Nancy Healy

Learning Outcome:
As I continue with this course and dig deeper into personalized learning, I’ve adjusted my learning goal:  I will find strategies and content that help me guide students through their own personalized learning pathways that meet standards, and more importantly, tap into their interests.

Resources:
In developing my learning pathway, I’ve been looking at the variety of resources across the four areas of the personalized learning menu, especially the Learner Path section. I’ve been looking for professional suggestions, content delivery ideas, technology resources, student choice activities, assessment tools, etc. Since I tend to be a visual learner, I’m drawn to the Teaching Channel videos. They provide excellent information and examples of students actively engaged in their learning paths. I also like the Personalize Learning and Next Gen Learning websites (personalizelearning.com and nextgenlearning.org) because they categorize information related to personalized learning in a way that makes sense to me. I'm also following several Twitter feeds for additional information, and I am referring to other familiar sources like the Buck Institute, Defined Stem, and ASCD.

I’m excited about students developing their own learning paths based on their interests and passions. They will be more engaged and motivated to learn. But I’m a bit overwhelmed by how to get students to this point. In a single classroom, students can have a broad range of needs, interests and abilities. And there are other factors to consider, too, including curricular requirements, physical layout and available resources. The sources I have chosen for my learning pathway address these concerns, but I’m not sure I will have a true understanding until I go through this experience with my students.
   
Artifact:
For my artifact, I am thinking I will do something like a Prezi where I can sort what I learned into different categories so my artifact makes sense to me and others. I want to create an artifact that I can easily refer back to if I’m looking for more information in the future. The Symbaloo we are creating will also be a great resource to refer back to in the future.

Prezi is a great tool to show relationships between and among different ideas and concepts. One of the things I struggled with when working on the content for this course is the fact that while we are learning about learner profiles, learner paths, competency-based progression, and flexible learning environments in categories they are related to each other. Prezi will be a great way to show how these ideas are connected.