Technology Empowers Differentiated Instruction

Technology offers a great potential to help students and prepare them with 21st century skills but how does that same technology help teachers differentiate instruction for all students? In January of this year ISTE provided several examples of classroom projects that helped students learn while keeping them engaged.

Certainly students enjoy school better and learn more with they are being taught in ways that respond to their readiness levels, interests, and learning profiles. Teachers can better meet these needs by changing four elements of their instruction: content, process, product, and learning environment. Teachers can differentiate their instruction by changing some of their instructional strategies, management strategies and including software applications, video streaming, the Internet and other technology resources. Differentiated Instruction should include digital-age literacy, inventive thinking, effective communication, and high productivity which should lead to better student achievement.

One way teachers can better understand their students is to do an interest inventory, survey, observations or interviews. You can check out Survey Monkey at: http://www.surveymonkey.com,
Free Online Surveys at http://www.freeonlinesurveys.com
Zoomerang at http://www.zoomerang.com.

Differentiated Strategies

1. Tic-tac-toe board of activities where students choose to demonstrate their understanding of a topic by making a choice from the board. To learn more about tic-tac-toe boards go to http://daretodifferentiate.wikispaces.com/Choice+Boards.
2. I-Search – students work individually or in pairs using the internet and other research tools to investigate a topic of interest. A couple of examples:
   a. I-Search Unit – http://www2.edc.org/fsc/mih/i-search.html1
   b. I-Search Curriculum Unit – http://www.literacymatters.org/content/isearch/intro.htm
   c. Webbe template and storyboard – http://www.everythingdi.net/docs/webbetemplateJan152009.pdf
3. WebQuests - students work collaboratively using web research tools to investigate a teacher-designed topic of interest. Examples:
   a. WebQuest page – http://webquest.org
   b. Pre-Writing a Webquest – http://tommarch.com/learn-ing/prewrite.php
   c. WebQuest Maker – http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/web_quests/
4. R.A.F.T.T. – this strategy integrates reading and writing in a non-traditional way with students creating a product that illustrates their understanding.
   a. R.A.F.T.T. stands for:
   i. Role – the role of the character
   ii. Audience – audience for the product
   iii. Format – the way a student choose to show their understanding
   iv. Topic – the final product: who, what, when where, how
   v. Technology – software application used by the student
   b. What is R.A.F.T.T. – http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/instr/strats/raft/
5. Jigsaw – students are assigned a subtopic of a particular topic of study within a group. Students research their subtopic and then “jigsaw” with other subtopic experts from the other groups to produce information about the subtopic. Once complete the student returns to the original or “home” group to share their knowledge. The home groups can build a wiki to share the information learned.
   
   For more information about differentiating instruction using technology go to http://everything-di.blogspot.com.

Ocean Explorer Brings Undersea Science to Life

Robert Ballard founder of the JASON Project

The JASON Project connects students with explorers during live sea expeditions to motivate and excite students about science. It’s called “telepresence” technology that enables an unmanned robot submarine to stay in the ocean 24-7. If a robot submarine finds a major discovery – maybe a lost city or sunken ship - experts in the scientific fields can be at a command center within 20 minutes, remotely controlling the submarine and its cameras. Through a live production studio students will be able to experience these breakthroughs.

How is this possible? Fiber-optic cables will transmit video feeds from cameras on the robot submarines to a command center at the University of Rhode Island’s Institute for Archaeological Oceanography. Other command centers are being built at 11 other oceanography institutes across the country which are linked through the ultra high-speed Internet2. National Geographic is spending $11 million to help build the live production studio.

Students at Internet2 connected schools will be able to view the remote camera images from the sea floor and listen to live conversations among the scientists. Rhode Island middle schools are connected to Internet2 and the district is building remote command centers in the school libraries. With this access the students will be able to see firsthand the explorations and be able to remotely control the submarines. How cool is that?

According the Robert Ballard the reason for targeting the JASON Project to middle graders was simple – he wants the future stars to be scientists and educators and if students aren’t interested in science by eighth grade he doesn’t think they will become interested in the upper grades.

To learn more about the JASON Project go to: http://www.jason.org/public/home.aspx

How will YOU see the future? How will OTHERS see you in the future?

When my father was ill in 2003 the doctors gave him a disposable pill-sized camera to swallow that would record pictures from inside. I was fascinated by the camera and I really wanted to see how this camera worked and how the pictures would be downloaded from the camera, but my father wouldn’t let me touch the camera, he just swallowed it with a huge glass of water. So much for my curiosity.

Fast forward to today. Rob Spence, a documentary filmmaker who lost one of his eyes due to a childhood injury, now wants to replace his prosthetic eye with a high-tech wireless web-connected video camera. He calls himself Eyeborg. His current prosthetic eye is not an orb but a soft material that sits on a peg that was surgically implanted inside the opening. Right now there is a team of people working to make him an eye camera with a miniature lenses and a wireless transmitter. Once the team can make a powerless solution and a wireless solution for the eye camera Rob will have a bionic eye.

How will this eye camera affect the future of optical robotics? One member of the team thinks this camera will lay the groundwork for curing blindness. Could someone who is blind be able to see again using ocular technology? Others on the team think this will give people the ability to record everything they see and experience.

Please watch the video for this amazing eye camera ocular technology.
http://watch.spacecast.com/the-circuit/current/january-2009/#clip128282
http://watch.spacecast.com/the-circuit/current/january-2009/

Please visit the Eyeborg Project website for more details.
http://www.eyeborgblog.com/

Eye image from Microsoft clipart
Disposable camera image from Google Images
Eye Camera screenshot from Spacecast video

A Foundational Structure for Learning

David Warlick spoke about the “Native Information Experience” for digital learners at the NCTIES conference last week in Raleigh, NC. He spoke about how school leaders and teachers are finding ways to implement learning 2.0 with their students.

David spoke about the eight characteristics of networked and digital information experiences that teachers need to bring to their classrooms from observing the outside-the-classroom informational experiences that defines the unique networked, digital, information culture of today’s students.

These eight “Native Information Experiences:

1. Are responsive – authentic, personal experiences of sending out and receiving responses from others. Receiving responses from others being the payback for the students.
2. Measures Accomplishments – by the audience and comments from their friends.
3. Values Safely Make Mistakes – students learn by failing; they will keep doing something until its right.
4. Demands Personal Investment – students invest a lot of cumulative time in their informational experiences.
5. Values Personal Experience and Identity – students need to be part of a social group, sharing and learning from others.
6. Rewards with Audience and Attention – audiences have to be earned. Rewards for the students come from having other see what they are doing. One site was mentioned concerning rewards and audiences – Fan Fiction where students write and add chapters to an online story. http://www.fanfiction.net/
7. Provokes Communication – through technology students carry their friends with them all the time always communicating.
8. Are Fueled by Questions – many students are not afraid to ask questions
   

Understanding the informational experiences of our students will help schools and teachers achieve learning 2.0 in their classrooms – having students create, communicate, collaborate, problem-solve, and be engaged learners will cultivate new learning experiences. Teachers need to use the many web 2.0 tools that are available – wikis, blogs, Flickr, ePals, RSS feeds, social bookmarks, social networks, VoiceThread, Audacity, PhotoStory 3, Movie Maker, Animoto and others to enrich the learning experiences of all students.