Differentiated Instruction

This blog examines the use that technology can have in the area of assessment.

Using technology to differentiate instruction across grade levels. Julia Kara-Soteriou. New England Reading Association Journal; 2009; 44, 2; ProQuest Education Journals
pg. 86

Not all students learn the same. This is a fact that is well known. I have been doing a lot of reflection lately as to how students of the 21st century learn. It started when I watched a YouTube video titled “A Vision of K-12 Students Today” I have embedded the video below.



In this article, there are a few things that stuck out to me as being realistic and usable in the classroom, some of which I have seen in action.

The first is what is commonly known as “The Clicker”. The author, Julia Kara-Soteriou, talks about how a colleague introduced you to the idea of using the clicker in her classroom. Students in the classroom each get a handheld device about the size of an iPod or mobile phone. When used with a specially created Notebook presentation (the same as Powerpoint, but with more options for SMARTBoards), students are able to do everything from answering polls, to comprehension tests, to full exams. It gives real-time feedback to the teachers about how many students in the class are understanding the content. And, because each student logs in to their clicker, teachers are able to see at a glance who needs more help with a specific concept.

While on my internship, one of the grade seven math teachers employed the use of clickers. His students loved them. They would complain if they had a math class without them. It not only helped their motivation in math, they also were able to share instantly with the teacher how they were doing, a bonus for those students who were too shy to raise their hand in front of their classmates. I had the opportunity to attend a training session on “the clicker” and believe that its use would definitely be a benefit if integrate into a classroom appropriately. They would not work for everything, but for a subject such as math, they were quite beneficial.

Another very interesting topic that I came across while researching technology and differentiated instruction is the creation of “Wikis”. A wiki is “a page or collection of web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki accessed March 15, 2009). Wikis allow students to collaborate on projects online. For example, if a group is working on a report, they could publish it to a wiki, and then each could edit it online, on his or her own time. They can also release it to the world and see what others might contribute to it, helping them to further synthesize their learning with that of others. I have spoken with teachers who have used wikis in their classroom to this extent, and they shared that people from across the world who, for some reason or another, had an interest in the subject reported on by their students were editing it, and sharing their knowledge with the students.

Technology is difficult to incorporate into the classroom because of funding. Items like the clickers can cost a few thousand dollars for a class set. Often school divisions offer grants for technology and it’s implementation into the classroom. Our students today are growing up in a world where technology rules. Why should they have a classroom that doesn’t follow suit? Technology, such as Clickers or wikis help us, as teachers to monitor students progress, in real time. We can offer suggestions online as they are working on a project, we can upload our rubrics, lessons, etc. to the World Wide Web for students to download if they were sick, or need to read through them again to study. Technology opens a lot of doors in the world of assessment, and it is up to us as the future educators to take a chance and walk through them.



Using Technology to Differentiate Instruction Across Grade Levels

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