Personalized Learning

Professional development is increasingly being described in terms of "personalized learning" with individuals having control over how they spend their learning time not just for work but also for personal growth. This practice connects educators to a larger network of co-learners and resources. Just as we work to individualize and personalize learning for students, we do the same for teachers who are empowered to design their own "PD" with the "P" representing personal and professional. Learning has no boundaries as we pull in and share information in our network feeding our curiosity whether it be for Thai cooking, core strength training, differentiated instruction or using multimedia in assessments.  

A couple places to get a feel for this shift in professional learning are the EdSurge blog for field reports on how various schools and districts are "remixing" their PD and a white paper entitled "Solving the Professional Learning Crisis".

The familiar approach to professional development is to attend workshops in-school and travel to conferences. A shift has occurred which now puts the individual educator at the center of the professional learning process. Instead of relying on in-person, infrequent sources for development, educators now create Personal Learning Networks (PLN) made up of digital learning resources and people. PLNs not only provide learning opportunities, but build community by offering a forum for sharing ideas and collaborating with others. Speak with an ICL team member to learn more about using educator blogs, Twitter,podcasts, Nings and other digital resources to construct a PLN to meet your personal learning needs. 

For resources to support your personalized learning, look to check out the PD & ICL section of the Web Resources for Learning Web site. 

Blogging

Writing is a key component of our PYP curriculum, especially as our students learn in two languages. One location in which to give students easy access to their writing (i.e., no lost papers) is our school-wide system of Google Docs. The 24/7 access to one's work and ability to collaborate on projects and/or peer editing definitely enhances our writing program. A second tool to support student writing is blogging. Google provides a blogging system called Blogger.

Blogging is both rewarding and motivating for students as it is an authentic task of writing for an audience other than just their teacher. With a click of a hyperlink, bloggers can gather high quality information from our library Online Resources page to further leverage the connectivity that Blogger provides. They can then include links to Web sites as well as embed images and video into their blogs to further make connections in their thinking. Settings can be applied to limit the audience to parents of individual students, your classroom or the whole grade level. Blogs also can be set to be public on the Web. Blogging is about providing a continuously updated stream of communications, and clearly puts students into the position of constantly going through the writing process to publish their work. The comment feature in blogs enables a focus on analysis skills as students react to one another's posts. The conversation and learning go on outside the regular school day thus supporting blended learning.

Take a look at an excellent blog post about implementing blogging in your classroom. Notice the expansive conversation that develops in the commenting strands. Consider how students' blogs might encourage ongoing discussions about books, science activities, current events, and students' individual interests in the classroom. Here are two more helpful blog posts.

• 6th Graders Have Their Say: Why Students Value Blogging
• Why Blogging is So Valuable in the Elementary Classroom (Check the references section for links to other excellent resources)

Multimedia Poetry Books

The Grade 3 team will be doing a poetry unit later in the year. One of their options for students to write their poetry using multimedia is the Book Creator app on the iPad. Students can handwrite, add text, record their voice, draw images and insert photos into their digital books.

Poetry writing is just one of many ways that we can use Book Creator to have students be creative and communicate their understanding. Here are a few links to give you more info about using Book Creator for a poetry project.

Book Creator Overview

iBook on how to do a poetry project with Book Creator

iBook of student poetry projects

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