My Personal Learning About Personalised Learning for Teachers

From the time I started  the ICT in primary education block, I have learnt about so much more about the role of ICT for schools, teachers and students. This subject has opened my eyes to many new ways of thinking about teaching and learning and also many different resources that are available and is constantly developing. From the very beginning, my goal was to always be informed about new technologies.

(Twitter.com, 2014)

During my journey throughout this subject, I was able to reach that goal. This was possible because of expanding my PLN (Personal Learning Network). I honestly did not know that the internet was filled with so many different social networks that enabled people (mostly teachers) to connect and share practically anything. Through expanding my PLN to social networking websites, I have now opened up a whole new world of learning. I like the fact that it is not limiting in terms of time and place; I am able to access this part of my network any time I want and wherever an internet connection is available!  21 Things 4 Teachers (n.d.) views PLN as "the ability to participate in global learning communities, exhibit leadership and technology skills to others, evaluate and reflect on current research...contribute to the teaching profession, school and community" and I completely agree with this. Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en_US). Social media enables teachers to bring ideas from around the world into their schools to improve teaching practices.    

We discussed many social media sites that can form part of our
PLN in class, but I have been constantly coming back to use Twitter, Pinterest, TedTalks, Youtube and Scoop.it

(Sawb, 2009). Used under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

The contemporary issue that I researched as part of my first assignment was personalised learning. At first, I looked at it from a broader perspective, but then came to realise that personalised learning - specifically for teachers - was more of an issue than personalised learning in the classroom. Teachers are going through professional development courses and workshops that do not seem to be personalised, contexualised or meaningful (Hanes, 2013). So what does this mean? Teachers are not relating to the content in these courses and therefore make it irrelevant. We need to make professional learning and development much more authentic and contextualised. We need to be able to engage teacher learners.

One of the first bit of information I found supporting persoanlised learning in professional learning and development was from YouTube. This video successfully communicates its view of professional learning and shows how we can improve.

YouTube video: (AITSL, 2012)

This video basically says that teachers need to be great learners in order to become great teachers. Teachers are always looking for the best methods and strategies of teaching their students. At the moment, the focus is on personalised learning for students; student-led rather than teacher-directed. Ark (2014) provides various examples customised learning pathways for kids as these are "high engagement pathways." If we know that students learn best when they are highly engaged in what they are doing, - in this case customised (or personalised) learning - then this is how teachers should learn too. Trust (2012) states that "highly effective teachers model" the information analysis and knowledge acquisition that students follow (p. 34).

I have also come across research and networks of teachers from other countries that have focused on personalised professional learning. In New Zealand, there was a study done to test the effectiveness of a virtual professiona learning and development (VPLD) program (Owen, 2011, p. 61) This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

This program focused on contextualising learning, where emphasis was placed on community and collaboration. There was also a focus on use of technologies, such as Skype and Moodle to communicate and to share ideas and thoughts.

Within the United States, Chicago developed an organisation called the Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL), which included a network of teachers from the area. Teachers here used technologies, namely mobile devices in the form of video recording, in order to share teaching practices and to provide constructive feedback to each other (AUSL, 2014). 

As we can see from the above examples, technology plays an enormous role in facilitate personalised learning. According to Ruben Puentedura's SAMR model, the technologies used in the above countries has mostly transformed the way that learning is personalised; value adding to the learning that provides better pedagogy (dougloader, 2012).

From all the information I have found, I have come to understand that professional learning must continue to develop and be updated. The best way to do so is to expand and explore our personal learning networks via social media. This is because social media is constantly being updated and new ideas are constantly being found. For me, I feel that the best place to find personalised professional learning and development is through our online personal learning network. We have so much control over what we choose to take in and what we choose to dispose or disregard.


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21 Things 4 Teachers (n.d.). Professional Learning Networks. Retrieved March 10, 2014, from http://www.21things4teachers.net/17---professional-learning-networks.html

AITSL (2012, January 2). Short version - Professional Learning Animation AITSL [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6ZifjWftc8

Ark, T. V. (2014, February 4). What If Kids Co-Created Customized Learning Pathways? Retrieved March 14, 2014, from http://gettingsmart.com/2014/02/kids-co-created-customized-learning-pathways/
AUSL (2014). About Academy for Urban School Leadership. Retrieved March 13, 2014, from http://auslchicago.org/about

Dougloader (2012, October 2). Applying the SAMR model into education « Adobe Education Leaders. Retrieved March 14, 2014, from http://blogs.adobe.com/educationleaders/2012/10/applying-the-samr-model-into-education.html

Hanes, C. (2013, May 13). What is the Problem With Professional Development? -. Retrieved March 15, 2014, from http://gettingsmart.com/2013/05/what-is-the-problem-with-professional-development/

Owen, H. (2011). Personalised, Contextualised, Professional Learning Development: Putting it into Practice. Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning, 15(1), 61-74. Retrieved from http://journals.akoaotearoa.ac.nz/index.php/JOFDL/article/view/13/16

Sawb (2009, May 21). Social Icons Pack. Retrieved March 2, 2014, from http://sawb.deviantart.com/art/Social-Icons-Pack-123247215

Trust, T. (2012). Professional learning networks designed for teacher learning. Journal of Digital Learning in Teacher Education, 28(4), 134-138.
Twitter (2014, February 9). What I would like to know [screenshot image]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/annajianguts