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I work at a high trauma school. I have seen students and teachers struggle both with the varied levels of skill/preparedness and the personal struggles that make it difficult for the majority of our student population to come ready to learn. I believe that blended learning allows a shift in focus toward individual student relationships. It encourages students to take ownership of their own learning experience. It also unhinges our students who are coming to school ready to learn (and usually have higher skill levels) from those who are in trauma and need more support and guidance to help them learn.

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Blended Learning to allow for ALL students to truly have personalized learning.

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Blended Learning to allow for ALL students to truly have personalized learning.

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Recognize everyone is a learner - all on different continuums

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Recognize everyone is a learner - all on different continuums

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Innovative Designer

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My students don't fit on a bell curve, so why try to teach to the average? I want to reach all students - that's my "why". Blended Learning - that my "how".

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If we don't start with the learner at the center of our decisions, we run the risk of quelling creativity and limiting the potential of cultivating skills noted on page 7 in perseverance.  Knowing that "old school" techniques illustrated in "Bold School" along with new technologies, approaches, and qualities that seek to expose potential in our little creative geniuses is our mission.    We have to build the foundation, and not skip into the slippery slope of flashy new tools.

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More school leaders than ever before are seeking to harness digital tools to personalize learning and to prepare students for life after school, when creating and thinking with technology will be at the heart of being engaged and productive members of society.

But these goals risk missing the bigger picture. Preparing students to be lifelong learners capable of partaking knowledgeably in both civic life and a rapidly changing workforce requires not just focusing on technology, personalization, or even coding, but the broader content and foundation at the heart of these experiences. The curriculum-what students are learning-matters.

That manifests in different, but related, ways.

For example, as students learn to read, it is critical that they build a strong and wide foundation of knowledge. A learner's background knowledge is a key ingredient in her ability to learn and absorb information from what she is reading and consuming. Accordingly, personalizing learning through technology will be most powerful when it is coupled with intentional, coherent and rigorous instruction.

Yes, tapping into and developing children's interests and instilling in them a sense of ownership of their education is important. Yet allowing them unbridled choice of what they learn, especially when they are young, means that in certain cases they will miss building that foundation. Despite the claims from some that content knowledge no longer matters in a world where everything is google-able, possessing deep background knowledge remains imperative for students to be able to read across a wide range of subjects and literary genres and be successful learners.

What we really need is a generation of people with the power to invent, design and think creatively across disciplines using all the tools, including computers, at their disposal-not a never-ending pipeline of programmers.

If students don't have a working familiarity with a body of knowledge, a new passage on the topic-no matter how elementary it may seem and no matter how strong the reader's fundamental decoding skills-will frustrate. A famous experiment about baseball illustrates the concept. Given a common passage about baseball, so-called "low-ability" readers who knew a lot about baseball significantly out-performed so-called "high-ability" readers who knew little. The reason is that the high-ability readers did not have the context to make sense of what they were reading. Imagine the bewilderment of someone who knew nothing about baseball trying to understand why the crowd cheered when a runner stole a base-an act that might sound criminal in another setting.

Without at least a working familiarity with a topic, Google-where you have to generate the right question to ask-will only take you so far in the moment. That is because, as cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham wrote, "Every passage that you read omits information. All of this omitted information must be brought to the text by the reader."

One challenge for schools is that each student possesses different background knowledge. Students from affluent families, for example, tend to enjoy exposure to a range of experiences outside school that build their knowledge without them even realizing it. They can arguably get away with schools that are less intentional about building knowledge. Low-income students often have a far more limited set of experiences outside of school that leaves them further behind.

Within these broad groupings, the differences are even more disparate. Building learners' background knowledge in scalable ways that is personalized to their particular needs is challenging. This is where technology can make a big difference. It can help educators personalize-not for its own sake or just because a student likes a particular topic-but so that students learn a solid foundation to participate civically and gain exposure to fields to build passions and even a career.

Similarly, although society's insufficient STEM career pipeline is one good reason to bring computer science into schools, focusing narrowly on preparing the younger generation for coding careers could have major limits, given that many of these jobs may not exist or be as valued in the future. What we really need is a generation of people with the power to invent, design and think creatively across disciplines using all the tools, including computers, at their disposal-not a never-ending pipeline of programmers.

This again puts the focus on curriculum, as it requires us to rethink how we teach computers in a way that supports students becoming strong computational thinkers and doers in service of being mathematicians, readers, writers, scientists, thinkers and learners. This can't happen if they don't have a strong grasp of the content they are meant to be analyzing, organizing, simulating and modeling with their computing skills.

To paraphrase Mitchel Resnick of MIT's Media Lab and David Siegel, co-founder of the hedge fund Two Sigma: If coding is going to make a true difference in children's lives, it is important to move beyond the traditional view of the discipline as simply a technical skill, or just a pipeline to getting a technical job. Rather, coding must be viewed as a new type of literacy and personal expression, and a way for people to organize, express, and share their ideas that is valuable for everyone, much like learning to write. Early research suggests that computational thinking-the ability to formulate problems and then use computers to help solve those problems-and computing education have the potential to develop students' higher-order thinking, problem-solving, collaboration and communication skills, which can help them become deeper learners across the curriculum.

Educators' increasing embrace of technology to personalize and offer computing education is encouraging. But how educators do that-having rigorous content with the opportunities to create at the heart-will matter significantly to the success of students and these efforts in the years ahead.

Amber Oliver is the director of the Robin Hood Learning + Technology Fund, a collaboration between Robin Hood, Overdeck Family Foundation and Siegel Family Endowment. Michael Horn (@michaelbhorn) helped develop the strategy for the Fund and serves on its Advisory Board. He is also an EdSurge columnist and Principal Consultant for Entangled Solutions.

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Without the Right Curriculum, Personalized Learning Is Just Another Fad - EdSurge News

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More school leaders than ever before are seeking to harness digital tools to personalize learning and to prepare students for life after school, when creating and thinking with technology will be at the heart of being engaged and productive members of society. But these goals risk missing the bigger picture.

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...the summative assessment of student-centered instruction!  When kiddos can articulate their strengths, areas for growth and how they learn best (as done in an SLC), educators can literally "see" how well students have "learned how they learn"!

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I’ve been implementing the station rotation model in my AP Psychology courses for the past year. I try to run them at least once per unit. Students like the independent nature of the activities as well as the opportunity to chose some of the learning paths they take.
Linda Schuerman, Middleton High School and Wisconsin Virtual School

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8 Things to Look For in a Student-Centered Learning Environment

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8 Things to Look For in a Student-Centered Learning Environment

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From "Getting Smart"

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When you walk into a school, what do you look for? When envisioning what type of learning environment is ideal for your child or the students you work with, what are the most important characteristics? What are the most positive, memorable experiences from your own schooling?

I value many different learning models and environments and honestly do not feel it is my role to judge or evaluate what is "good." That said, from years of teaching in the classroom and countless visits and interactions with excellent educators worldwide, I've created a list of things I commonly observe in great student-centered learning environments. As the Nellie Mae Education Foundation describes, student-centered learning "engages students in their own success-and incorporates their interests and skills into the learning process." Student learning is personalized, competency-based, happens anytime and/or anywhere, and students have ownership in their learning.

I paired my personal list with thoughts from my teammates at Getting Smart to create a collection of "School Look Fors" based on our discussions and experiences in schools.

Download a copy of this graphic

Keep in mind, these Look Fors are not meant to evaluate a learning environment. Rather, they can serve as a springboard for creating talking and discussion points. Also, some of our favorite learning environments are places where educators are still working on addressing some of these Look Fors. It is obvious but still important to state this: every day is different in every school, and we don't know the on-going experiences and interactions of those teaching and learning in those spaces.

Amongst the fourteen School Look Fors above, there are eight in particular that really stand out when it comes to student-centered learning environments.

1) High degree of student engagement; challenge, enthusiasm, joy. One of the goals of creating a student-centered environment should be to make learning joyful, challenging and engaging. Thrive Public Schools is one of the most joyful places we have visited. Joyful learning coupled with purposeful challenge makes Thrive truly an incredible place. The laughter and engagement flows through every hall and classroom.

2) Students know what they are learning and why. Katherine Smith students, including the fourth-grade student (pictured in Quality Work + Project-Based Learning at Katherine Smith Elementary) who shared her writing project goals with us, know what they need to do to accomplish a project or a task. The project was personalized to her goals and she was working at her own pace to accomplish them. Educators from Katherine Smith share that this doesn't happen overnight, but with great PBL facilitation even kindergartners can have this level of focus and clarity.

3) Blend of individual, collaborative team and large group work. Intrinsic Schools in Chicago is literally designed, both in structure and in instruction, to be a blend of individual and team work. Students all work in big learning pods and rotate between groups or one-on-one instruction with their teachers.

4) Students use personalized technology to produce as well as consume. Student-centered learning demands students spend at least some portion of their day working on personalized learning tasks or projects. CICS Irving Park students in Chicago use the Summit platform during part of their school day, and staff now find that discipline issues are lower and engagement is skyrocketing. CICS Irving Park partners with LEAP Innovations in their personalized learning pursuit, working together to ensure the learning is not just individualized but that it is also meaningful and connected to the real-world.

5) Students have some opportunity to work at their own pace and explore their own interests. Exploring student interests (and interests that they may not even realize they have) is core to a great student-centered environment. Students also work on addressing competencies, or skills, and do so at their own pace. Da Vinci students ebb and flow in and out of group work and individual projects, which are usually designed based off of student interests. Many students at Da Vinci are working towards mastering competencies and earning SNHU credits for doing so. They get to choose focus areas for their learning, which may include learning about communities and causes that they are most passionate about. Students are often working on a similar set of goals, but not all on the same activity or task.

6) Students are doing the bulk of the work and the talking. Students ideas and voices are front and center in student-centered learning environments. Design39 students are confident communicators and collaborators. Learning Experience Designers (also known as teachers) get students started and guide their learning, but allow for lots of student discussion and work time. On our visit last spring, students were working on their own or in groups throughout the school. One group of third graders we chatted with were addressing this question: "How might we define ourselves within this world we live in?"

7) There are multiple forms of assessment, feedback and demonstrations of learning. Students in student-centered learning environments get lots of feedback. They get individual feedback, hopefully on both academic and social and emotional goals. They also get group or team feedback, maybe based on projects or a team activity. At Cougar New Tech in the El Paso Independent School District, students keep their projects up in an in-school museum. Whenever visitors come, they get to practice their presentations and receive feedback to improve their work.

8) Instruction, culture and environment reflect and include student and staff diversity. From the Secretary to the Vice Principal, C havez Multicultural Academic Center staff truly reflect the community and students served. The halls and walls are covered with student artwork, cultural displays and messages of empowerment around diversity as being a strength. Students see themselves in their learning space and their cultural strengths are highlighted throughout their learning day and in the physical school environment.

What else would you add? Above all else, there is no better sign than being in a school environment where educators, parents and students express they are joyful about their school and confident in the quality of teaching and learning.

For more, see:
Stay in-the-know with all things EdTech and innovations in learning by signing up to receive the weekly Smart Update . This post includes mentions of a Getting Smart partner. For a full list of partners, affiliate organizations and all other disclosures, please see our Partner page

Emily is the CEO of Boundless. Follow Emily on Twitter at @EmilyLiebtag.

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8 Things to Look For in a Student-Centered Learning Environment

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When you walk into a school, what do you look for? When envisioning what type of learning environment is ideal for your child or the students you work with, what are the most important characteristics? What are the most positive, memorable experiences from your own schooling?

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So many words, but note Blended Learning is "student centered!"