Educational Technology at IU13

As we continue on our journey in supporting districts to create personalized learning environments for their students, I have been continually reminded about the need to build, support, develop, cherish, and encourage our teachers in the process. In a personalized learning environment, we focus so much on the "learner" and try to make all our decisions based on what is best for learning and the learner in the process. We focus on how can the learner help co-design the lesson, units, progressions, activities, etc. and what form of assessments are best for the learner to demonstrate mastery.

This fall (2018), we launched the IU13 Personalized Learning Academy in an effort to support districts in their customizable, ongoing journey toward personalized learning. We realize that there are many different definitions and understanding of what is true Personalized Learning, so we wanted to help provide clarity in the mist of so many different interpretations.  As a result, we have aligned with several national partners to help support this work such as iNACOL, The Learning Accelerator, LEAP Innovations, The Personalized Learning Institute, and Mass Customized Learning (MCL) National Alliance.  Through the last six years, we have been concentrating on supporting districts/schools/teachers in their various blended learning implementations particularly the station rotation model. As these classrooms continued to expand and grow in the station rotation model, we noticed a natural progression toward creating a more personalized learning environment and wanted to support movement in this progression.  In an effort to provide direction and clarity, we have officially adopted iNACOL's definition of Personalized Learning:

IU13 is pleased to announce our Personalized Learning Academy (PLA) Kick-Off coming up on June 13, 2018. Our vision for the PLA is to support districts in their customizable, on-going journey toward personalized learning. Because there are so many different definitions and understandings of Personalized Learning, we have adopted iNACOL's official research designed definition of PL -