On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that Facebook has helped “develop software that puts students in charge of their lesson plans.” The “Summit Personalized Learning Platform” is an online tool that the social media giant built collaboratively with Summit Public Schools, a nonprofit charter school network with headquarters in Silicon Valley. In a Facebook post, Diane Tavenner, CEO of Summit Public Schools, writes, "In a personalized learning environment, a student’s success is defined by knowledge, skills, habits and mindsets.” She says the new Summit Personalized Learning Platform will allow students to select their own projects and work at their own pace. The initiative began with a partnership between Summit Schools and Facebook in 2013 called the Summit Basecamp program and will expand this year to more than 100 new schools that include over 1,100 teachers and 20,000 students. “Bringing personalized learning to classrooms is hard work and people should expect that it will take more than one year to see progress,” writes Tavenner. Will Facebook solve the challenging goal of true “personalized learning?” We’ll continue to follow the story as it progresses. – Christine Weiser, Executive Editor
