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Personalized learning--let's put digital tools to good use.
It's time for ALL students to excel!

Critical Thinking to Personalized Learning

What keeps teachers up at night? For me it was the question, "Why are my students struggling at the end of every unit?"
I noticed that my students were very dependent on me, on their notes, and on their practice test. This was very troubling and although many students demonstrated the ability to apply the skills and knowledge being taught, it was only in the familiar context in which the concepts were introduced and soon after learning.

First, I identified the problem and the cause. I determined two root causes of this phenomenon to be:
  1. Students lacked mastery of the skills and knowledge. They were too dependent on their untrustworthy rote memory and unable to employ other techniques to supplement their low aptitude.
  2. Students lacked necessary critical thinking skills to help them determine the necessary knowledge and skills needed to problem-solve when encountering novel problems. They relied too heavily on being spoon-fed answers by their teacher so they never developed skills to learn autonomously.

Second, I explored and researched tools and techniques that would support mastery learning, autonomy, and critical thinking skills. My findings pointed towards developing metacognitive thinking skills to supplement low abilities and support problem-solving. My findings also pointed to a necessary shift from teaching "inert knowledge" to implementing engaging authentic tasks like problem-based learning to create strong schema and improve critical thinking skills.

Lastly, even though the development of metacognitive thinking skills showed a positive impact on student academic achievement, my very limited research was unable to determine whether there was indeed mastery learning and procedural fluency. This led me to wonder what else I could do to ensure that all students were gaining mastery and improving their metacognitive thinking skills. With such varied abilities within a class, how could I differentiate?

My research into critical thinking revealed that teacher feedback was still a very necessary factor for the development of metacognitive thinking skills but with 1 of me and 30+ of them, I wondered how I could possibly provide my students with regular timely feedback. How could I monitor student progress and motivate them learn to monitor their own data and use it to create personal learning goals?

The answer came to me in one of the courses at Touro's Innovative Learning Program--personalized learning (PL) or competency-based learning (CBL). Personalized learning is a student-centered and student-directed approach to instruction. Utilizing the advancements of the 21st century, personalized learning could address all of the problems mentioned above--development of concept mastery, autonomy, and critical thinking.
CLICK on the image to enlarge infographic about how to set up personalized learning in your classroom
CLICK on the image to learn more about the elements of Personalized Learning

Videos that Explore the "What, How, and Why" of Personalized Learning

CLICK to learn more about personalized learning
CLICK to find out more about how ex-Googler, Max Ventilla, founder of AltSchool has built a highly personalized educational experience
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LESSONS
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HOW-TOs
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REFERENCES
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ASSESSMENT

Useful Digital Tools to Support Personalized Learning in the Classroom

DIGITAL ASSESSMENT TOOL
HOW?
  • Create a teacher account
  • Add students using class code
  • Have students complete initial quiz of each unit to unlock their personalized study program
  • Monitor student progress
  • Use assessment data to differentiate activities and create learning goals
  • Assign lesson practices, articles, and videos as needed
DIGITAL ASSESSMENT TOOL
HOW?
  • Create a teacher account
  • Import students from Google Classroom or add students using class code or link
  • Choose: (1) videos from public archive, (2) upload your own video, or (3) pay to use school lesson videos
  • Edit: cut video length, add assessment & guiding questions, hints & feedback, and your own voice over
SCREEN RECORDER
HOW?
  • Download the recorder launcher
  • Choose: (1) to record the screen, webcam, or both and (2) size 480p, 720p, full screen, or active window
  • Click on the red record button to narrate, pause button to stop, arrows go back or forward to a pause point, and done to preview and download as a file or upload to YouTube or Screencast-O-Matic
WHY?
  • Progress monitoring feature assists with determining strengths and concerns for each student
  • Differentiation feature for activities
  • Allows students to work at their pace and level anytime and anywhere
  • Mastery/Competency-based
  • Offers math tutorial videos, hints, articles (articles, guiding questions, practice problems, Q&A section, and tips), and a personalized study program with recommendations
  • Offers feedback and unlimited attempts to master content to support growth mindset and agency
WHY?
  • Customize video resources to fit the needs of your students (with your voice and your teaching style)
  • Help support autonomy and metacognitive thinking by embedding guiding questions, hints, and feedback
  • Assess what your students know and use the data to inform instruction
  • Students can complete the assignment at their pace anytime and anywhere
WHY?
  • Create customized tutorial videos to fit the needs of your students (with your voice and your teaching style)
  • Align to your curriculum and lessons using desired academic language
  • Upload to EdPuzzle to embed questions to promote metacognitive thinking
  • Have your students use this tool to create their own math tutorial videos and assess their understanding
  • It's free!

Standards Addressed in this Capstone Project

MATHEMATICS/ELA CONTENT
8 MATHEMATICAL PRACTICES
7 STANDARDS FOR EDUCATORS
7 STANDARDS FOR STUDENTS
21ST CENTURY SKILLS (4 C's)

Here is what you will find under the links to the right for each image shown below.

LESSONS
Lessons on how to support the development of metacognitive thinking skills and use digital tools like Khan Academy or Ed Puzzle to support personalized learning.
HOW-TOs
Instructional videos, articles and case studies on implementing digital citizenship personalized learning in your classroom and use digital tools to differentiate learning or create your own math tutorial videos.
REFERENCES
Valuable resources: websites, articles, books, blogs, research/references, academic papers and useful tools.
ASSESSMENTS
Assessments: data and scoring guides/rubrics.