Technology Driven Differentiated Instruction

I've been following Vicki Davis's blog and projects for quite a while. It was really cool to have her present at the Illinois technology conference. The presentation that I attended was Technology Driven Differentiated Instruction. I've done a great deal of research about differentiated instruction. My master's thesis was a study on effective professional development strategies in order to implement DI into teaching and learning. I've read research by Carol Ann Tomlinson, who is the foremost expert on the subject. This workshop presented the content with a new twist. DI is a very complex topic and generally pretty difficult to do well at first. Vicki's presentation provides some very specific recommendations for the use of web2.0 tools in the classroom and how the process, the product, or the content can be differentiated based on the teaching and learning experience. I need to take a look at her slideshow a few more times to get my head around the information. Pairing the implementation of web2.0 tools with DI is so overwhelming. I think that first teachers have to be comfortable with one concept or the other first before the two are paired. Clearly, Vicki has well developed technology integrated classroom, globally connecting her students using blogs, wikis, podcasting, and other tools. None of the teachers I currently work with are using web2.0 tools.

Here's the slide show, and my big three.

| View | Upload your own

• Find a way to use ClassTools.net - I saw this site at Beth's workshop too. It looks like a cool application for interactive white boards
• Blog regularly - even if I can't implement any of these "big three" lists, continue to write about what I've learned
• Write a Big Three for the workshops from IL-TCE
• Organize Intentional R&D - Use this name for the list of stuff I want to look at, learn, implement, inspire other with. This seems like a way to make the time I spend with new ideas and articles much more productive.