| | April 20168By Serena Sacks, CIO, Fulton County SchoolsToday more than ever, information and technology are becoming mission critical to teaching and learning. Kids today are born as digital natives and exposed to digital technology on a daily basis. They can interact seamlessly between the cyber world and the real, tangible world. This tech savvy generation expects to be presented with media-rich information, content, dialogue, and even entertainment. Anything less won't hold the attention of most kids, and if we don't have their attention, they aren't learning.The Fulton County School (FCS) District is on an exciting journey to personalize learning for every student. As the fourth largest school district in the state of Georgia, we serve over 96,000 students and 14,000 staff, including 7,500 teachers. We see personalized learning as a pathway to meet our district strategic goals by 2017 that include 90 percent graduation rate, 85 percent college readiness, and 100 percent career readiness.Personalized learning means that students get what they need when they need it, and teachers have the tools they need to help students learn at their own unique, individual pace. Part of this personalized effort includes leveraging mobile technology for all of our students. Thanks to the generosity of our taxpayers and funding through the one-cent special-purpose, local-option sales tax (SPLOST), we are now able to purchase and deploy 65,000 mobile devices that will enable teachers to track student progress in real time and make necessary adjustments. We are providing class sets of devices for elementary schools (10 devices per 30 students) and one device for each middle and high school student.Readiness for these devices involves a methodical 12-18 month process to plan for how technology will be used to enhance and personalize learning. Imagine a classroom studying a current event. Currently, all the students would be reading about the same event from the same reading material. With these new devices, all of the students could still be studying about the same event, but each could be reading from a variety of articles chosen for their specific reading level. Kids who are already strong readers get to keep sailing ahead through more challenging material. At the same time, the teacher uses the technology to discover who is struggling and help them catch up to where they should be.However, it's important to emphasize that technology alone cannot transform education. It's not about the device--it's about people, especially teachers, using tools to enhance the learning process for students. The instructional model, facilities, evaluation metrics and many other factors play a great role in learning success than a device ever could. Our teachers are our most valuable resource, so it's our job to make sure they can spend as much of their time as possible doing those things that only a human can do. These devices give teachers more tools to help students learn at their own, unique, individual pace. By continuing to put more resources in the hands of our teachers to meet students where they are, Transforming Education through Personalized Learning at Fulton County SchoolsSerena SacksIN MY OPINION
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