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.
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.
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.
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.
In the future millions of children are taught not by teachers, but by holograms of their favourite celebrities beamed directly into their bedrooms.
Taylor Swift explains algebra through song. MrBeast teaches economics. Cristiano Ronaldo narrates Shakespeare.
John loves Call of Duty, so the AI knows better than to burden him with a biology textbook. Instead, Biology appears through his tactical headset as he patrols a post-apocalyptic rainforest, quick-scoping Nazis while an AI companion whispers: “Excellent shot, Sergeant. Also, the capybara is the world’s largest rodent”
I have made similar mistakes with analogies. That made me smile. I think there are issues with the idea of making education entertaining or trying to motivate students with the "jazz hands" approach. It can be dull sometimes, getting better at anything normally involved a dull part you need to persist through.
Another great article, thanks Daisy. Personalized education doesn't work just as differentiation was problematic (and impractical). You can't evade the assessment dictating that they will all need to show similar skill and knowledge sets. Sorry about West Ham, btw.
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.
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.
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.
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!
In the future millions of children are taught not by teachers, but by holograms of their favourite celebrities beamed directly into their bedrooms.
Taylor Swift explains algebra through song. MrBeast teaches economics. Cristiano Ronaldo narrates Shakespeare.
John loves Call of Duty, so the AI knows better than to burden him with a biology textbook. Instead, Biology appears through his tactical headset as he patrols a post-apocalyptic rainforest, quick-scoping Nazis while an AI companion whispers: “Excellent shot, Sergeant. Also, the capybara is the world’s largest rodent”
I have made similar mistakes with analogies. That made me smile. I think there are issues with the idea of making education entertaining or trying to motivate students with the "jazz hands" approach. It can be dull sometimes, getting better at anything normally involved a dull part you need to persist through.
Another great article, thanks Daisy. Personalized education doesn't work just as differentiation was problematic (and impractical). You can't evade the assessment dictating that they will all need to show similar skill and knowledge sets. Sorry about West Ham, btw.