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| Meris Stansbury, Online Editor |
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| Photo: eSchool News |
This year, that time was reversed: 80 percent of her class time was spent moving from student to student; about one-fifth continued to be a standard lecture format. The rest of the direct-instruction materials she wanted students to see, she assigned them to watch or read at home.
Students choose when they want to eat and when they want to work during a 60-minute lunch, and they randomly can be found working in groups behind the reception desk—or in the teachers lounge.
New technologies offer promising opportunities for schools to move away from the factory-style instruction model to one where learning plans are customized for each student—something already common in special education but largely absent from the mainstream.
Coined “personalized learning,” the approach is being tested with specific populations of students in many schools and implemented with all students in places such as Waukesha’s STEM Academy.
In some schools, personalized learning aligns with a blended learning approach that mixes face-to-face teaching with online instruction.
In a time of reduced resources, some advocates say blended learning also could allow teachers in some cases to handle larger class sizes, particularly if teachers combine their classes and/or receive support from lower-paid aides or even older students. What that could mean for the quality of instruction long-term remains unknown.
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Source: eSchool News
