Dive Brief:
- Arizona's Dysart Unified School District, northwest of Phoenix, has an Innovation Academy where students have virtual reality stations, circuit boards and laptops, but even in low-tech classrooms in other schools, teachers personalize learning with what experts have termed “little data.”
- The Hechinger Report writes that little data refers to data about individual habits and behaviors, and Dysart teachers — whether they are in the Innovation Academy where all student coursework is completed in easily trackable online environments, or not — individualize instruction based on each student’s progress.
- Some teachers ask students to track progress toward meeting state standards in Google spreadsheets or even on graphs in their paper notebooks, and regardless of the method, the progress tracking helps teachers personalize learning and helps students better understand their own strengths and weaknesses.
Dive Insight:
School districts across the country are experimenting with new ways to personalize learning, especially now that new technologies exist to help them do it. Curriculum and instruction departments are partnering with IT departments in the most integrated districts so tech initiatives are directly tied to the needs of students and teachers.
As at Dysart, personalized learning doesn’t have to be high-tech, but some of the models that have gotten the most attention rely on digital. The Facebook-backed Summit Personalized Learning Platform gives students complete control over their learning path, allowing them to choose which subjects and units they want to tackle throughout the school year. AltSchool, founded by Google’s former head of personalization, has its own proprietary platform that requires students to master competencies before moving on and helps teachers personalize instruction.
