Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums THINKING BIG About Gifted Education Gifted and the Personalized Learning Movement

My local public middle school is one of I think 100 pilot schools for this personalized learning curriculum. https://www.summitlearning.org/ Its still a bit new but Facebook lent the Summit program some programmers. My kid is not in the pilot (there was a lottery) so that is about all I know so far.

This brings up for me the following opinion. Gifted is (slowly but surely) "losing". At least in California. Or the USA. That's my impression from reading the tea leaves in articles. That, if we're so gifted, why are gifted programs decreasing (would love to find some statistics on this). (Maybe if we were smart we wouldn't have used a polarizing term like gifted.)

So its hard to advocate, or get results, for programs that (are perceived to) benefit only 1% of the population. So the idea is, personalized learning benefits 100% of the population. It may well be taking off. And the question is, how well do such programs benefit the gifted. Nominally, they would at least let our kids work ahead, find more material, and be less bored. Nominally, these programs teach to all 100 percentiles at once, as opposed to traditional day-one page-one schools that teach squarely to the 40th percentile.

That said, they don't treat the unique social and emotional needs of the gifted. They don't help gifted kids find gifted peers. They may emphasize covering more material, instead of covering material in greater depth. It could help in gifted identification. The latter issues could be addressed within personalized learning. SEN is harder, but at least these programs could help identify some of the gifted.

So what say ye? In terms of realpolitik, should we throw our weight behind personalized learning, as a movement for 100% of the students, and abandon the limited results we've had in promoting straight gifted programs that are perceived as polarizing or unfair, or having only 1% native constituency, in what is perceived as a zero-sum game of public education?

All the districts around here go on about "personalized learning" and it comes off as kind of a joke, considering they do nothing, or any efforts in terms of policies don't actually translate to much in the actual classroom. Our principal didn't even know what the policies were that the school board had approved for differentiation, acceleration, etc. Basically, it doesn't work in a traditional classroom. There is no way a teacher can plan a curriculum for 25 or even 35 (in our case) kids. So at the same time they are talking about "personalized learning" they are using cookie cutter curriculums that will raise their math and reading state scores.

edited to add, I see this is an online program you are talking about. Not sure how that works, or the point of going to school, if they are going to be in front of the computer for hours each day.

We have the "modern learning environment" (it has a new similar name now but I have forgotten it). It works well if for gifted kids IF they have good EF, are self starting and motivated, work well with visual input (though it is you tube or khan academy not a learning platform), can handle noise and are not easily distracted. This seems to be a minority of HG kids but I suspect MG and bright kids do well but bright kids usually do and MG often do with some modufications. Ds9's teacher's stock answer to any question is "i don't know, google it" but since ds9 is fairly sure he must know at least some of the time he now mistrusts me when i genuinely don't know. I think 9 and 10 is too young and if it weren't for the fact most parents can afford tutoring this would be obvious but that is only my feeling. I changes ds7 to another school first term and ds9 is changing next week for the last term.

I think the clear pathway in the article may help kids keep on track providing they have good support.

I'm skeptical. My kids go to a school that's pretty serious about individualizing education for each student, and they have to limit enrollment in order to be able to do this. Even so, it's not easy.

I suspect that "personalized learning curriculum" means something like "watch videos and work online at your own pace." There are problems with an approach like this: first, it requires a lot of motivation from the student, which kids aren't exactly known for. Second, it requires that kids have an ability to be autodidacts, because you can't ask the video a question when you don't understand something. So you have to find the answer yourself. IMO, this is asking way too much. Note: Experience makes me dubious about claims that you can ask the teacher --- teacher is already answering someone else's question and another kid is waiting. Like I said, it's not easy, and yet my kids' school is very small.

Third, students learn what the video decides they should learn, and not much else (barring high motivation). Fourth, you can't have a conversation with a video regarding your thoughts on whatever it was talking about. Class discussions led by a knowledgeable teacher are essential to learning. That can't happen if everyone is working on his own video and the teacher is running around answering a dozen different questions.

It might work as a system for imparting discrete skills, such as performing mathematical algorithms or identifying linking verbs. But as a tool for providing a meaningful education that includes problem-solving skills? I doubt it.

Not to mention that personalized learning systems risk becoming excuses for cutting teaching jobs. I may be critical of the overall poor quality of the US teacher corps, but the solution is to improve the teaching corps, not to buy software licenses.

Perhaps "personalized learning" is the latest buzzword. And as with many curriculums, the devil is in the details. I or we should really give Summit a fair shake, they don't just plunk the kids in front of a list of Khan academy videos.

True, the questions we raised are valid. But its just possible it can be better than many alternatives. Like schools with no gifted programs, that teach day-one page-one to the 40th percentile. In principle at least a gifted student can work their way through the material. Though, what happens when they get too many years ahead and finish out the 12th grade material in 9th grade.

It is my understanding (and I may be wrong, that is to say, it may not be the same everywhere) that public school districts are issuing laptops or i-pads to support personalized learning, and the curriculum is largely online making books nearly obsolete.

While there is good and bad in everything, I am wary of "Personalized Learning" and understand it is a new means of data collection, which may include:
- turning on camera or microphone to observe the student
- collecting keystrokes
- recording how many minutes the student spends on each screen page
- biometric data:
-- watching the eyes as they scan the screen page
-- capturing student finger print

Learning from a pre-selected subset of lessons contained in one's device (typically a laptop or i-pad) seems to me to be a type of censorship... getting students to willingly forsake books and the vast stores of knowledge found in their pages (including differing perspectives over time)... as "old fashioned".

Kids may be more drawn into the "virtual" world, and be interacting less with the "real" world.

Additionally, because each student may be graded according to different criteria on assignments of varying complexity (differentiated task demands), concepts such as grades and class rank become rather meaningless.

Not a fan.

Without using the word "gifted", I believe the study here is illustrating that 15%-45% of students are not well served under current grade-level standard curriculum and pacing.

Our district is doing something they are calling Mass Customized Learning. When discussing it with other parents, and even teachers, we often laugh at the title itself. A lot of eye-rolling, etc. And I feel it is primarily a move to a more electronic system, an amount of screen time that cannot be healthy, and could also just be a bunch of buzz-words and hot air.

However, like everything else in life, I don't believe it's either all good or all bad. I am skeptical, and am curious to see how the pendulum swings, and what trend comes next. The good that I have seen come out of this, at least for our family, is not just a willingness but a push (from the district) for acceleration. There are so many threads here and elsewhere in which the parents are fighting and pushing for acceleration, but we never even had to ask. DD7 is currently going to 3rd grade for math. 4th grade is in a different building 15+ minutes away, and they have already voiced intention to bus her there next year in order to continue the acceleration. So, at least in our case, they are not just having the gifted kids work ahead on their iPads individually (though that does happen to an extent) but are also being flexible in grouping children by ability and not just by age.

State law still mandates that she have a GIEP and the differentiation that goes along with it (which is never enough!) and she has a separate document for her acceleration plan. So I suppose my overall stance on the individualized learning movement is that it's probably good for gifted kids, as they're less likely to be stuck working so far below their ability. If it leads to states no longer requiring IEP/GIEPs for the gifted, then I would probably reconsider. If you live in a state that already doesn't require differentiation, then that's a whole other problem, I guess.

"Mass Customized Learning." LOL. In my more cynical moments it seems hopeless to me, and I think that the vast majority of people working in education have no critical thinking ability whatsoever. I think the kids in the middle will do well even with poor curriculums and disorganized schools but it's those at the top or the bottom that really suffer due to all the chaos and reforms and trends which are based on basically nothing. "Equity" is all the rage around here, but no one seems to know what it actually means. Our district now wants to bus kids right past a middle school to a different one that is about 30 min. away, citing "race issues" even though the vast majority of students at all of the schools are white and middle or upper middle class.

In 2010, a book was published on this subject: Inevitable: Mass Customized Learning. Although this was just 6 years ago, the widespread use of technology for education was a radical new concept at the time. Common Core wasn't widely known, and hadn't yet been widely adopted. This was prior to the proliferation of using technology for data capture and collection, when it seemed to be widely believed that technology would be exclusively used for presenting information to students, not for collecting information on students.

This is a good thing.

Once "differentiation" meant differentiated instruction, curriculum and pacing... now it can mean anything that is different (and not necessarily better suited to meeting a child's educational needs in their zone of proximal development (ZPD))... therefore beware the meaningless buzzword. I mention this rather frequently because there are always new parents joining who may not have heard the buzzword warning.

Well! If you want to talk about buzzwords, Summit learning certainly piles them on:



Self-directed empowered deep learners building authentic meaningful cognitive skills on demand! Who could say no to that?

(And yes, they collect data: it's not just a feature, it's a benefit.)