Differentiation vs Personalization

Differentiation has been the buzzword for many years.  Everyone has been saying that we must differentiate our instruction for our students to support their individual needs.  Recently personalization has become the new buzzword.  I have had many conversations with people about personalization and it seems to me that the majority of people are using these two terms interchangeably.  Are they the same thing?  If not, what’s the difference?

I believe that the two are very different.  Teachers differentiate for their students by giving alternative assignments or modifications to assignments for students to better support a student’s needs.  It is the teacher that makes the majority of the decisions for differentiation.

Facilitators of learning, (i.e. teachers) personalize learning by giving learners, (i.e. students) both a voice and choice in their learning.  Learners are pushed to take more ownership of their learning and are not just given choices, but allowed to have a voice in what the process looks like.  No, they are not permitted to skip over Common Core learnings.  Instead they are given the standards, benchmarks, and proficiencies they must learn and given the freedom and ownership to have a voice and choice in how they learn them and how they demonstrate mastery of the learning.  The facilitator of learning will make the final decision on whether to approve the learner’s process and demonstration of learning both before proceeding and after completion.  The facilitator will also be able to give suggestions on how to move forward, but the ownership is shared by both the learner and facilitator.

This has a very different feel than differentiation.  When you talk about personalization, what are you really saying, meaning, and hearing?