Personalizing learning means different things to different people. The idea I want to share behind personalized learning is to empower learners including you as a learner to own and drive learning. That’s not easy especially when teachers have so much on their plates. It could be easier to continue with the status quo. But the teachers I know want the best for all of their learners. This post is to provide a few reasons to consider when you personalize learning.

1. No one is average.

In Dr. Todd Rose’s book, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World the Values Sameness, he explains why we came to embrace the scientifically flawed idea that averages can be used to understand individuals. Rose offers a powerful alternative with three principles of individuality: the jaggedness principle (talent is never one-dimensional), the context principle (traits are a myth), and the pathways principle (we all walk the road less traveled). He explains that we are all unique and can take full advantage of individuality to gain an edge in life.

So why is this one of my reasons to personalize learning? I believe each of us is unique and all of us are learners. When I read Dr. Rose’s book, he explained about variability and why education has to change to meet the needs of each individual learner.

“Why is there no average learner?”

2. The Myth of Learning Styles.

We are all unique as Dr. Rose mentioned in his book, End of Average. Because of who we are and how we all learn in different ways, learners have preferences about how they learn. According to the authors [Riener and Willingham, 2014], whether we call it talent, ability, or intelligence, people vary in their capacity to learn different areas of content, differ in their background knowledge, and, intertwined with ability, they differ in their interests. When we identify a learner as one learning style over another, it does not follow the research about how the brain works. We use all of the modalities because that is how our brain works.

So why is this one of my reasons to personalize learning? I’ve seen so many learners labeled visual or kinesthetic so teachers differentiated instruction based on one or two labels. All of us have multiple dimensions that make us who we are. Most of us are visual learners unless we cannot see. Even blind people visualize in their heads what they are seeing. I will be writing more about this, but I hope schools rethink why they should not use learning styles to label a child.

“Why are learning styles debunked?”

3. How our Brain Learns.

Learning is a neurobiological process indicated by the growth and strengthening of connections between neurons. The brain is constantly changing which is called neuroplasticity. This means the brain can be improved and continues to adapt and learn through life even into our old age. The human potential for learning is limitless at any age. When you learn something new, your brain makes new connections. Your brain is even active when you reflect on your learning. You learn when your brain is active especially when learners ask questions, investigate, create, or reflect on their learning. Passive exposure or listening to a lecture does not necessarily lead to learning.

So why is this one of my reasons to personalize learning? Our brain is constantly changing as we learn. When a school or parent believes that a child is born with certain traits or talents, this can cause the child to believe that’s all they are. This happened to me. I was told I wasn’t very smart. I believed that during most of my school. My parents always believed in me and fought for me. And, on my own, I read and was hungry to learn. So I did. I was lucky to have parents who believed in me and a teacher who believed in my writing. I finally realized that I could learn anything if I put my mind to it. So now I write, share, and learn something new every day. I know that every child can learn because their brain is growing and learning every day. All children can learn if we give them opportunities and the support they need.

“How does the brain work?”

4. Universal Design for Learning® as the Framework

David Rose and Ann Meyers from The Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) founded Universal Design for Learning® (UDL)  based on decades of brain research and the neuroscience of individual differences, human variability, and how we learn. UDL is about reducing or eliminating the barriers to learning and optimizing levels of support to meet the needs and interests of all learners in the classroom. They realized that the curriculum, not the learner, was the problem. UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional methods, materials, and assessments that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs.

So why is this one of my reasons to personalize learning? We need to put more energy into finding out how children learn best. Universal Design for Learning does that. The three principles, Multiple Means of Engagement, Multiple Means of Representation, and Multiple Means of  Action and Expression, pave the way. All three of the principles work together, but when you start with the “Why” of what engages you to want to learn, nothing can stop you. It is about encouraging curiosity and wonder. That passion to learn is what is so exciting about personalized learning.

“How can we reduce barriers to learning?”

5. Accountability vs. Responsibility

The word “responsibility” tends to be interchangeable with the word “accountability.” In many cases, teachers feel they are the ones responsible for students to learn. The reason is that the system seems to hold them and the school accountable for what students learn. “Accountability” refers to making, keeping, and managing agreements and expectations where “responsibility” is the feeling of ownership. So this means that each learner needs to be held accountable for what they learn by taking responsibility for their own learning.

So why is this one of my reasons to personalize learning? If the teacher is the hardest person working in the classroom, then who are the people really learning? Learning is not about passively receiving information. When the teacher is the one held accountable for what kids learn, then learning becomes work, not fun for both the teacher and learners. When our kids have a voice and choice in what and how they learn, they want to learn. They are motivated to learn. When they realize learning is for them not for a grade or for the teacher, they own it and develop agency.

“Who owns the learning?”

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All learners can learn. It is our job as educators to provide the environment and support system so learners have a voice and choice in their learning. These are just a few reasons for you to consider if you go on the journey to personalize learning for all of your learners. I plan to write more posts that explain each of these reasons in more detail and discuss learner agency in depth in several posts.

Bringing Makerspaces into Classrooms to meet STEM and STEAM

Post by Jackie Gerstein, Ed.D. @jackiegerstein, and Barbara Bray @bbray27 is also cross-posted at https://goo.gl/bnu1NB 

If there is a makerspace in your school, it may be down the hall, in the library, or in another building. If there is someone other than the teacher managing the makerspace or there is a schedule for the school, your kids may only be able to use it once a week or month. Some makerspace activities may be focusing on how to use the resources available and may not be connecting the activities to the curriculum or around a real world problem. If this is how the makerspace is set up in your school, then your kids may not have access to the resources, materials, and tools when they need them, especially for STEM or STEAM.

In deciding what resources you need based on the learners you have, you may first need to determine how your learners learn best, what projects you plan to do, how you can set up a makerspace in your classroom, and much more. This is why we decided to create a planning tool for makerspaces in the classroom for you using the Design Thinking Process and Universal Design for Learning®.

The Design Thinking Process

Design thinking is an approach to learning that includes considering real-world problems, research, analysis, conceiving original ideas, lots of experimentation, and sometimes building things by hand. The projects teach students how to make a stable product, use tools, think about the needs of another, solve challenges, overcome setbacks and stay motivated on a long-term problem. The projects also teach students to build on the ideas of others, vet sources, generate questions, deeply analyze topics, and think creatively and analytically. Many of those same qualities are goals of the Common Core State Standards. (What Does ‘Design Thinking’ Look Like in School?)

We adapted the Design Thinking Process to include additional phases based on our own experiences in schools with educators and kids.

Define the Problem: The educator along with the learners generate possible authentic problems to explore within their local community (classroom, school, social, community) which includes identification of the intended audience.

Empathy and Perspective Taking: Learners interview clients to gain an understanding of their needs and to see the problem from their perspective. The educator can assist learners in the interview process including how to develop interview questions.

Idea Generation: Learners, typically working in small groups, generate lots of ideas and questions to ask to solve the design thinking problem or challenge. Each generated possible design is analyzed as to its potential to resolve the design challenge.

Sketch Design: A blueprint or sketch of the selected design is created through pencil and paper or through an online tool such as Google Draw or Sketchup. This design can be pitched to another group for constructive feedback.

Prototype – Test – Refine: This phase is the actual creating and building of the product. To get the product to work as the plan often takes several iterations of prototype, test, and refine. Learners are encouraged to use the tools and building processes that work for them.

Feedback from User: The final design is presented to the users for their feedback. The designers ask the users about the degree to which the design met their needs asking specific questions about what worked and what still needs improvement.

Final Reflection: Learners reflect on the process in a way that works best for them – blogs, photo essays, video recording, podcast, sketchnotes, illustrated ebook.

Share Out: A goal of the design thinking process is sharing learning out to a broader public. This is typically done by sharing documentation of learning and final reflections through social media.

Universal Design for Learning® (UDL)

Universal Design for Learning® (UDL) developed by David Rose and Ann Meyers is a registered trademark of the Center for Assistive Special Technology (CAST). UDL was designed to reduce the barriers to the curriculum and maximize learning. UDL provides a framework for all learners to help them become self-directed and independent expert learners. UDL has reordered the principles and guidelines, to begin with, Multiple Means of Engagement, the Why of Learning that compliments how the Design Thinking Process involves learners in identifying an authentic problem or challenge.

• Multiple Means of Engagement (Why) is the affective network that explains how interest and purpose engages and motivates learners to want to learn.
• Multiple Means of Representation (What) is the recognition network how content is represented and how learners process information.
• Multiple Means of Action and Expression (How) is the strategic network involving how learners monitor progress and demonstrate and reflect evidence of learning.

http://www.cast.org/our-work/about-udl.html

The National Center on Universal Design for Learning goes deeper referring to the alternate version of the UDL Guidelines found in the book UDL Theory and Practice by David Rose and Ann Meyers where the order of the principles and the guidelines have changed. The UDL Guidelines provide a deep dive into each of the principles to checkpoints that provide resources, examples, and research. We pulled together the phases of the Design Thinking Process and identified specific options under each principle to create a Design Thinking Process and UDL Planning Tool for teachers.

Design Thinking and UDL Planning Tool

In the initial phase of defining the problem, the teacher involves learners to generate possible authentic problems within their local community. The problem can be defined by the teacher to encourage learner interest. We connected the UDL principle Multiple Means of Engagement to this phase by providing options for recruiting learners’ interest through optimizing relevance, value, and authenticity. To understand the problem, the teacher activates learners’ background knowledge and invites them to highlight patterns and critical features around real world problems that impact them.

The UDL connection to Engagement to the second phase of Empathy and Perspective Taking made so much sense to us. The UDL connection involves learners having options for sustaining effort and persistence by fostering collaboration and community. This phase is where learners gain an understanding of the needs of specific people about a problem from their perspective. They may interview, do observations or survey them about the problem.

Some lessons can involve a specific problem identified by the teacher who first wants to encourage empathy. We provide one example around an Egg Drop and the Design a Squishy Circuit for a Classmates (see these examples at the end of this post).

The middle phases of the Design Thinking Process involve the iterative steps related to idea generation and prototype-test-refine as well as getting feedback from the users.

As can be seen in the UDL Connections column of the Design Thinking and UDL planning tool, representation and action and expression can be explicitly addressed. Representation or the What of Learning is a strong focus during the Idea Generation and Feedback from Users phases as the educator helps learners highlight patterns, critical features, and relationships of their discoveries. The Action and Expression or the How of Learning emerges most strongly during the Creating a Blueprint and Prototype-Test-Refine Phases as learners include their own personal touches and preferred means of expression.

The final phases of the Design Thinking Process involve reflection on the design and making experiences and then sharing out the results to a broader audience.

The UDL connection to Action and Expression is especially strong in the final phases of Reflection and Sharing Out. During the reflection phase, learners are given the option to express what they learned during and because of their STEM, STEAM, Maker Education experience in a way that makes the most sense to them given the nature of the task; and their preferred means of expression. This is especially relevant given all that technology and online tools provide.

For example, students can write a blog, create a photo essay with a caption, record a podcast or video, do a hand-drawn or online sketch, create a comic.  Learners, many being savvy at the use of social networks, can then choose how they want to share out their reflections. This serves several purposes related to Action and Expression: (1) it gives learners an authentic audience, and (2) it helps other makers learn from their personal experiences.

Two Examples of STEM, STEAM, and Maker Education Activities using the Design Thinking and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Planning Tool

We hope the Design Thinking and UDL planning tool we developed helps you guide the design of learning activities that focus on STEM and STEAM and brings makerspaces into your classrooms.

We welcome any comments, ideas, or questions.

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Dr. Jackie Gerstein’s byline is, “I don’t do teaching for a living. I live teaching as my doing . . . and technology has amplified my passion for doing so.” Dr. Gerstein has been teaching in-person and online for several decades. Currently, she teaches master’s level online courses in educational technology for Boise State, Walden, and Western Governors’ Universities as well as gifted elementary education where she focuses on STEM, STEAM, and Maker Education

She believes that one of the roles and responsibilities of the 21st-century educator is to share resources, ideas, and instructional strategies with other educators.

Jackie actively blogs at  https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/ and tweets at https://twitter.com/jackiegerstein

Additional Resources referenced from Jackie’s blog:

• Introducing Design Thinking to Elementary Learners
• Video Game Design with Elementary Learners
• Student Voice Comes With Teachers as Listeners
• Giving Students a Voice Models High-Quality Learning Processes
• Today’s Education Should Be About Giving Learners Voice and Choice.
• Show Learners The Possibilities and Get out of the Way

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Barbara Bray worked with Jackie to design the Design Thinking Process and UDL Tool. This is Barbara’s blog so all the information about her is under the about tab. Barbara co-authored two books on personalized learning with Kathleen McClaskey: Make Learning Personal and How to Personalize Learning and actively blogs at http://barbarabray.net/ and tweets at https://twitter.com/bbray27 

by Barbara Bray and Kathleen McClaskey

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is used to design curriculum, lessons and instruction based on the diversity of the learners in their classroom. The three principles of UDL are:

• multiple means of representation
• multiple means of expression and action
• multiple means of engagement

When a teacher understands his/her learners through the UDL lens, he/she creates a flexible learning environment and provides opportunities for learner voice and choice. When lessons are designed using the UDL model, the lesson includes goals, methods, materials, tools, and assessments to reach and support the maximum amount of learners in the classroom.

Learners can use this model to help them understand how they learn best and what learning path they can take to become an independent expert learner, leveraging their natural abilities in the process. This process helps the learner create their personal learning profile that is understood by both teacher and learner.

The importance of this strategy is that both the teacher and the learner understand who the learner is and how they learn best. The learner and the teacher uses the UDL lens to personalize learning. So what does that look like? Here are two eighth grade students and their Personal Learner Profiles.

Susan

• is an avid reader, likes to write descriptively, and enjoys drawing.
• is anxious when she speaks in front of others.
• forgets the sequence, moral and message of the story.
• wants to ask questions but is uncomfortable voicing her concerns.
• works better individually or in a small group.

Justin

• reads and writes at a third grade level.
• requires projects to be broken down into smaller segments.
• has a difficult time organizing and little ability to interpret concepts.
• needs to know purpose behind reading assignments.
• loves to draw and is interested in multimedia.

For US History, eighth graders study the Civil War.  There is so much information on the Civil War. The teacher and learners  needed to choose one essential or anchor standard. In this case, they determined that the main issue learners had problems with was analyzing text and making connections to a concept.

Essential or Anchor Standard

> Key Ideas and Details (Informational Text)

RI.8.3. Analyze how a text makes connections among and distinctions between individuals, ideas, or events (e.g., through comparisons, analogies, or categories).

After determining the essential standard, the teacher and learners identified supporting standards for the history topic: Civil War. The power of using historical information such as primary and secondary sources is that learners can use visual information in multiple forms to understand the concept. They also were going to choose one subtopic to do a short project.

Supporting Standards

> Integration of Knowledge and Ideas (Integration of History)

RH.6-8.7. Integrate visual information (e.g., in charts, graphs, photographs, videos, or maps) with other information in print and digital texts

> Comprehension and Collaboration (Speaking and Listening)

SL.8.1. Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 8 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing their own clearly.

> Research to Build and Present Knowledge (Writing)

W.8.7. Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self-generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration.

> Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas (Speaking and Listening)

SL.8.5. Integrate multimedia and visual displays into presentations to clarify information, strengthen claims and evidence, and add interest.

After the teacher and learners chose the standards, they brainstormed questions about the Civil War. They worked in pairs to prioritize questions until they chose one essential question.

Essential Question

What are the causes of the Civil War?

Learners then paired with another learner to come up with supporting questions. The pairs prioritize those questions until they came up with one question that they will research and answer for their project.

Supporting Questions:

• Why did southern states secede from the union?
• What events or publications sparked the start of the Civil War?
• Was slavery the main issue for the war’s beginning?
• What other factors contributed to the civil war beginning?
• If slavery began in 1619, why did it take 200 years for it to become an issue?
• Why did the South believe that they needed to continue slavery?

The learning strategies Susan and Justin used were based on their learner profiles to help them meet the Common Core and demonstrate what they know and understand. Because Susan and Justin understand how they learn best through their UDL lens, they were able to make choices for themselves. Those choices included how they access information, how they are engaged with the information, and how they like to express what they know.

To personalize a unit of study like the Civil War, it is more than just memorizing battles, events, people, places, and times. The essential and supporting questions push the investigation of history further. This project encourages diverse learners to own and direct their own learning about the Civil War. Susan and Justin have diverse learning challenges, yet both of them have a passion for drawing. Because they were able to choose how they respond to the question, they were more motivated to design a title graphic and a Prezi presentation that utilized their creative talents. They were responsible for  their learning by choosing the question, the direction of their presentation, and which one of them did each of the tasks to complete their project.

Universal Design for Learning is the guide for schools for personalizing learning to meet the Common Core State Standards.