Wednesday 14 December 2011

Personalized Learning Continued...


Over the last few weeks I have repeatedly tried my best to build in more choice and flexibility into the day-to-day assignments in all my Junior Info Tech courses. My colleague (Nicole) and I in the IT department are attempting to engage our students and their learning in more meaningful and relevant ways. When I say relevant and meaningful, I mean trying to give students as much choice and control over their learning as possible.  I still believe that some commonality or base background knowledge is warranted, but why can’t all assignments be designed in a way that recognizes individual learning strengths? That is why I have been going through the process of trying to add choices to almost all the assignments I have been asking my students to complete over the past month.  As students in my classes begin to get use to the idea that there is more than one way to display their knowledge (and the choice can be theirs), anxiety seems to be decreasing. To date, balance appears to be the key with students requesting that they have choices with regards to the finished products or final stages or summary’s of learning, but not the entire assignment as a whole. A good analogy might be that of a pyramid where the base is all the same or similar, with the focus getting more narrow or personalized as a knowledge base advances and different aspects of particular content peak certain interests. 

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