In an attempt to get students more involved with meaningful learning, Facebook and Summit Public Schools have created a Personal Learning Platform giving students control over their learning.

“The collaboration, which started in early 2014, veers away from the traditional intensive fact-packed style of learning to emphasize a student-centered, exploratory learning model,” according to EdSurge.

“Technology comes into play in two ways: It gives students more command over the pace and direction of their own learning, putting the resources they need at their fingertips when they need it. And technology tightens communications between teachers and students, enabling the teachers to act more like “coaches” and less like lecturers, even as they keep an eye on whether students are working their way through academic standards.”

Students will be given a Personal Learning Platform that allows them to put learning into context in conjunction with daily work. Even more interesting about the platform is the fact that they plan on giving the technology away for free. According to a Facebook blog post, the technology should also free up time for educators to mentor students directly.

“We started by working together to rebuild their tool, called the Personalized Learning Plan (‘PLP’), for Summit’s use in the 2014 school year. Last year, more than 2,000 students and 100 teachers spent the school year using it,” said Chris Cox, Chief Product Officer.

“For 2015, we’re supporting Summit as it partners with public schools who want to explore personalized learning through a small pilot program. We’ll use feedback from this program to improve the PLP so we can eventually offer it, for free, to any school in the US that wants it.”

It is also important to note that PLP will be completely separate from Facebook so users don’t need to have a Facebook account in order to access the potentially game-changing technology.

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Article by Navindra Persaud, Education World Contributor