This fall, we were starting to hear school district officials talk more about using technology to personalize instruction, and about looking for ways to break long-standing conventions of schooling, like paper textbooks and five-and-a-half-hour elementary school instructional days.
It’s a learning process, which the Leesburg Daily Commercial reports is starting to take root in Lake County, with backing from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The newspaper reports the local school district wants customized learning to be ubiquitous in its classrooms by 2022.
Instead of sitting in a classroom and listening to a lecture, students participate in projects in groups and individually, giving them more time to spend one-on-one with the teacher.
For example, (social studies teacher Justin) Crouch will have a video of his lecture for each student to watch during class so he can spend one-on-one time with students who need help.
Crouch has served on the Gates Foundation Grant Committee for personalized learning and helped to write a grant for instruction at Umatilla High School that is tailored to the needs of individual students.
Crouch said he gives students multiple ways to learn a specific topic.
“Some students learn better through discussion,” he said. “Some students learn better through watching videos. What I do is give them these options so they can speak up and tell me what is the best way they learn the information.”
These developments in school districts around the country are worth following. They reinforce a foundational argument for school choice: What’s best for one student might not be best for another.
More importantly, they signal a broader shift toward an education system built around the principles of choice, customization and mastery, which has implications for the ways schools are funded, results are measured, and schools are held accountable.
