Personalized Learning @ Waitsfield
Looking back
A lot of our first trimester work was to establish a successful 1:1 culture. We used personalized learning and discovering a sense of self as learners as a way to shape this. We had to partition time to include Chromebook mechanics, digital citizenship, diversifying our digital toolbox plus goal setting and gobs of reflection.
Specific Highlights
"-It is your personal computer so you can save passwords for websites. -you can bring home to work on homework. -It makes you more responsible because you have to take care of it."
Chromebooks have successfully going home since end of September
Academic & Personal Goals
We carved out specific time for student goal work; we have working blocks on Monday & Friday to focus on goals, evidence gathering, reflection. Goals were revisited to make sure they are connected to sense of self and met SMART criteria.
Blogging
"I feel like it is a way for us to really think about things and process them through our heads."
PLP on Google Sites
We pared down the PLP template to only include About Me, Academic Goals, Personal Goals, and Highlights. Students seem to connect more with their blogs than with PLP sites.
Moving Forward
Moving forward our work is going to focus on introducing Transferable Skills. We recently introduced students to Blogger labels which we hope will help facilitate student connections to their learning as well as help them curate their reflections.
We will continue to roll out more technology tools, and highlight the importance of workflow between multiple apps.
Expanding reflection beyond the core
We have already begun to see unified arts teachers ask students to bring chromebooks to class and will encourage more blogging/reflection on their classes/projects and we want this to continue and expand. As we plan to introduce the Transferable Skills, it will be important for students to recognize that these skills are pervasive across all curricular content. Reflecting on specials classes can help support this.