(another program that will be posted online – check here)
Many schools and libraries are starting to embrace personalized learning, blended learning, the flipped classroom or whatever new buzzword appears. At the Online School for Girls, they’re talking about “competency-based instruction” that puts learners at the center, meeting their needs and goals (in other words, it’s not teacher or student driven, it’s learner driven). This approach allows teachers to work smarter.
Projects are remapped to put the student learner at the center, allowing for deeper engagement with the materials :
- what major competencies are desired?
- what is the individual student profile (what type of learner are they? what do they already know?)
- what “pathway options” are there to get the student to understand the material?
- what operational elements need to be designed?
remember: the pathway is less important than the competencies
You can build units in your LMS – Haiku, Schoology, WhippleHill, LibGuides, Moodle, etc. – chunking competencies and building in the pathway options.
Personalized learning is data-driven: always assign what students are learning and circle back if necessary. In other words, assess assess assess (not necessarily formal assessments!).
In order to do this, you need to think about the school climate and have conversations about pedagogy. For this to work, creating a climate of personalized learning needs to be a strategic intention, with an evaluation of space and investment in infrastructure for what the student’s needs are. Does the school’s mission have learners at the center?
The next speaker was from SFPL, highlighting their new literacy and learning center, a place where all kinds of learning can take place. They’ve relabeled their classroom the Learning Studio/Learning Theatre, giving it flexible furnishings that can be positions to best assist what the program is.
Other ideas:
- develop a public instruction plan
- create a collection of resources and programs
- instructional materials and tools are important (use YouTube for a tutorial collection, create handouts as take-aways)
Most learners want hands-on help! Make that happen with drop-in classes, 1:1 tech help (20 min sessions), online course instruction and meet-ups.
Finally, we heard from VATech, which has created a program that stresses empowering students by partnering with faculty – to do this they’ve developed programs and tools.
Good place to start: check with the first year experience librarians at schools popular with students and build down from that
One thing they’ve created is an iPad tour of the library: auto-generated, outcome based tour (there are also auto-graded assessments). They’re now thinking about beacons, QR codes and apps to provide the same opportunities.
It’s important to train the trainers: creating lesson plans and activities that teachers can use/drop-in to their classes. Your role is that of coach/consultant, not teacher. Example? their Working with the Library toolkit. The anecdotal evidence is that this works, freeing the librarians to do 1:1 assistance.
VT has also created an Instructional Learning Community with the assumption that all librarians are learners. It’s open to anyone who wants to talk about teaching and includes a Read/Lead group who read and discuss a book that deals with learning, pedagogy, schools, etc.
Tool to check out: EDpuzzle (allows students to insert questions they have about the video tutorials they’re watching)
Venn Librarian 