Technology and Differentiation

The Weigal, James, & Gartner (2009) piece identified a crucial role for technology in education - addressing multiple modalities of learning.  Technology can be used to give students multiple options to access the same information and skills, using visual, audio, written, and interactive media.  The authors also spoke about the use of technology to address the needs of students with disabilities.  But one use that they did not really dive into was the idea of differentiation within an entire population of students, even a typical general education classroom.

Everyone learns at different rates and this does not mean that one student is "gifted" and another is "disabled."  So even in our general education classrooms, we must teach sort of in the middle; ideally keeping the interest of our top performing and self-motivated students and scaffolding enough for our struggling and/or disinterested students.  But with technology, we can now differentiate in our classrooms with ease.  Software has already been created that can adapt to a student's abilities and we should continue to push for these types of educational tools to emerge into our classrooms.  Not only can this type of technology help re-mediate skills for children who need more time, but they can provide enrichment experiences for students who are being intellectually held back in a general education setting.