3.+Strengths+&+Weaknesses

= Strengths & Weaknesses of Personalized Learning =

Try to identify the strengths and weaknesses of personalized learning referred to in the following video.
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What if personalized learning goes too far and becomes hyperpersonalization?
"In many ways, hyperpersonalization has the potential to limit students to only the content that they want to see, hear and read about. While considering personalization and technology, we need to think about the role of critical thinking, diversity and chance (serendipity), and their importance of learning and society, and to the long-term implications of driving digital personalization (customization) in terms of the future of public education" (McRae, 2010, p. 10).

What if stakeholders have ulterior motives?
"Personalization of learning and emerging technologies are engaged in a political handshake that must be examined. There are, for example, questions of teacher and student efficacy in a K-12 educations system when personalization is coupled primarily with the discourse on emerging technologies and their benefits" (McRae, 2010, p. 10).

"The imposition of standardized tests, like the FSAs, Grades 10–12 provincial exams, district- and school-wide writes, runs contrary to meeting the needs of individual students and exploring personalized learning paths. However, the testing industry, worth billions, is the driver. Both personalized learning and the testing agenda are being pushed by the same reformers" (Sims, 2010)

"There is a concerted attempt to commercialize and corporatize public schools. Through deliberate underfunding of public schools, policymakers have created space for business as consumers and salesmen. Corporate giants, like Bill Gates, are quite willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to support charter schools in order to ensure a marketplace for consumers of goods and services provided by companies that will earn billions. Others are turning to schools to provide students with specific job skills, so they do not have to invest money in training workforces" (Sims, 2010).

"Teachers would no longer be teaching, but would be liberated to facilitate personalized learning for each student. Teachers are asking for class size, class composition, and specialist supports that allow them to meet the needs of every child. However, the reformers have visions of students attached to wireless digital devices taking personalized learning courses on-line, and students going out into the community to buy services" (Sims, 2010)

What if we can't see the forest, for the trees?
"We should also not be distracted from other critical issues by a focus on personalization empowered by emerging technologies" (McRae, 2010, p. 10).

What if students become good at interacting through technology, but not with each other face-to-face?
"Technology and social isolation are at the forefront of my concerns. I would classify myself as a proponent of technology; I use it everyday in my math and science classes, both as a primary teaching tool and as a supplementary aid. However, technology is a tool to use, not something that excuses us from the thinking process itself" (Suhr, 2011).

"We should consider the personal cost to 8-18-year-olds who average 10 hours and 45 minutes per day exposed to media, or the Canadian Paediatric Society's recent policy recommendation of no screen time for children under two years of age and a maximum of two hours for children older than two" (McRae, 2010, p. 10).

"Our students are spending so much time connected to Facebook, Twitter, wireless handheld, and television. Do we then want their education experience to be with a screen? When students are wired and immersed in the new social media, who will teach them media literacy, boundaries, and appropriate usage? Where will they learn about community, civic responsibility, and a just, civil society?" (Sims, 2010)