Personalizing Learning

I read David Warlick's post entitled "What Place Personalization." He asks a good question in his post, "So what is it in the learning experiences that we maintain for our students in our classrooms that calls on their uniqueness, that asks them to personalize? If, rather than expecting them to turn in work that is the same as everyone else, we expected them to express what they are learning in a way that is unlike anyone else, might this be one way of starting to integrate, among other things, the Creativity and Innovation that the new ISTE NETS are calling for?"

Reflecting on my own classroom, I am wondering if I scaffold the learning in ways that provides for students to express their uniqueness while achieving academic standards. It is a balancing act. I have seen teachers who foster a good bit of creativity but the students don't always achieve the academic goals. In other words, the creativity is fun but lacks substance. I have seen other teachers who seem to bring students to great heights of academic achievement but don't necessarily provide for a uniqueness to be expressed. So how do we bring the two together? Foster creativity while achieving substance?

Many of us have been working on developing educational experiences that are differentiated. I think this is a good first step. Is the key to learning experiences that call on our students' uniqueness, asking them to personalize, inside our students themselves? Do we need to some extent take ourselves out of the equation?

For now, I have no answers just questions. What do you think?