As part of its initiative to provide students with more personalized and blended learning opportunities in and outside of the classroom, the Spring Independent School District (ISD) in Texas has partnered with itslearning (www.itslearning.net) to provide a digital learning platform.
Designed for the K-12 sector, itslearning is a leading, cloud-based learning management system that enables teachers to differentiate and deliver instruction while engaging today’s “digitally wired” students anytime, anywhere, and on any device. Educators in Spring ISD began looking at the solution as a way to expand their current blended learning offerings during the summer of 2013.
“Statistics show that around 60 percent of colleges and universities use some form of blended learning, which requires students to take a more active role in managing their education,” said Regina Owens, executive director for instructional engagement, Spring ISD. “We assessed our current standing and felt there was more we could do to prepare our students for that type of learning community – where digital 1:1 learning, collaboration and truly self-directed academic experiences will abound. Our decision after the initial evaluation was that we could make that transformation easier and more successful with itslearning in place.”
The learning platform’s integration with existing school and district systems gives teachers a way to share instructional resources, assignments and activities, and assessments with students and parents via personalized dashboards. At the same time, students have the power to decide how they learn as the solution automatically adapts to support learning styles that offer the best opportunities for success. A proprietary ‘standards mastery and recommendation engine’ facilitates remediation, acceleration and review by automating the recommendation of resources and activities based upon standards mastery assessments. The recommendations are also tailored specifically to the individual learning styles of each student – regardless of age, ability level, interests or special requirements.
Owens concluded, “There are very few programs I have seen introduced where both teachers and students echo the sentiment of ‘we get to use the new solution’ rather than ‘we have to use it.’ That’s been the case in our early interaction with itslearning; students like it and so do the teachers. This is going to have such a positive impact.”
