Post-Reflection

What I NOW know about personalized learning is…

In looking back at my pre-reflection, I can see that I’ve learned quite a bit about personalized learning. While what I previously knew as personalized learning, is a type and way to personalize learning, it was not a complete personalized learning experience.

A true personalized learning experience includes an element of co-planning and student-directed planning, that I didn’t have in my flipped classes nor in our Georgia Virtual courses. This is a time-consuming step for the teacher, but necessary to ensure that each student is on track in the course.

In addition, true personalized learning has an element of choice. Not just the choice of how long to spend on an assignment or module, but a choice of how to demonstrate mastery. We did not do that in my flipped classroom nor in my Georgia Virtual classroom. Although, to be fair to myself, this was more to do with lack of planning time and the constraints of the district grading system in my flipped classroom.

We did several labs in my flipped courses, but many weren’t true project-based learning. They worked for the constraints of the setting, but wouldn’t pass a “personalized learning test," if that was ever a thing. The same can be said for my Georgia Virtual School classes.

And, I think the biggest takeaway is that personalized learning doesn’t have to be an all or nothing approach. It takes significant time, resources, and energy to implement a full personalized learning curriculum. So, implementing it piecemeal, unit by unit, assignment by assignment, is okay.

I’m looking forward to working on implementing my personalized learning plan from Module 5 in the next few courses.