For example, if digital gaming is working well at a local high school. Industry would scale digital gaming through intervention at multiple high schools.

Comcast is giving inexpensive Internet access to families in need.

I do not know to what extent this happened in the past or is happening now, but I commend Comcast for their generosity. It would be expensive and difficult to decide who qualifies, and to keep account of those people.

Having the Internet opens opportunities for students with computers. Learning can progress faster and deeper.

Several private local companies provide our students with space in their buildings to come and access wi-fi. This was a partnership set up between the local businesses and the school district. In addition, several private companies have become involved in some of our problem-based learning initiatives by offering authentic feedback on students’ ideas, some even offering rewards (albeit ice cream, but nonetheless).

The values embedded are that a learner can spend more time on subjects that are abstruse, and less time on the easier subjects. The learner learns at a personalized and standardized pace.

Personalized learning is different than personal learning. That is, personalized learning is based on a designed curriculum. The designed curriculum is based on national and agreed to educational technology standards. Personal learning, on the other hand, is based on individual and self designed learning.

Personalized learning in a classroom is in addition to the group activities and momentum that a teacher establishes. Even as students are working to learn within a class, there are aspects of that student’s learning that need to be personalized for that student to have success with the whole-class assignments.

Personal learning is not classroom learning (though it can happen there). When people find topics of interest, they can use available tools (library, Internet, experts, etc.) to gain knowledge of the topic. Their drive is intrinsic, as is their reward.

The values embedded in personalized learning include an inherent support for each student individually, and a freedom from strict curriculum expectations to allow for some differences in process and even product.

Hughes sums up his description of personalized learning with the statement, “No two students are experiencing the same thing…” I would add the phrase “at the same time.” Students may not be moving through the curriculum together, but they are all moving through the same curriculum. Providing interventions (deficit-based or for enrichment) is one way they are providing a layer of personalized learning, but what about the majority of the students who don’t “need” interventions or enrichment? Is their learning personalized? Isn’t this just differentiation?

I believe there has to be a layer of interest-driven learning in order for learning to truly be personalized. The description provided by Hughes still implies that students take a test to demonstrate mastery. In “personal” learning students determine how they will demonstrate mastery.

There are blurry lines that exists between personalized learning, personal learning, differentiation and individualized education. How do we clearly define those lines?

That is, the DoE is pushing digitization in the K12 curriculum. DoE is experimenting with giving each student a laptop for learning and student achievement at the national level. DoE is sharing knowledge and dialogue about 21st Century educational technology at the national level. Moreover, DoE is pushing open education on “what works” in educational technology at the national level.

The government is supporting research efforts, granting money for that research and also for tech implementation projects, requiring schools to report of results of that tech integration, and supporting private/public partnerships.

The Department of Education recognizes that what we’re doing in education is not working. The DoE is looking at state-level policies versus national-level policies and reconsidering how programs are implemented. They are encouraging the creation and use of Open Education Resources (OER) in an effort to address equity; also equitable access and opportunities to learn for all students. Finally, the DoE is using research on “what works” to determine next steps.

There are countries who are “doing” education well. There was no mention of studying those countries’ educational systems. My question is…why aren’t we looking at high-performing countries and studying their education systems?

The risk could be that we breed a group of introverts. That is, if students interact with computers all day as opposed to interacting with peers, then we could have K12 social interaction issues in the future. Thus, I argue that a hybrid approach works best in academia, in my opinion. That is, a combination of computers and teacher instruction.

Through assessment, understanding the learning progression. She unpacks and describes the importance of open education, higher education, professional learning, and research and innovation in K12 learning.

Two main ideas that stood out to me in this section were the international connectivity between classrooms in the USA and China, and the adult learning partner concept. Both ideas reflect the best in constructivist teaching theories and would support various high-quality instructional objectives in any classroom. Both are real possibilities for innovation in classrooms.

It is evident that we are on a pathway to digital game based learning. He wants to pull the resources together so that teachers can teach digital game based learning and that students can learn from digital game based learning. His overall approach is discovering a pathway to enhance a teaching-learning environment using a data driven science such as digital game based learning.

I believe education has been moving toward a data-driven approach. However, the question lies in the type of data being used. We use assessment data to drive instruction. We have this issue in education of “teaching to the test” because teachers are evaluated on their “data.” There is value in data, but I agree with George Couros (2018) who tweeted, "I think that “data-driven” says something immensely different than “Data-informed” (https://twitter.com/gcouros).

Digital learning environments make available more information, more connectivity, more diversity, deeper thinking, creativity, synthesis, and visualization.

Her assessments aligns with the other members of the panel. That is the other members of the panel spoke to assessment as personalized learning. Hughes and Popovic, for instance, spoke on the lines of pathways to learning assessments instead of core values.

Zolt’s description of assessments as, “low pressure, high yield,” is a bit different than Hughes idea of mastery. Zolt explained that the authentic task of writing about reading presents students with an opportunity to demonstrate multiple skills within the single task of writing letters.

I think giving all students a computer is a good start. I think that exploration and intervention in digital game based learning at the K12 level would open the door to educational technology as a learning tool.

The comment was made that the national culture is very innovative, but that schools are not, that schools are behind and educators are resistant to innovation.

Is this true? All of it? I think it is overgeneralized.

I agree that learning can take place using technology that is integrated with pedagogy instruction and content knowledge, for the most part.