Defining Personalized Learning

Personalized learning tailors instruction to the individual needs, skills, and interests of students using technology, robust data, and rigorous planning. This education model gives teachers and schools the opportunity to accelerate student learning and skill mastery, particularly for struggling students.

Personalized Learning Strategy

Educate Now! co-leads the Breakthrough Schools: New Orleans strategy with New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO), with an aim to build local proof points of high-quality personalized learning while fostering an ecosystem where innovation and information spreads across the city. This strategy is funded locally by Baptist Community Ministries, Booth-Bricker Fund, Leslie Jacobs, and Stephen Rosenthal, and nationally by the Next Generation Learning Challenge (a joint effort of three national foundations).

We pursue this strategy in two ways:

• Nurture the Ecosystem. We envision a New Orleans personalized learning community where interested parties can learn from a shared knowledge base of key strategies and lessons learned. We do this work on three levels:
  • Targeted Workshops. Led by national and local experts in Personalized Learning (PL), workshops engage NOLA school leaders in understanding PL, experiencing PL, and learning first-hand from more veteran PL leaders.
  • PL Community of Practice (PLCP). Led by a local PL school-based leader, the PLCP is a dedicated network of school-based PL leads who gather monthly (and communicate in between) to share best practices and lessons learned and provide feedback to each other. Educate Now! pays a stipend to the PLCP lead.
  • Ed Tech Meet-ups (ETMs). Co-led by a committee of local PL leaders, ETMs are monthly convenings of teachers, school leaders, and others to share best practices in integrating tech into instructional practice. EN used to fund catering and swag for the ETMs, NSNO has since taken over that expense. 
• Transition Existing Schools. We set a goal of there being at least five proof point schools across New Orleans by the end of the 2016-17 school year. We award grants of increasing size so as to move schools along the spectrum of readiness to pursue PL: Explore, Pilot, Pilot + Plan, and Implementation.

 

Grant Type	Purpose	Amount
Explore	Research and explore PL to develop school’s PL vision	$10,000
Pilot	Further explore PL through a year-long pilot	$46,000
Pilot+Plan	Further explore PL through a year-long pilot, and develop whole-school implementation plan	$66,000
Implementation	Implement high-quality PL plan	Up to $300,000

 

We are not currently accepting proposals for support. Check back here for updates on our strategy and future Requests for Proposals.