<story><title>The Messy Reality of Personalized Learning</title><url>https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-messy-reality-of-personalized-learning</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mattferderer</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m 100% for using data to help personalize learning but I strongly believe using a computer for even half of the learning leads to large negative results in social skills &amp;amp; physical health.&lt;p&gt;Instead of using the tech start up mentality, I think a lot more benefit could be done by helping teachers build relationships with there students &amp;amp; having open dialogue on what they like &amp;amp; what they don&amp;#x27;t. I get that this means throwing more money at lower teacher&amp;#x2F;student ratios which is hard to do but I think it would have a greater impact than tech. I say this as someone whose life &amp;amp; thoughts towards learning did a 180 once they were introduced to the internet &amp;amp; computers in the 90s.&lt;p&gt;Yes, computers can change the lesson plan &amp;amp; personalize per student faster &amp;amp; better than a teacher. But at what cost?&lt;p&gt;While multiple techniques exists, are there that many that a teacher can&amp;#x27;t try multiple out on there students and record how they respond? I feel if we had reasonable classroom sizes of 10:1 this would be fairly easy to do.&lt;p&gt;I also feel we could cut down the amount of info we jam into students heads &amp;amp; focus on learning the more important concepts. I believe Bill Gates &amp;amp; many others have started preaching this as well.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t need to learn everything but there are some core skills that we don&amp;#x27;t spend enough time on that will benefit us much longer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>crispyambulance</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    &amp;gt; ...build relationships with their students &amp;amp; having open dialogue...
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
You&amp;#x27;re right. And that DOES WORK.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s why the most elite schools in the world use classroom setups like &amp;quot;Harkness Method&amp;quot; (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.exeter.edu&amp;#x2F;exeter-difference&amp;#x2F;how-youll-learn&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.exeter.edu&amp;#x2F;exeter-difference&amp;#x2F;how-youll-learn&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;p&gt;The problem is that it&amp;#x27;s expensive, class sizes are a fraction of what public schools have to serve. Instruction is &amp;quot;mastery-based&amp;quot; which means that individual students don&amp;#x27;t move forward in the curriculum until they&amp;#x27;ve demonstrated mastery of prerequisite foundational topics.&lt;p&gt;This is part of the reason why kids from wealthy families can end up in elite colleges. Connections help, of course, but the kids are well-taught. For them, learning disabilities are just obstacles that can be worked around, fall-behind one semester because of teenage stuff? No problem, they get tutored out of that rut. The same kinds of problems in an overcrowded and overwhelmed public school end with the student being stuck academically and not prepared for college.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Messy Reality of Personalized Learning</title><url>https://www.newyorker.com/news/dispatch/the-messy-reality-of-personalized-learning</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mattferderer</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m 100% for using data to help personalize learning but I strongly believe using a computer for even half of the learning leads to large negative results in social skills &amp;amp; physical health.&lt;p&gt;Instead of using the tech start up mentality, I think a lot more benefit could be done by helping teachers build relationships with there students &amp;amp; having open dialogue on what they like &amp;amp; what they don&amp;#x27;t. I get that this means throwing more money at lower teacher&amp;#x2F;student ratios which is hard to do but I think it would have a greater impact than tech. I say this as someone whose life &amp;amp; thoughts towards learning did a 180 once they were introduced to the internet &amp;amp; computers in the 90s.&lt;p&gt;Yes, computers can change the lesson plan &amp;amp; personalize per student faster &amp;amp; better than a teacher. But at what cost?&lt;p&gt;While multiple techniques exists, are there that many that a teacher can&amp;#x27;t try multiple out on there students and record how they respond? I feel if we had reasonable classroom sizes of 10:1 this would be fairly easy to do.&lt;p&gt;I also feel we could cut down the amount of info we jam into students heads &amp;amp; focus on learning the more important concepts. I believe Bill Gates &amp;amp; many others have started preaching this as well.&lt;p&gt;You don&amp;#x27;t need to learn everything but there are some core skills that we don&amp;#x27;t spend enough time on that will benefit us much longer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dalbasal</author><text>To some extent, computer-aided learning might help reduce student&amp;#x2F;teacher ratios in practice. 2 hrs independent learning to 1hr in groups 1&amp;#x2F;3 the size... for example.&lt;p&gt;While I agree that more teachers per student is highly effective, it&amp;#x27;s also expensive... and will unavoidably end up becoming cost-limited below the ideal level.&lt;p&gt;As a total side note, I wonder what other, potentially healthy changes can be made if personalized learning can be made to work well.&lt;p&gt;For example, I suspect that homogeneous age classes are not ideal. Spending half your life in a room with 40 other 10 year olds isn&amp;#x27;t something that happens outside of modern school systems. It&amp;#x27;s somewhat unatural. Maybe mixed-age classes can become possible again.</text></comment>