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About a decade ago, leaders in this public school district nearly 70 miles northwest of New York City decided to radically change the way they provide education to its diverse and academically challenged student body. They decided to "personalize" learning for every child, which means that they tailored lessons to each student's needs, interests and learning pace. They gave each student access to technology that helps teachers customize their lessons. And they ended social promotion, so that struggling students are no longer shuttled along to the next grade level simply to keep them with the herd of similarly aged classmates.

The shift has coincided with improved test scores and graduation rates.

"I am overwhelmed with joy for my students because I know now they each stand a better chance of being a successful student," said Regina Trout, who teaches the second-year kindergarteners at Maple Hill Elementary School in Middletown. "When they come to me knowing zero letter recognition - some might not even be able to recognize their own name. And at the end of the year, to just see their growth ... I start to get teary."

And it would not be possible, Trout said, without small-group instruction and the assistance of classroom technology that helps her deliver a custom-fit lesson for each student.

Personalized learning dates back to a Chicago lab school at the turn of the 20th century, but the concept is having a renaissance because of today's more sophisticated technology - and the excitement and investment the technology has inspired. Last year, the founder of Facebook pledged to donate $45 billion to social causes, one of them personalized learning. And various technology companies - from no-name startups to behemoths like Pearson - boast of new programs meant to facilitate this style of education. Conferences for teachers from coast to coast brim with representatives from the multibillion-dollar technology industry, many of them promising to help teachers provide customized tracks for education.

"All of them are searching for that holy grail of tailoring content and skills to the weaknesses of each kid," said Larry Cuban, an emeritus professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education, who often writes about education technology on his popular blog.

What is personalized learning? It can look a little different in every school, in every classroom and for each student. Teachers create lessons that are challenging without being too hard, and that suit the individual interests of each child.

It's easy to see why this is an attractive idea.

When teachers face 25 or 30 students, if they decide to teach in the conventional way of standing in front of the room and lecturing, then they must provide a lesson that will benefit the majority of the room - the average student. That leaves behind those who are below or above expectations. The best teachers find ways to help those students, but it's a tall order. It takes a superhuman amount of work to find lessons that fit each student every single day.

That's where technology comes in. Various products on the market today claim they can help the teacher create bespoke lessons for individual students, or otherwise make teaching more effective and efficient.

Some education technology developers, such as Knewton, say machines can figure out what students need to know and how best to deliver it. The computer system does this by constantly assessing how a particular student answers questions and what kind of lesson most engages that student. For instance, Waggle, a program powered by Knewton's technology, serves students new tasks based on how well they did on previous tasks. Knewton's claim to fame (and some are skeptical of it) is that it provides the right difficulty and the right presentation, and can find whatever style students seem to like best.

But for that concept to work, a child must spend a lot of time on the computer, feeding the system with data that the software uses to improve itself.

"You want to extend and maximize their time in the system," said Jose Ferreira, Knewton's founder and CEO.

There's the rub: The idea of students, especially younger children, spending a lot of time on a computer worries some people.

And they suspect that education technology companies may be promising more than they can deliver.

"The words 'personalized learning' probably generate more heat than light," said Arthur Levine, president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and a former president and professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The phrase "personalized learning" is now emblazoned on a wide variety of programs and products. Some schools say they have trouble figuring out what to buy. Many programs and products produce reams of "research," but they're just sales materials masquerading as effectiveness studies.

"You wouldn't take a medicine that hasn't been tested," said Ryan S. Baker, associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the new Penn Center for Learning Analytics. "But people will adopt a curriculum after just being pitched by a salesman. The things that are good are not the same as those that have good marketing."

Baker thinks the real problem is lack of awareness about what's available. There is a lot of good research about what works in education technology, he said, adding, "The problem is there is not a lot of good research about every system."

The enthusiasm to be in on the latest and greatest thing in education can lead schools to try splashy programs that fail to take into account teacher training and valid research into how students learn. And the schools may then adopt and fast-track those programs without giving proper thought to what personalized learning entails or how to train their teachers to do this work.

"Don't believe the sticker," said Karen Cator, president and CEO of Digital Promise, a nonprofit organization that promotes effective use of education technology. "I shouldn't say 'don't believe,' but I mean double-check and see if, in fact, it's marketing. Or does it actually follow the promise of personalization?"

It's impossible to say precisely how many school districts, nationwide, are implementing personalized learning. But the popularity of education technology comes at a time when computer algorithms are creeping into just about every part of the day. Netflix provides suggested movies based on what you've watched in the past. Google's search engine serves up more of what you've clicked on in the past. Social media sites suggest new "friends" and sources of information tailored to your connections.

Many say that for education to be truly personalized, the student should get some say in his or her learning, and teachers should be there to guide them - not just push them along based on whatever a computer algorithm determines is best.

"A lot of folks, when they say 'personalized learning,' they mean something about a technology platform that changes for [different] kids," said Jennifer Davis Poon, director of the Innovation Lab Network at the Council of Chief State School Officers, a Washington, D.C.-based education reform advocacy group. "But in a more traditional setting, it is a very teacher-focused, teacher-driven type of instruction."

And for Trout, the kindergarten teacher at Middletown, New York, her work reveals an instructional shift that goes beyond buzzwords like personalized learning - or the flash of new technology.

When students get what they need when they need it, and when they are treated as an individual, it makes all the difference.

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The Growing Role of Technology in Personalized Learning

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About a decade ago, leaders in this public school district nearly 70 miles northwest of New York City decided to radically change the way they provide education to its diverse and academically challenged student body. They decided to "personalize" learning for every child, which means that they tailored lessons to each student's needs, interests and learning pace.

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BAM! Radio - WASCD:Learn Teach Lead Radio

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Nanocasting Radio Network is property of Jackstreet Media the leading new madia company that developed the Nanocasting system for hypertargeting an audience and delivering information directly to those who are most interested in it.

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Think about a time when you were really engaged in something, the kind of engagement where you lose track of time and experience feelings of joy and satisfaction. You may have felt acutely focused and physically, mentally, and emotionally absorbed in a task. I've felt this most often while writing, reading, teaching, and coaching-always signaled by the moment when I notice the clock and, feeling dazed, wonder where the hours have gone.

The feelings are pleasant and there are always outcomes-a chapter written, or a complicated dilemma unraveled, for example. It wasn't until I heard about the work of the Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi that I learned that this notion has a name: flow.

I'd like to urge the education community to move beyond a discussion of engagement, with its vague definitions and murky attributes, to a conversation on flow. And I'd like to propose that our task as educators is to increase the experiences of flow for students.

What Is Flow?

Csikszentmihalyi identified three conditions necessary to achieve a state of flow:

1. The goals are clear (e.g., design an experiment that demonstrates X, write a persuasive essay, paint the ceiling of the chapel).

2. The goals are attainable and within one's skill set and ability, and the challenge level and skill level are both high.

3. You get clear and immediate feedback so you can adjust your course.

Intrinsic motivation is a key element that leads to experiences of flow; we have to want to engage in the challenging task. I doubt that anyone has ever experienced flow with a worksheet or while alphabetizing spelling words. Flow does not happen on the low end of Bloom's Taxonomy.

The Road to Mastery

I'm going to assume we all want students to master certain skills or standards, or show mastery of a domain of knowledge. Flow is an essential to mastery, though it doesn't guarantee mastery. I have seen many classrooms full of students who were engaged in an activity but didn't necessarily master any skills.

But mastery is not attainable without flow. Flow happens in a moment, while mastery takes years. And to push that notion a little further, philosophers debate whether mastery can really be attained, which is exactly what makes pursuing it so appealing-as soon as we reach what we think is mastery, we see another level of mastery ahead and seek to attain that level, and so on.

But back to the concrete: Our students can master the craft of writing a persuasive essay, if, perhaps, they've had some moments of flow on their journey.

The Secret

Here's the secret to why it's really worth creating experiences of flow for our students: When they experience flow, we will too. When they're in their student zone of flow, the same will most likely be true for us: Our goals are clear, the challenge is high, our skills match the challenge, and we're getting immediate feedback from kids and adjusting so that we can meet their needs and accomplish the goal. It's synergistic and beautiful!

This is why every lesson must have clear and laser-focused objectives-not because an administrator is going to come in and ding you if they're not posted, but because without an articulation of a clear goal, students can't attain flow. This is why we need to know what our students know and what they can do, and why we need to be acutely aware of their zone of proximal development (ZPD); this is why we need to do those diagnostics and KWLs, so we can match their skill level to an appropriately challenging task. This is why we need to design lessons and assignments that are rigorous and on the upper levels of Bloom's, that ask students to argue and debate, create, and evaluate.

And this is why we need to check students' understanding every 10 minutes and use a range of formative assessment strategies, so we can then adjust course and ensure that they'll be successful with the task.

Of course, a clear learning objective won't ensure flow and there's much more to consider. But as a goal, I'm proposing that flow should be part of our daily experience in school-for students and teachers. Maybe we can't experience flow all day, every day, but maybe students and teachers can experience it more often than we do now.

Perhaps flow is the secret to transforming schools, retaining quality teachers, and keeping kids in school. I'm going to make a wild guess that kids who quit school have had very few experiences of flow within a classroom. Let's refocus our energies on creating the conditions for flow to be experienced in schools. We'd all benefit.

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Beyond Student Engagement: Achieving a State of Flow

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Think about a time when you were really engaged in something, the kind of engagement where you lose track of time and experience feelings of joy and satisfaction. You may have felt acutely focused and physically, mentally, and emotionally absorbed in a task.

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What the Heck is Project-Based Learning?

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What the Heck is Project-Based Learning?

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PBL is the ongoing act of learning different subjects simultaneously. It's the journey of their learning.  It's the interaction of their lessons.

Great example: It's not learning the names of the states and capitals. It's learning about a region and developing your own state.  It's multilayered learning.

It is an ongoing process where students are documenting their learning along the way as well as being assessed along the way.  It involves collaboration and presenting the final project as using a multi-media approach.

You're not replacing content, you are creating a vehicle to showcase the content/curriculum.

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Tailoring learning for each student's strengths and interests and giving students a voice and choice in what, how, when and where they learn. Giving students the flexibility and supports they need to master content at the highest possible standard. The roles of a teacher would shift to be more like mentors, coaches and facilitators which would provide students with more power and control of their learning. Assessments would be performance-based such as project-based learning and portfolios.

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What Research Says About Project-Based Learning

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What Research Says About Project-Based Learning

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- Aims to engage student in real-world problems that require critical thinking
- projects typically present a problem to solve, a phenomenon to investigate, a model to design, or a decision to make
- helps students develop problem-solving and decision-making skills
- helps students practice collaboration skills that prepare them for the workplace
- results in more positive attitude toward subject areas- less anxiety because it is more hands-on
- in high poverty areas could increase inequity due to lack of technology and resources
- this article is reporting that it is an effective teaching method, but at the same it says that there is no research to prove that it is effective or leads to greater student learning
- should not be put into place unless it is carefully designed by teachers who have been trained in project-based learning
- difficult to implement based on the rigorous demands of today's school structure (standards, high-stakes tests, pacing guides)

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What is Personalized Learning?

Julie, Heather B, Kris-anne, Grace

Personalized learning can identify student's unique needs and address them.

It includes student choice and voice in what they want to do...tailors learning for each student's strengths, needs and interests. Differentiation is a key part of personalized learning and it is essential in education. This gives students ownership over their learning and incorporates their interests and passions,. Learning bridges formal and informal learning experiences and is connected through the effective use of technology. The pacing is flexible and designed to meet individual student profiles. It also includes deeper learning and problem
solving to develop meaning. Frequent feedback from instructors and peers is also key to the success of personalized learning.

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Educational Leadership "What Reserach Says about Poject Based Learning" Heidi, Rebecca, Maureen, Kasey, and Nicole

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Educational Leadership "What Reserach Says about Poject Based Learning" Heidi, Rebecca, Maureen, Kasey, and Nicole

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Pros:
* Engaging
* Students in PBL learning significantly outperformed students in mainstream schooling
* Real world application
* Creates positive attitude towards math and decrease anxiety towards math
* Teaches problem solving and decision making
* Effective for teaching process: Problem solving, decision making
* Teacher acts as a facilitator to guide students
* Can be flexibly integrated: Whole class, small group, or individual

Cons:
* Time constraints
*Teachers feeling the pressure to of having to teach all of their curriculum in addition to PBL
* Some teachers see it as facing PBL as an additional demand
* Difficult in high poverty areas
*Without carefully designed tasks, skilled teachers, and school conditions that support projects, PBL can devolve into a string of activities with no clear purpose or outcome.

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We are 1 of 15 Catalyst Districts

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Lawrence Public Schools:  Personalized Learning for K-5

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Tour the States: Project Based Learning Style!!!

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5 Keys to Rigorous Project Based Learning

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5 Keys to Rigorous Project Based Learning

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5 Keys to Rigorous Project-Based Learning