When American education transformed during the Industrial Age, we adopted a traditional factory model of schooling. In that model we created schedules mandating students to have a set amount of time in school. It also adopted the management style of a factory and started grouping students together by age. It surprising that education has not changed.
If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to watch this video by with Forbes and Khan that explains the broad history of US Education in 11 minutes.
Within 120 years, our educational system hasn’t changed but society has. How can we be successful in today’s society when education is still being run like a factory from a model designed over 120 years ago?
It is essential that we have a shift in our educational system that matches current society. The good news is that there are systems attempting to fix that problem. We see schools across the nation adopting STEM, project based learning, blended learning and other innovative models. Despite all of these advances, they all still have the fallacy of a factory model school. We as nation will never be the top nation in terms of education unless we fix that fallacy.
Im afraid to throw the word out there because it may loose meaning like so many of the buzz words in today’s educational realm. Personalization is not a trend but a paradigm we must accept. To help us understand what personalized learning is, we must agree to a common definition. The 2016 National Educational Technology Plan: Future Ready Learning: Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education (NETP) and the 2017 NETP Update, the U.S. Department of Education officially defines personalized learning:
Personalized learning refers to instruction in which the pace of learning and the instructional approach are optimized for the needs of each learner. Learning objectives, instructional approaches, and instructional content (and its sequencing) may all vary based on learner needs. In addition, learning activities are made available that are meaningful and relevant to learners, driven by their interests and often self-initiated.
What it boils down to is a few essential components that help define personalized learning:
- The pace of learning is adjusted.
- Learning objectives, approaches, content, and tools are tailored and optimized for each learner
- Learning is driven by learner interests
- Learners are given choice in what, how, when, and where they learn
- Learning is often supported by technology
In this series, I will examine each of these working conditions to help achieve personalized learning in today’s society.
Academy of Edification 
