I just wrote a whole IB TOK lesson around technology and personalisation. A long time ago I was heavily influenced by Neil Selwyn's, Is Technology Good for Education? and it comes through clearly in the lesson: https://www.internationalschoolhistory.com/perpectives-in-technology.html But the bottom line for me has always been that the point of schools is to teach kids what they couldn't learn elsewhere and wouldn't want to learn unless we forced them to. We do education because it is good for them and in the long-term interests of society.
In spirit of analogies...I liken personalized learning in K12 to learning how to cook. You can put a novice chef in a kitchen full of the most wonderful gadgets and ingredients...but without any input from the master chef, will you get a good meal? I am responsible for teaching my students foundational work such as "knife skills", "seasoning", "Mother sauces", "doneness", and basic cooking methods: frying, roasting, etc. Once these are mastered, the student is then knowledgeable enough to go forth and learn any new recipe they are interested in learning, and I can help them with the tricky parts - but until someone shows them around the kitchen...
Yes, doing hand calculations can be a bit boring and uninspiring just like cutting an entire bag of onions to drill the importance of cutting consistency can be as well...but what you do with this skill is really where the personal part comes in.
The older I get the more I believe in the importance of learning from history, and I would say that, wouldn't I? I always tried in my teaching to find analogies and connections with the kids I taught. I'm surprised that anyone wouldn't. I think there's a parallel with being interested in what the kids you teach are interested in. I always watched whatever TV programmes my primary phase groups were watching. Never missed a Byker Grove or a Grange Hill. When I was a deputy head in Swindon football was a big thing in the local community. We had a couple of lads who played in the youth team. I'm interested in everything but everything doesn't hold an interest for me. I knew little about football but I know how to learn. I think the joy of teaching lies in using your skills as a teacher to find ways to make the learning as interesting and engaging as possible. Back in the dark ages of the 1960s English language O level required candidates to master clause analysis. At the time there was a fad for elephant jokes. Our English teacher used these to help us practise our clause analysis. And I still remember that. Although I'm out of the game now I'm still passionate about learning and education. From my seat in the stands it looks as if it's ever harder for teachers in state funded schools to be creative about the way they teach whatever the schools' curriculum might be.
I worked in schools with lots of Charlton & QPR fans and always used to look out for their results. I think that did help me to build relationships with the students and indirectly helped me to be a better teacher. But it was never as helpful as I hoped when it came to teaching specific content, for the reasons I outline above.
Once I used the hamburger structure to teach paragraphs and we ended up making hamburgers and then writing paragraphs about hamburgers. Now I just teach students how to write a paragraph
A wise man (Craig Barton) once said: "[students complaining] 'When will we ever use this in real life?' What I really think students are saying is: 'I don't understand this.'"
Whenever a student in my class asks me this, I tell them to ask me again once they’ve practiced a few questions. Funny how it never comes back around once they’ve developed some fluency!
I think giving students choices works very well if you restrict the choices to things you want them to do. 1) Build a high quality task pool. 2) Restrict it to the tasks that are helpful for that student. 3) Create various activities that consist of these tasks and allow the students to choose from them. It's sort of like, "Would you like to play tennis, run a couple miles, or play basketball?" All are good exercise. I hate running, but I'd play tennis every day.
Thanks Daisy. I agree that not all challenges with learning will not be solved with personalisation for its own sake. However, I do think students' ability to participate in the selection of what they learn can be incredibly powerful in terms of intrinsic motivation.
The most exciting learning opportunity I've ever had was when I did my History AS Level and for one of our modules we got to select whatever History topic we chose and write a 3,000 word essay about it (within a range of 1000 CE to 1950 CE). I picked Genghis Khan because I was so intrigued by the idea of studying something outside of Western history. I bought books with money I earnt at my Saturday job, convinced my friends to go and see a movie about Genghis Khan with me at the cinemas, and threw myself into the work. That module has since been retired, which is a shame, as for me it was a huge motivation for my studying History at university and eventually becoming a History teacher.
I think the ability to personalise content or have it be more responsive to student interests could therefore be a really powerful tool for History learning, for example, especially at KS3, where topic selection is to some extent arbitrary, given the scope of topics it is possible to select from in the curriculum. We want students to build good historical skills at KS3 as well as a schema of basic historical knowledge, and so I think a curriculum designed around a combination of fundamental shared knowledge with the addition of personalised learning opportunities could be a really exciting alternative to the current model that I've experienced.
I don't know exactly how far you could take this, but for example, as a KS3 History teacher you could help students to identify a historical enquiry question that they are interested in, aligned to an area of History skills building (e.g. continuity and change) and support them in using AI as a tool to help students explore that enquiry question with prompts to build up subject knowledge and lead to a developed response to the enquiry question set at the start.
This is how an adult beyond formal education might pursue their interests. Take model railroading, for example. A person interested in this would learn about the history of the railroad they are modeling. They would need to learn about many facets, such as electronics, scenery modeling, building a shelf or table for the layout, and the geometry of track laying. Take quilting as another example. The geometry of fitting pieces together in a pattern, color coordination, stitching by hand or with a machine, etc. These are all things that people learn by connecting to prior knowledge or building new knowledge. Soldering is something not normally taught in school, and unless you have metalworkers in your family, you would have no prior knowledge to build on.
Thanks Daniel. I don't fully agree as my AS Level history example was from when I was 17 years old. I had probably built up what could charitably be described as a limited schema of that period in history, but had to reach for a lot of knowledge, and probably made some imprecise conclusions as a result. It still sparked something for me. My point is that the opportunity to discover something new was as important as how secure my knowledge became.
I have been researching this subject myself for a side project, and I think still one of the most effective learning methods, even in the era LLMs, is what Maria Montessori explained as "freedom within the limits". Great computer scientists like Seymour Papert and Alan Kay provided so many valuable insights for better education using power of computation, also inspired by Montessori, so I think that's could real source of ideas having current abilities of LLMs.
I find this so relatable. Whenever we talk about AI in education, there’s this huge urge to make everything look incredibly fun and tailored to what kids watch on YouTube. But in reality, true personalization isn’t about changing the wallpaper of the lesson to match a student's hobbies, but more about meeting them exactly where they are with their understanding and helping them take the next solid step at their own pace.
Great piece here. I use TONS of analogies and constantly refer to other domains during my instruction, always helping students make connections. But, I agree with you that doing so in every situation with every single student is not only impractical, but often ineffective for learning. I find that the personalizing is most useful when training behaviors, such as work ethic, study habits, organization/planning, etc. rather than content. Students immediately understand processes for success in other domains and can apply them to the classroom.
Back in the day (mid noughties), Learning Management Systems (LMS) were touted as the big enabler of Personalised Learning. I know I researched it as part of an MSc in eLearning whilst teaching Chemistry. Education policy at that time called for the teacher's role to be less sage on the stage and more as facilitator on the side-lines. Social Constructivism ruled (as did learning styles). Needless to say, results dipped. I quietly ditched the LMS and resumed explicit instruction, relegating the LMS to homework quiz marker and collector of homework. Personalised learning is knowing the needs of each student, knowing when to change tack and move the direction of the lesson. Spotting misconceptions readapting and responding to feedback (which may be as subtle as the change in body language of a pupil) is not yet, as far as I'm aware, in the repertoire of any LLM. Going beyond the capabilities of the LMS - LLMs can mark the homework..
Thanks Daisy. I've actually written a Substack inspired by yours where I built a tool in Claude for personalised learning and I'm going to be documenting how I make it work:
I’m a tutor 1 on 1, not a teacher (thus no experience of classroom management!). With that caveat, I’ve started asking my students “do you know what this word means?” when I see a bit of blankness on their faces. They do trust me enough to say “no” if they don’t (phew!) Inspired by discussions like these about content, I say “let’s look it up”. Then I demonstrate the prompt and the habit of looking beyond google’s AI summary. One of my toughest customers - 11th grade and English not his first language and a mumbler- surprised me a week later by looking up a word all by himself.
The problem is that it’s easy to do this 1 on 1, much harder or impossible with a full class. But if the student starts wanting to look things up independently, maybe that can help on the content issue.
Also, maybe I could reduce the fear even more by saying “is there anything in this paragraph that we should look up”, instead of “do you know what this word means”. As a new tutor, I’m on a pretty steep learning curve myself.
I just wrote a whole IB TOK lesson around technology and personalisation. A long time ago I was heavily influenced by Neil Selwyn's, Is Technology Good for Education? and it comes through clearly in the lesson: https://www.internationalschoolhistory.com/perpectives-in-technology.html But the bottom line for me has always been that the point of schools is to teach kids what they couldn't learn elsewhere and wouldn't want to learn unless we forced them to. We do education because it is good for them and in the long-term interests of society.
In spirit of analogies...I liken personalized learning in K12 to learning how to cook. You can put a novice chef in a kitchen full of the most wonderful gadgets and ingredients...but without any input from the master chef, will you get a good meal? I am responsible for teaching my students foundational work such as "knife skills", "seasoning", "Mother sauces", "doneness", and basic cooking methods: frying, roasting, etc. Once these are mastered, the student is then knowledgeable enough to go forth and learn any new recipe they are interested in learning, and I can help them with the tricky parts - but until someone shows them around the kitchen...
Yes, doing hand calculations can be a bit boring and uninspiring just like cutting an entire bag of onions to drill the importance of cutting consistency can be as well...but what you do with this skill is really where the personal part comes in.
The older I get the more I believe in the importance of learning from history, and I would say that, wouldn't I? I always tried in my teaching to find analogies and connections with the kids I taught. I'm surprised that anyone wouldn't. I think there's a parallel with being interested in what the kids you teach are interested in. I always watched whatever TV programmes my primary phase groups were watching. Never missed a Byker Grove or a Grange Hill. When I was a deputy head in Swindon football was a big thing in the local community. We had a couple of lads who played in the youth team. I'm interested in everything but everything doesn't hold an interest for me. I knew little about football but I know how to learn. I think the joy of teaching lies in using your skills as a teacher to find ways to make the learning as interesting and engaging as possible. Back in the dark ages of the 1960s English language O level required candidates to master clause analysis. At the time there was a fad for elephant jokes. Our English teacher used these to help us practise our clause analysis. And I still remember that. Although I'm out of the game now I'm still passionate about learning and education. From my seat in the stands it looks as if it's ever harder for teachers in state funded schools to be creative about the way they teach whatever the schools' curriculum might be.
I worked in schools with lots of Charlton & QPR fans and always used to look out for their results. I think that did help me to build relationships with the students and indirectly helped me to be a better teacher. But it was never as helpful as I hoped when it came to teaching specific content, for the reasons I outline above.
Once I used the hamburger structure to teach paragraphs and we ended up making hamburgers and then writing paragraphs about hamburgers. Now I just teach students how to write a paragraph
A wise man (Craig Barton) once said: "[students complaining] 'When will we ever use this in real life?' What I really think students are saying is: 'I don't understand this.'"
Whenever a student in my class asks me this, I tell them to ask me again once they’ve practiced a few questions. Funny how it never comes back around once they’ve developed some fluency!
The attempt to design instruction for each student reduces instructional clarity, overburdens teachers, and fragments learning experiences.
https://shoemakerf.substack.com/p/how-can-classrooms-promote-success?r=2y95p&utm_medium=ios
I think giving students choices works very well if you restrict the choices to things you want them to do. 1) Build a high quality task pool. 2) Restrict it to the tasks that are helpful for that student. 3) Create various activities that consist of these tasks and allow the students to choose from them. It's sort of like, "Would you like to play tennis, run a couple miles, or play basketball?" All are good exercise. I hate running, but I'd play tennis every day.
Thanks Daisy. I agree that not all challenges with learning will not be solved with personalisation for its own sake. However, I do think students' ability to participate in the selection of what they learn can be incredibly powerful in terms of intrinsic motivation.
The most exciting learning opportunity I've ever had was when I did my History AS Level and for one of our modules we got to select whatever History topic we chose and write a 3,000 word essay about it (within a range of 1000 CE to 1950 CE). I picked Genghis Khan because I was so intrigued by the idea of studying something outside of Western history. I bought books with money I earnt at my Saturday job, convinced my friends to go and see a movie about Genghis Khan with me at the cinemas, and threw myself into the work. That module has since been retired, which is a shame, as for me it was a huge motivation for my studying History at university and eventually becoming a History teacher.
I think the ability to personalise content or have it be more responsive to student interests could therefore be a really powerful tool for History learning, for example, especially at KS3, where topic selection is to some extent arbitrary, given the scope of topics it is possible to select from in the curriculum. We want students to build good historical skills at KS3 as well as a schema of basic historical knowledge, and so I think a curriculum designed around a combination of fundamental shared knowledge with the addition of personalised learning opportunities could be a really exciting alternative to the current model that I've experienced.
I don't know exactly how far you could take this, but for example, as a KS3 History teacher you could help students to identify a historical enquiry question that they are interested in, aligned to an area of History skills building (e.g. continuity and change) and support them in using AI as a tool to help students explore that enquiry question with prompts to build up subject knowledge and lead to a developed response to the enquiry question set at the start.
I am much more sympathetic to this idea at A-level than KS3!
This is how an adult beyond formal education might pursue their interests. Take model railroading, for example. A person interested in this would learn about the history of the railroad they are modeling. They would need to learn about many facets, such as electronics, scenery modeling, building a shelf or table for the layout, and the geometry of track laying. Take quilting as another example. The geometry of fitting pieces together in a pattern, color coordination, stitching by hand or with a machine, etc. These are all things that people learn by connecting to prior knowledge or building new knowledge. Soldering is something not normally taught in school, and unless you have metalworkers in your family, you would have no prior knowledge to build on.
Thanks Daniel. I don't fully agree as my AS Level history example was from when I was 17 years old. I had probably built up what could charitably be described as a limited schema of that period in history, but had to reach for a lot of knowledge, and probably made some imprecise conclusions as a result. It still sparked something for me. My point is that the opportunity to discover something new was as important as how secure my knowledge became.
I have been researching this subject myself for a side project, and I think still one of the most effective learning methods, even in the era LLMs, is what Maria Montessori explained as "freedom within the limits". Great computer scientists like Seymour Papert and Alan Kay provided so many valuable insights for better education using power of computation, also inspired by Montessori, so I think that's could real source of ideas having current abilities of LLMs.
I find this so relatable. Whenever we talk about AI in education, there’s this huge urge to make everything look incredibly fun and tailored to what kids watch on YouTube. But in reality, true personalization isn’t about changing the wallpaper of the lesson to match a student's hobbies, but more about meeting them exactly where they are with their understanding and helping them take the next solid step at their own pace.
Great piece here. I use TONS of analogies and constantly refer to other domains during my instruction, always helping students make connections. But, I agree with you that doing so in every situation with every single student is not only impractical, but often ineffective for learning. I find that the personalizing is most useful when training behaviors, such as work ethic, study habits, organization/planning, etc. rather than content. Students immediately understand processes for success in other domains and can apply them to the classroom.
This is - again - a brilliant read!
Back in the day (mid noughties), Learning Management Systems (LMS) were touted as the big enabler of Personalised Learning. I know I researched it as part of an MSc in eLearning whilst teaching Chemistry. Education policy at that time called for the teacher's role to be less sage on the stage and more as facilitator on the side-lines. Social Constructivism ruled (as did learning styles). Needless to say, results dipped. I quietly ditched the LMS and resumed explicit instruction, relegating the LMS to homework quiz marker and collector of homework. Personalised learning is knowing the needs of each student, knowing when to change tack and move the direction of the lesson. Spotting misconceptions readapting and responding to feedback (which may be as subtle as the change in body language of a pupil) is not yet, as far as I'm aware, in the repertoire of any LLM. Going beyond the capabilities of the LMS - LLMs can mark the homework..
Thanks Daisy. I've actually written a Substack inspired by yours where I built a tool in Claude for personalised learning and I'm going to be documenting how I make it work:
https://maxherzog.substack.com/p/teaching-tools-1?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3o7508
Knowledge sticking to knowledge is my thing at the moment too. Just posted about this for early years numeracy. https://bridgethorton.substack.com/p/measuring-the-cognitive-load-of-a?utm_source=app-post-stats-page&r=4t0dub&utm_medium=ios
I am always on the lookout for a good analogy! Thanks for sharing
I’m a tutor 1 on 1, not a teacher (thus no experience of classroom management!). With that caveat, I’ve started asking my students “do you know what this word means?” when I see a bit of blankness on their faces. They do trust me enough to say “no” if they don’t (phew!) Inspired by discussions like these about content, I say “let’s look it up”. Then I demonstrate the prompt and the habit of looking beyond google’s AI summary. One of my toughest customers - 11th grade and English not his first language and a mumbler- surprised me a week later by looking up a word all by himself.
The problem is that it’s easy to do this 1 on 1, much harder or impossible with a full class. But if the student starts wanting to look things up independently, maybe that can help on the content issue.
Also, maybe I could reduce the fear even more by saying “is there anything in this paragraph that we should look up”, instead of “do you know what this word means”. As a new tutor, I’m on a pretty steep learning curve myself.