Like many terms in education, the words we use to describe K-12 instructional strategies mean different things to different people. The five most common terms we’ve found to garner much debate and deliberation are:
Most educators will agree there’s a need to move in the direction of one or more of these strategies. However, if you ask them what they mean you will most likely you’ll get a variety of similar, but different answers. For example, to Otus, personalized learning happens when instructional practices, content, and learning environments are tailored to the unique needs and learning preferences of individual students. The key to personalizing learning is data. This is because it is very unlikely that teachers can accurately tailor instructional strategies and content to each student when simply relying on intuition.
A major challenge to effectively realizing any of these approaches in a school system is in the amount of effort required for educators to fully understand the academic, cognitive, and social-emotional status of every child. We believe that this is because all of the information we know about students (grades, attendance, behaviors, performance on classroom-based assignments, etc.) is scattered across technology platforms. More importantly, the information we want to know about students (strengths, passions, interest, purpose, etc.) may not be readily available.
By removing silos of data and simplifying the use of technology for educators, it empowers teachers to do what they do best, teach. While ultimately, our vision is for Otus to be a technology tool that can recommend instructional strategies, content, and assessments based on multiple points of academic and social-emotional data, we know that right now, when teachers simply have the information needed to see students holistically, every student is able to get the resources and attention they need in order to achieve their personal best.
I hope you’ll join us on November 1st for A Conversation on Modern Measures of Learning. We’ve created a new format for this conference that allows attendees to have a chance to gain valuable insight from leading educators in an environment geared toward participant-driven conversation based on the aforementioned topics. At Otus, we believe we’re better when we’re learning together.
