“One Size Fits All” is old-school – We should allow each child to learn at her/his own pace?

Most of the K-12 solutions out there, whether it is a learning solution or a technology infrastructure solution, seemingly cater to the philosophy of “One Size Fits All”. This is the wrong approach to K-12 education that alienates a sizeable percentage of the student population early on, whether they are attention-deficit, athletically oriented, learning-challenged or students with multiple extra-curricular activities outside of school. Today, technology is available that can facilitate learning at an individual student’s pace, rather than forcing students to match the learning speed of the fastest learners in the classroom. A lot of students give up on serious learning early on, after desperately playing catch up.

Critical Links provides K-12 schools with the learning, IT and networking infrastructure and the consulting services to facilitate such customized learning experience for each individual student. At the core of this solution are the Critical Links education appliance and the Intel Classmate PC, which help provide the24/7 connectivity (voice, data, video, wireless support and security including content filtering and parental supervision), the learning management system, learning activity management system (fully integrated with LMS) and the student, classroom and school administration tools needed to enable such learning. This 1:1 learning allows students to feel independent (and not feel left out), because now they can pace their own learning experience as they have access to all the lectures and slides and notes and videos (all content) as and when they need, without the constant pressure of catching up to peers.

The new-age learning tools such as Wikis, blogs etc. and the ability to create and share content within a small study group or a larger random group of students, makes this an optimum solution for an individualized learning experience or a collaborative one. As a student, I remember being frustrated by certain topics and certain teachers. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to cope with the styles of certain teachers or you hate certain topics. Now, the K-12 student does not have to feel powerless when faced with such an eventuality. You have the off-line resources at your finger tips from school or home, without all the distractions of the public internet thanks to the VPN-based, school-centric 24/7 learning experience.

Another aspect of this solution concerns students with learning disabilities – now the parents of such students can take more control of their kids’ academic performance and do not have to be completely dependent on individual teachers to do their jobs well and understand the unique nature of every child with a disability. A parent is in the best position to understand the unique nature of a child’s learning disability and as a result should be empowered to influence the child’s learning experience in a positive way. With the education appliance powered solution from Critical Links, your home can become a virtual classroom with the parents in a position to supervise and monitor their children and to bring them up to speed.