Innovation Profile 118

Giving choice or enabling choice?

If teachers are to take account of the learning styles of all their students, this is a heavy extra workload.

In time, part of this load will become just a teacher's natural way of working. Teachers will organise their planning so that they can easily use resources appropriate for different learning styles, and a greater variety of teaching approaches, without having to spend more time preparing lessons.

Of course there is another way, which is to enable students to find by themselves the learning resources that suit them best. This requires that there is a learning space that they can access, which hosts a wide variety of learning resources and tools.

In days gone by, and still now, this out-of-class learning space was the library. For some it was also their home - if their family was supportive and wealthy enough to buy appropriate books, games, tools and perhaps a computer. This social divide, where only some students have effective access to learning at home, has severely constrained how much teachers have felt able to structure their teaching to promote and support independent learning.

It is surely not acceptable now, in rich nations, for only some of a nation's school/college students to have the kind of access to learning enjoyed by those from wealthy families. We are rapidly moving to a world in which all homes should be connected; the connection can give access to a learning space, learning resources, and learning tools.

As soon as it is accepted that to personalise learning, all learners should have independent access to a well populated learning space, we can move rapidly to the questions of who can provide such things, who should fund them, and who should manage them.

Effective online learning spaces are available. Look on the right hand side of the page at http://home.capitaes.co.uk/learningplatform/solution/index.asp and you will see links to case studies (PDF files) of some very different schools that have taken the decision to provide an online learning space for their students.

If you feed hungry people, they live for that day. If you provide them with what they need to feed themselves, they can live through life.

The Capita Education Services company profile on our web site will give you an overview of the company.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

If you know of examples of innovative use of ICT-for-learning that others would be interested in, please email innovations@eep-edu.org

_________________________________________________________________________________________