As education-technology lobbyists persuade policy-makers that “personalized learning” is the golden ticket to academic achievement, parents must understand exactly what this concept is and what it means for children. What they discover should trigger a rebellion. As we’ve explained (see here, here, and here, for example), personalized learning means using technology to deliver instruction based on the “needs” of the student. A child will be propped in front of a screen and directed to interact with a sophisticated
software program that records thousands of behavioral data points. His physiological data can be harvested via the “Internet of Things,” which refers to a connected network of devices, such as wristbands, that deliver physical data to a smartphone or computer.All this psychological and physiological data will be fed into an algorithm that not only analyzes how the child’s brain works but predicts what he’ll do in the future. None of this is explained to parents when they’re told “personalized learning” is the wave of the future. MORE
