How to apply a personal learning approach through technology

Personalised learning – it’s a hot topic in the world of education but one that lots of us struggle with. It means different things to different people, and the original principle was to encourage teachers and educators to create individualised learning for each student – identify their needs, how they learn and how we might support them best. The challenge, of course, is ‘time’. To plan for each of perhaps 150 students in your subject area and then to deliver that in each lesson presents a teacher with significant challenges amidst the day to day pressures of teaching.

Perhaps we need to look at things differently. Maybe it’s not about personalised learning, maybe it’s more about ‘making learning personal’. Empowering our students with the tools to personalise their own learning experience. To allow them the flexibility to select which tools they use, and just as importantly, when they use those tools to support their learning.

In doing so, we create more independence in students, and we provide them with the confidence to take a lead in how they learn. This applies to all students equally – to those with individual needs through to those high achievers and those learning an additional language. It can help students study and apply themselves in ways that are specific to their own needs.

This personal learning approach also allows students to build their learning around their aspirations and passion. It helps provide engagement in learning and enable access for every individual student. In doing these things, we help make students our partners in learning – working with us as educators to improve outcomes and increase their own potential.

The world of technology in our classrooms is our greatest enabler yet for this approach. Technology gives us flexible tools – tools that students can grasp and understand. Tools that can be used exactly when and where they are needed. Take the Read&Write software. A simple toolbar loaded with features, available at all times, to every student. The student can choose when to use a specific tool, or set of tools. They get to explore what works for them and understand how they can be supported.

So, instead of looking at tools and technology that require integration into lessons or new activities to be created, let’s start to look at tools that are there to support and scaffold our students at all times. In doing so, we can create a substantial impact for all students, and, to a degree, combat the one big challenge every educator faces – lack of time. Let’s start creating opportunities for open-ended learning; allowing different ways to express learning and being flexible with our students.

Students can now start to initiate new approaches to learning and we start to create learners that are much more reflective on how they learn – enabling them to change methods as they progress and choose the most effective and supportive learning journey. That’s the very definition of ‘personal’.

Making learning personal is a central component in building those essential 21st-century skills we hear so much about – it’s helping create learners that are more independent, increasingly confident, innovative and creative. Technology gives them choice and voice and builds vital digital skills.

Let’s make learning personal using technology and provide one more path to enable every student to fulfil their full potential.