1.1: Empowered Learner

Students leverage technology to take an active role in choosing, achieving, and demonstrating competency in their learning goals, informed by the learning sciences.

a. Students articulate and set personal learning goals, develop strategies leveraging technology to achieve them and reflect on the learning process itself to improve learning outcomes.
b. Students build networks and customize their learning environments in ways that support the learning process.
c. Students use technology to seek feedback that informs and improves their practice and to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways.
d. Students understand the fundamental concepts of technology operations, demonstrate the ability to choose, use and troubleshoot current technologies and are able to transfer their knowledge to explore emerging technologies.

The Empowered Learner standard is one of the ones that I enjoyed researching the most. Once I began learning about all of the practical ways that technology could be integrated into the classroom I found myself constantly searching for the ways in which students could use technology to feel empowered in their learning. For me, this looked like finding options for students to have choice in their learning. Choice in their goal setting, in their learning environments, in the way they gained knowledge and feedback, and in the way in which they wanted to interact with technology as a whole.

So often as a teacher, I found myself stuck in a rut of giving the same tasks for students to accomplish or to represent their learning, and it was so incredibly exciting to learn about this standard and how we can really open the box of creativity for our learners! Read more about my inquiry process regarding Student Standard 1 in my post, Empowering Learners Through Choice.