One area of life where technology is starting to make some big inroads is in K-12 education as the tools available are finally reaching a point where they are accessible to students and affordable for schools to deploy.
If you have children in a public school system, there are decent odds that your kid is using some Google tool to manage or even complete assignments. Word is now out that Facebook has a small team that has been working on their own education tool that is rolling out on a pilot basis to public schools this year.
Facebook has already been working on their new education tools in conjunction with California’s Summit Public Schools. The Summit Public Schools are unique in that they rely heavily on online delivery of content and assessments to students, so there is a good familiarity with technology already.
Summit schools also put all students on their own personalized learning track so they can learn at their own pace. The framework appears to be quite successful as they have a very high ratio of students getting accepted in the university system.
Facebook’s engineers were so impressed with this that they approached the Summit schools and asked how they could help them improve what they have. Summit pointed to the tool used to track progress on individual learning plans and asked Facebook to help them overhaul the system. This resulted in the Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) platform.
During 2014 over 2,000 students and 100 teachers usedthe PLP. Facebook and Summit are expanding the program during 2015 to partner with public schools through a small pilot program. The long-term goal is offer a platform for free to any school in the U.S. that wants to use it.
For those worried about privacy, a frequent sticking point for Facebook, the team working on the project and the PLP are completely separated. Facebook says an account with the social media giant is not required to use the PLP.
The engineers working on the project also abide by the White House endorsed Student Privacy Pledge to protect student data and information.
0 comments:
Post a Comment