The Messy Reality of Personalized Learning
<i>&gt;Personalized learning, though premised on differentiating one student from another, has seemed to work best when it attends, first and foremost, to the needs of teachers as a group. If tech is, indeed, merely a tool of personalized learning, then what does that make the teacher?</i><p>It makes the teacher more of a facilitator&#x2F;coach&#x2F;mentor and also a proctor for administering tests.<p>This is a long article and headline of <i>&quot;personalized learning&quot;</i> and how it was described in the article was unfamiliar to me.  That jargon of &quot;personalized learning&quot; seems to translate to &quot;laptop-based learning&quot;.  The laptop&#x2F;Chromebook is the <i>primary</i> transmission of material.  The teacher becomes a <i>secondary</i> role -- help answer extra questions&#x2F;etc.<p>The author of the article is biased with the premise that the teachers that are physically there in the classroom are the best transmitters of the material.  This is <i>theoretically</i> possible but reality is that you often get an ok or under-average teacher.  The result is a bad teacher that confuses and frustrates the students instead of teaching them.  With laptop-led learning, you could assemble the best instructors (or multiple alternative virtual teachers) instead of being restricted to the random quality of the local teacher where you happen to pay your taxes.<p>As a personal example... None of my math teachers from 1st grade to high school were as good as Grant Sanderson (3Blue1Brown)[0].  (I think many HN&#x27;rs might have a similar life schooling comparison.) I would have been better off with high-quality math lessons from a laptop and then consulting with the in-classroom teacher acting as a coach to supplement the videos.  The alternative of watching teachers bored with their jobs did not help me learn math.<p>That said, I can see where some kids won&#x27;t respond to laptops and need a live instructor to transmit information.  This is where we can <i>personalize</i> the curriculum.  Some kids use more laptop videos; others utlilize the live teacher.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw&#x2F;videos" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw&#x2F;vid...</a>