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For the past 20 years I have seen the state and federal governments try to standardize public education in order for us to compete on the global stage in terms of test scores.  Many of Sir Ken Robinson's quotes resonate with me because he is very concerned that if we are not careful we will reform the creativity right out of education.... out of our teachers... and out of students.  This quote sums up what technology could do for public education.  It is time for us to allow students, teachers and parents to take control of the education of students and enable our students to be great.  I believe this is accomplished by personalizing our instruction and customizing it to the needs of each student.
This is also where I get excited about the possibilities of technology integration, online learning and blended learning.  These types of instruction can be used to personalize the instruction for our students.  Our students come to us from a variety of backgrounds and home situations and thus need a variety of supports and encouragement from their teachers and school community. In a blended or online learning environment technology can be leverage to provide many of the supports and instruction that students need to be successful. Another key aspect of blended and online learning is the variety of the opportunities for students to use the technology to be creative and use critical thinking skills.

As I have been in my role at Peru for 1.5 years, I have noticed that PD for teachers and administrators is a one size fits all concept.  My first attempt at personalizing our PD was to create a badging course that covers many aspects of Technology integration and blended learning.  I noticed that many of my teachers completed the badges and earn the compensation for the badges without really incorporating the information into their instructional practice.  My goal for this course is to create a personalized professional development process in which my teachers create learning goals for themselves and choose PD opportunities that will help them reach this goals.  My hope is that as teachers streamline their PD we will see a return on the investment with increased engagement and test scores in the classroom.  I hope to roll out my personalized professional development process in the fall of 2017 using our lms, Canvas as the platform for delivering content to teachers.