift from a teacher-led to a student-centric learning system.

What is the vision for personalized learning?

We just finished our first year using non-graded time as a variable this year, in other words, grade levels went away as we know it. They are based in their instructional level, not their frustration level. That’s a huge paradigm shift. The words we are using are mass customization. We recognize that every child is unique, so we must look at every child as a unique individual. Where are they on that continuum so that we can help them continue that academic unique journey?

Where does personalization intersect with equity?

We certainly believe that what happens in our traditional system is a travesty. The kdis are put on a conveyor belt, and nine months later they are popped out and for the most part if they are almost ready to go to the next level, they go, regardless. That for us is not equity. We have broken that model and tried to look at each child as an indidvidual. It’s not the teacher just talking about her 25 kids in the class. All teachers are owning all kids’ education and graduation goals, even at the elementary level. We all have a piece of the game.

I wish people could come and really see this in action. Once a month, we host these tours and we have 25 and 30 people, come, we put it in context. We put it in the classroom. These kids can clearly articulate what their goals are, and where they are at, academically. What it is they are working on, and they can tell you what they know, and they can tell you what they don’t know. It’s really remarkable to see. Kids are not shy about sharing that with others.

Read more of the inteview on the challenges being addressed, system design, curriculum and technology, teacher role and professional development, and opportunity for public-private software development partnership. Read more about the Adams County initiative.