Appalachia Intermediate Unit 8, working in a partnership
with The Pennsylvania Leadership Development Center, created the Pennsylvania Mass
Customized Learning Consortium last year.
The consortium is open to all organizations involved in learning
throughout Pennsylvania and surrounding states.
Membership consists of those education leaders who will work to
transform learning in their organizations to assure students (learners) receive
learning at their learning level every day.
The concept of “Mass Customized Learning” was made popular through the
work of Chuck Schwahn and Bea McGarvey in their book Inevitible: Mass Customized Learning: Learning in the Age of
Empowerment. Nationally, there are
schools all over the United States implementing ideas of customized learning
into their system; most notably in Lindsay Unified School District in
California. As the Pennsylvania
consortium grows from our current 24 learning organizations, there is usually
one basic question that leaders have as they contemplate joining with the
consortium.
Question #1: “We already personalize and differentiate
our instruction so we are already “customizing” education in our schools so why
should we join with the consortium?”
Answer: Mass Customized Learning is
much more than “personalization”, differentiation” or “performance based”. MCL has two premises:
1.
Dislodge the industrial
age model of schooling.
2.
Become
radically learner centered.
Think about the examples of customization in our world
today. If you use Facebook, Twitter or
Amazon your interactive experience is customized to your likes and
dislikes. In our area of Pennsylvania
you can have your coffee and sandwich selections customized to your exact taste
at a Sheetz. Technology has progressed
to the point where learning leaders can now leverage the technological tools to
create a customized learning environment for our students (learners).
Mass Customized Learning advocates do not believe that we can "tinker
toward utopia" (to borrow Larry Cuban's term) anymore. Rather, we must
work to create a new learning ecosystem that goes beyond the current
educational system and allows learners and their families to customize their learning experience. Creating a learning ecosystem without barriers of
time, space or place is essential for our learners and our society. We now live in a time and place where we can
create a learning experience for all of our children that is not time
based. By “time based” I mean that
students move from one grade to the next and from one concept to the next often
without regard to actual learning. It
seems obvious that we should not accept an educational system that “teaches”
students in “batches” based on their date of birth. Rather, let’s create a learning ecosystem that meets every student at their level (academic, learning, social, etc) every
second of every day. This is what we discuss and implement as members of the Pennsylvania
mass Customized Learning Consortium. To
get a better understanding of the industrial age model of schooling, please
watch the video below.
