Facebook backs learning system giving students control over lessons
Facebook has backed the Summit Personalised Learning Platform (SPLP), reflecting its next big step into education. The aim of SPLP is to give students more power over how and when they learn by presenting them with a year’s worth of lessons broken down by subject, thus allowing the student to work through the content at their own pace. Teachers become helpers or mentors to students, helping them to work through all the content in an organised fashion, rather than directing the work they must do and when. More than 1,500 American educators have learned how to use the system over the summer via the Summit Basecamp, with 120 charter schools planning to implement the system when school resumes in September.

Facebook is out to upend the traditional student-teacher relationship.

On Tuesday, Facebook and Summit Public Schools, a nonprofit charter school network with headquarters in Silicon Valley, announced that nearly 120 schools planned this fall to introduce a free student-directed learning system developed jointly by the social network and the charter schools.

Rather than have teachers hand out class assignments, the Facebook-Summit learning management system puts students in charge of selecting their projects and setting their pace. The idea is to encourage students to develop skills, like resourcefulness and time management, that might help them succeed in college.

“As parents and kids and teachers get access to this type of learning, I think more and more will want it,” Diane Tavenner, the co-founder and chief executive of Summit Public Schools, said in a telephone interview.

The Facebook-backed platform is entering the public school software market when rival tech giants like Google and Microsoft have already established big footprints in education, in an attempt to build brand loyalty among students early.