Food for Thought: Personalized Learning

Dear all,

Hope you all enjoyed the International Festival on Saturday afternoon. It was a great afternoon, I felt the best in my 5 years because it was more relaxed with a street party atmosphere. It is afternoon’s like this that differentiate true international school communities from want to be international schools.

This week’s food for Thought is going to be in two parts so that it is manageable for everyone. Part 1 starts with an amusing 10 minute Sir Ken extract that is shared to provoke you to think about personalized learning in an indirect context. His talk touches on unexplored talent, the miracle of being born and ends by saying, “nothing is so important as an idea whose time has come,” which I believe is why we need to be focusing our ISHCMC future on Personalized learning. Sir Ken then says, “nothing is so influential as a life well lived,”  and for us that lays down the challenge has to how we create the foundation for that life through the education and experience we give each and every one of our students. Again this has to be by seeing each ISHCMC students as an individual and personalizing their experience. 

Understanding Personalized learning is very important for all of us because as ISHCMC moves forward it needs to become more and more embedded in our classrooms, if we are to truly assist students be the best learners they can be. Five to ten years ago we were talking about differentiated teaching strategies, then it was individualized learning, both of which are controlled by the teacher. Today we are talking more and more about personalized learning where teachers pass control to the students. The new PYP model stresses Student Agency. Other system refer to this as Personalized Learning or Student centered learning. This short video introduces you to the transformation that is needed. It stress four key principles that need to be present for this transformation of education: Personalized Learning, Competency Based Learning, Learning Happens Any Place and Any Where and finally Students Take Ownership. 

One of the key areas that becomes very obvious when one reads about personalized learning is the use of data to both identify and then track student development of skills and the impact of these upon their learning. This is a fundamental part of personalized learning and one that we will have to work very hard to develop at ISHCMC. This short promotional video highlights how algorithms and systematic planning can make personalized learning come true in schools. 

Next week we will go deeper into this topic.

Have a good afternoon,

Yours

Adrian

Additional News Article that you might like to scan.

Here is article about the importance of philosophical thinking routines for our changing world. Again it supports our move to introduce Philosophy for Children across all Grades in ISHCMC. Again we are aligned with progressive thinking about education.

https://psmag.com/education/ireland-pushes-philosophy