Education Week - October 19, 2016 - 29

8

'Red Flags'
to Look for in Products
QUESTIONABLE STUDENT AGENCY

BY MICHELE MOLNAR

ersonalized learning: Is it an educational imperative, a marketing strategy for an ed-tech
product, or both?
Too often, teachers and administrators say,
they find that personalized learning is used
by companies as mere buzzwords to promote
a run-of-the-mill digital tool.
"In the marketing literature, this term is
overused," said Devin Vodicka, the superintendent of the Vista,
Calif., school district. "Many products that someone claims are
personalized are actually just a series of digital worksheets."
But educators are finding ways to sort the real personalized
potential from the empty promises of some ed-tech products.
For instance, Vista uses its own Personal Learning Pathway
framework to evaluate products, said Vodicka.
Some of the key questions educators in his district ask:
* Is this product based on a student profile?
* Is there an integrated technology component that includes
two-way communication?
* Does the product include student choice and pathways?
* How does it fit with the learning environment, and more
broadly, is it connected with real-world opportunities?
* Does it use a competency-based model, in which students
move at their own pace as they master academic content?
Last month,Vista hosted 42 superintendents from across the
country, who discussed that and other approaches as part of an
ongoing cohort studying personalized learning through AASA,
The Superintendent's Association.
The most important starting point to vet a product, for Barton Dassinger, the principal of Chavez Elementary in Chicago,
is this query: Does this product improve student learning better
than the alternative to using it? And does the company generate reports in such a way to allow for an analysis that will
answer that question?
The starting points of "what is our need?" and "what is our
goal?" are important for Théa Williams, who is both a technology teacher for pre-K-5 and the technology coordinator
for Brooklyn Arbor Elementary School in New York City. As
an iZone pilot-team leader through the city's department of
education, she said she has learned to move beyond the catchphrases for products to identify the data needed.
Red flags about the "personalized learning" label abound,
according to Amy Nowell, the director of research for LEAP
Innovations, a Chicago-based nonprofit that works to build
educational innovations by connecting schools and businesses.
From her experience testing ed-tech products with evidencebased research methods, Nowell, and other experts have identified several red flags educators should watch for:

This is a fundamental element of personalization. Can the students take ownership of their own learning by setting their own
goals? Can they track their own progress?
Nowell recommends that teachers "test drive" products as
though they are students and make sure they understand what the
data mean.
For instance, if students aim to learn a particular unit within a
specified period of time, and the product provides feedback that
"you have only completed one activity" in that time frame, what,
she asked, does that mean to a student trying to complete and
comprehend the full unit?

INADEQUATE CONTENT
By definition, personalized learning allows students to
move at their own pace through material.
"There's never a classroom where every student is average," said Nowell. "We've had a number of teachers who
were really disappointed when they dug in, and two months
into the year, their brighter kids are looking for material
that wasn't there."
While ed-tech products can often be retrofitted to accommodate material for advanced or struggling students,
that's often a "clunky" solution, she said. A digital resource
with "only 130 lessons" is unlikely to have enough content
to go up or down two grade levels.

USELESS DATA
Products for personalized learning generally produce a lot
of data. Williams recommends educators first ask: "How do
I make sense of this data?"
In theory, experts say a data dashboard should help students and teachers understand what the metrics are, how a
certain metric was arrived at, and what it means for student
learning. But that is not always the case.
For example, one product reported to teachers the
percent of total lessons each student completed in the 4th
grade curriculum. "Johnny has completed 4 percent of the
lessons has no actual meaning to anybody," Nowell said.
"It's not tied to what students are learning. It's not tied
to learning standards or mastery of content. Johnny could
have clicked through, 'completed' them, and gotten them
all wrong."

LACKING RECOMMENDATIONS

"

We've had a
number of
teachers who
were really
disappointed
when they dug
in, and two
months into the
year, their
brighter kids are
looking for
material that
wasn't there."
Amy Nowell
LEAP Innovations

"I need the data to help make instructional decisions,"
said Williams.
The problem is that automating the process of using
data to inform educators' decisionmaking is still largely an
unmet need. "I don't feel personalized ed-tech products have mastered
that yet," she said. "I'd like to see more automation, providing data to
teachers to make instructional interventions in the learning path."

Personalized Learning: The Next Generation / edweek.org/go/personalized-learning

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