A 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation study found that 'Eight- to eighteen-year-olds spend more time with media than in any other activity
besides (maybe) sleeping-an average of more than 7½ hours a day, 7 days a week.'
the concept of curation as a pedagogical tool to embolden critical inquiry and engagement
Jenkins highlights the type of online activities that participatory spaces enable-archive, annotate, appropriate and recirculate-which occur in
real time and in the context of abundant information flow
To curate, historically, has meant to take charge of or organize, to pull together, sift
through, select for presentation, to heal and to preserve
The preservation and organization of content online is now largely
the responsibility of the individual in highly personalized information spaces
Across all levels of education today, students enter the classroom with a certain level of familiarity with digital tools and platforms (Prensky, 2001;
Ofcom, 2010; Rosen, 2010). The notion that this familiarity translates to a heightened level of technological competence has been contested at all levels
of education
the distribution of technology in our classrooms remains radically uneven
about 48 percent of low-income families have a home computer compared with 91
percent of higher-income families, according to a recent report by Common Sense Media,
an independent group that advocates for kids.
even students who don’t have home computers or Internet access are increasingly
likely to own a cell phone. “Teens, Smartphones, &
Texting,” a March 2012 study by the Pew Internet & American Life
Project, has found that 77 percent of young adults ages 12 to 17 own a cell
phone, and 31 percent of those ages 14 to 17 have a smartphone
the costs of hardware, software, and networking can add up, and during budget
crises—particularly when schools are cutting staff—the introduction,
maintenance, and upgrade of technology can be a political challenge as well as a
financial one
After
Hardware obsolescence is one of the things that schools have always had to
consider
the flood of devices currently available (including netbooks, tablets, ereaders,
and handhelds) and those that are “hotly anticipated” make the decision of which
computer to buy incredibly complicated
are student data and projects interoperable—that is, can you easily move files
from one type of computer to another (say, from a Windows-based operating system
to an Apple-based one or from a mobile device to a laptop)? These types of
questions are particularly important if schools house a number of different
kinds of devices
Schools also need to consider the impact of potentially hundreds of devices on
their WiFi networks.
Schools must also ask if students will be able to access their schoolwork from
home
Today’s factory-model education system, which was built to standardize the way we teach, falls short in educating successfully each child for the simple reason that just because two children are the same age, it does not mean they learn at the same pace or should follow the same pathway
what no one disputes is that each student learns at a different pace
everyone has a different aptitude—or what cognitive scientists refer to as “working memory” capacity, meaning the ability to absorb and work actively with a given amount of information from a variety of sources, including visual and auditory
everyone has different levels of background knowledge—or what cognitive scientists refer to as “long-term memory.” What this means is that people bring different experiences or prior knowledge into any learning experience, which impacts how they will learn a concept.
targeting learning just above a student’s level such that it is not too easy or hard is critical to helping students be successful
the logic of personalizing learning and moving away from the current system that mandates the amount of time students spend in class, but does not expect each child to master learning.
today students do not in fact learn or master a common body of knowledge and skills at approximately the same time; they are merely taught them—which is far different from truly learning them.
Learning some things in common—of course not all things, but a strong foundation—is important
evidence seems to suggest that the achievement gap is exacerbated in the factory-model system when a student does not master a concept, develops holes in her learning, and the teacher just moves on to the next concept the next day.
when we move to a competency-based learning system concerned with rigor—in which students move on to new concepts only upon mastery (and there exists the notion of a minimum pace so students who are falling behind get more attention and gaps don’t grow too big)—
There are lots of notions and differing definitions of what personalized learning is, but when I, and many other disruptors use the phrase, we mean learning that is tailored to an individual student’s particular needs—in other words, it is customized or individualized to help each individual succeed.
Benjamin Bloom’s classic “2 Sigma Problem” study
by the end of three weeks, the average student under tutoring was about two standard deviations above the average of the control class.
The problem is that having a human tutor for each student is prohibitively expensive
blended learning is that we can gain the benefits of mass customization—many of the effects of a personal tutor in other words—without the costs.