Personalized Learning

             I read the article "Preparing Students to Learn Without Us," which can be basically summarized in two words: personalized learning. Will Richardson describes that there are many different ways to learn the same material, and each students has to find their own thing to relate the material to. He starts if the article by wondering how his son, who loves basketball, could apply this knowledge to math lessons that he needs to learn in school. There were millions of possibilities that his son could relate basketball to. What I found interesting, however, was another example he gave, about a boy who cared more about being a star football player than school. He was in British literature, and had to explore a theme in said literature. The teacher helped him decide that "he should explore the medieval version of a football star—a knight. It then developed into looking at how British literature addresses masculinity; he was really able to reflect on his own ambitions through the literature."
            The article also mentions the use of google docs, diigo, and blogs, all things that we use here in CAP 10, as good ways to personalize learning and stay connected. I agreed that each of these are good tools. We could also use the blogs to not only do structured assigned posts, but also posts about subjects that interest us and their relationship to film.We can make this class more personal by subscribing to bloggers who share the same interests as us in the film-making process. For example, I could subscribe to bloggers who write about camera work because that is something that I am interested in.

The article and my annotations: http://diigo.com/0sxlb