As teachers, each year we get a new set of drummers that walk into our classroom while we are marching to our own drums.  The biggest challenge all teachers have is finding a way to get the drums to work in harmony through differentiation.  Each student has their own set of talents and weakness.  Students will naturally gravitate towards their talents and things they are good at.  The teachers fill the gaps in their weaknesses.  Unfortunately, in a class of 20 students there are often 20 different areas for teachers to support.  So creating a large tool box to support your students is where differentiation comes into play.  Sometimes differentiation is changing the number of problems assigned when other times it is having a note-taker for a student.  The key to differentiation is finding ways to support your students so they can be successful, adapting to their needs as an individual.  Differentiation can be as easy as allowing a student to use a calculator in class

When I think of differentiation, I think of literature groups and math groups based on various ability levels.   But differentiation goes beyond just creating groups it is also finding ways to make all of the materials accessible to the students.  Addressing the various learning styles within each lesson, offering multiple instruction mediums and adapting activities for students are all part of the differentiation process.  One of the strategies that jumps out to me is to using multiple mediums to present the same topic like having students write their vocabulary words, act them out and sing them is one way to support student learning.  I love the tutorials that have been created for this class and that I have found on youtube while exploring during assignments.  This has inspired me to want to create my own video tutorials to support student learning.  While I still have to explore sites like screencast-o-matic and storify, these would be a great way to differentiate a lesson.  Audio books and student recordings are other ways to differentiate our classrooms.  Students who struggle with reading can listen to the books while reading along in an eBook.  Students who struggle with writing can take a test by answering in an audio file and using a dictation device to write their stories.  It all boils down to adapting the activities to meet the students where they are while still challenging them.

My favorite part of teaching is finding ways to differentiate for my students.  The first place I always start is talking to my special education teacher.  They are full of tricks we often forget about or never knew.  The only problem is it can get very tiring trying to keep up and do it with every assignment.  But in the many years I have been teaching differentiation has evolved.  We have moved beyond tape recorders and transparencies (I think I still have a case of recorders and cassettes hidden in my storage that have been replaced new technology) into the digital world of technology.  There are so many new tools for us to use that makes the world of differentiation easier. 

Take the time to check out this week’s pinterest for tools to support differentiation within the classroom.   I had to stop at 20 because there is so much out there to support differentiation.  The Twitter sessions and Connectivist List gave me even more sources this week.  I have a list of 16 other sites still to explore recommended by my peers. 

Will digital tools lead to the closing of our school doors?

 There is so much technology it is hard to keep up.  As soon as I think I have one tool down, there is a new one to explore.  My project group really pushed me to try new tools like Wiggio and embedding videos into our Wikispaces.  Even when the technology did not work exactly as we expected everyone was quick to find a new way to get the job done. I never imagined it would be possible to really do a group project in cyber land but my group proved me wrong.  I believe everyone worked together and did their part to make create a resource we could all use in the future.  One of the key pieces is that we always had someone willing to be the “leader” of the group.  While this role changed there was always someone willing to step up and get us rolling.  When I think about applying a virtual team project to students, the leadership must be taught and embedded into the project.  For adult teachers, I think this was a natural process but for youth I think this is a skill we need to develop through modeling, practice and very clear expectation.  Providing rubrics and checklists were helpful to me.  I was also thinking about the student who doesn’t normally participate or do their work how do we get them engaged in a group project like this?  How do you differentiate for your students with special needs without bringing attention to the student?  I can see creating Wiggio groups fro my students now and helping them set up their tasks and projects.  I can picture doing many group projects this way and allowing student to track their own progress.  When students are able to break a project down into smaller pieces they might not see it as so daunting.  The sense of accomplishment will grow as they mark each task done.  Student can create their own checklists using Wiggio too and collaborate on individual projects to support each other. 

While in our groups work we did not use Trello, I can believe it would be a great tool to help differentiate within the classroom.  Often times, students need to set a different pace or have a modified assignment.  Trello offers a platform to publish an assignment and make modifications for individuals without the peer knowledge.  The stigma of groups can be eliminated.  Like in Wiggio, Trello allows students to break projects into workable parts.  I thought the kinesthetic action of moving an assignment into the “doing” column would help give students the visual reminders about their work.  This also serves as a great place to place support documents or tutorials that reach students at multiple levels.

Out of all the new tools, I have explored I am sold on Evernote for portfolios and student notebooks.  I see so many uses from progress monitoring to taking class notes and doing projects.  The skills they develop using these tools can easily transfer over to the professional world as they transition out of school. 

The one tool we have used extensively in this class that I am still not sold on is Twitter.  While I can see its uses and benefits, to me it is just another place to get lost in cyber land.  I have read several articles that are swaying me, yet I am still not sold on using twitter.  To me, I see it as another way kids will be bullied and an easy distraction in class.  But maybe in time, I will be convinced.

Don't forget to check out new resources on my Pinterest page.

The cloud is a tool I have not used effectively.  I have been part of the mobile me network for over 3 years yet I have used it very little.  I love that my calendar and address book is connected on all my apple devices and I can use my work PC to make changes or updates to them.  So it makes me feel connected but then I know there is so much more to the iCloud service that I am not using beyond syncing.  Last fall, I downloaded dropbox and even tried to share some pictures with a colleague but I never heard anything if they were ever used.  Then we used dropbox in a class at UAS.  It  was an easy way hare my assignments with the professor.  Then I realized that it was a great way to bring my work home with me at night.  As I was writing grants or working on a project, I just save everything in my dropbox and I can get it on my iPad, my pc or my macbook.  So after being “forced” to use dropbox in my class, I now use it regularly.  Once I figure out how my professor set up all her students, I can totally see using it in the classroom.  Students can post their work in the drop box and I can add comments to it in the margins using notes in word.  Making dropbox an easy tool to help student improve their work and give them feedback at their pace.  .

Evernote is another tool that would be great to use on student portfolios.  Students can capture their work on in Evernote by taking a picture of the page or scanning it into a computer.  Then the teacher could attach a video comment on the assignment to give them feedback.  While I have personally used Evernote to take notes at meetings and trainings, the tutorial in our module taught me about making notebooks within Evernote to organize my notes.  This past week, I was at a training watching a colleague type into the iPad notes program so I showed him my Evernote and how to use the notebooks then open them on a computer later.  He was sold on the app.  This made me think about using ever note as a study guide notebook where students could create a notebook for each topic covered then they would have a full set of notes to review for finals or help them with assignments.  These can be uploaded for the teacher to review and offer support for each student. 

I have found the use of Penultimate to be a useful tool to correspond with my science students because I can use it with younger students on the iPad.  The students can write using a stylus or their finger and label a diagram they draw.  The students do not spend time pecking away at the keyboard and they can write right into the notebook.  Then I can add comments to their work.  UPad is another similar program I am just exploring, so far I can see using it for responsive reading and teachers being able to see the notes of their students within PDF documents.  There are so many options out there as we explore the cloud. 

I have a few questions about using the cloud.  Living in rural Alaska, I wonder how effective we can be using the cloud when there are so many days there is not a strong signal to upload and download files.  Is this really an effective answer?  I wonder how much in the cloud is accessible by outside entities.  I realize there are password protections but then things still seem to get out of the cloud.  So how can we truly protect our students?  How long are things available in cloud?  When we stop using it where does it go?  I can see each year teachers setting up new systems and accounts for their students so Johnny Smith will have at least 12 different cloud accounts by the time he graduates from high school if not more.  Does all this “paperless” work really reduce our carbon footprint if it takes huge amounts of energy to keep these clouds running? 

It is amazing to me how much is out to the world through the Internet.  While the Internet has enhanced learning in many cases, it has also put many of our students at risk.  As educators, it s up to us to help guide our students in using all these tools and how to post on-line respectfully.  Unfortunately, the more the kids learn the more our student are exposed.  The hardest part as an educator is knowing that everything that is posted is there for and can have implications later in life.  While as a teen they are writing a harmless story as an assignment when it is in the cloud or on-line it is available years later as they are applying for a job or trying to get into the military.  What is innocent chatting is a record that can be followed.  The fact that everything put in the cloud is accessible makes me leery of using it in the classroom.  It makes me wonder how much of my cloud can been seen.

Check out the articles I’ve found on the cloud in education as well as how to use these applications in the classroom. 

http://pinterest.com/bbarnowsky/the-cloud/

Don't let your student work get washed away in the rain.  The digital age has given us so many options to preserve student work and capture learning.

With high stakes testing a the pressure to increase proficiency, traditional portfolios have been lost in the rush of covering all the material.  Too often we get to conferences and have lots of data to share with parents and families about "where their student is academically".  Too often this creates added stress and pressure to our students.  Through the use of portfolios we can easily share the data of their students as well as their successes.  How cool would it be to allow a family to hear audio for a child fluently reading a poem with an illustration or piece of art that shows the child's interpretation of that poem.  The technology of today has made portfolios feasible again.

Teachers can track student progress and document student work using Evernote as they walk around the room on a tablet then review it later on their laptops.  This is a quick and easy way to create student portfolios with little class time taken up.  Students can track their own progress in using a digital notebook like Penulitmate on a tablet or Upad.  I am in awe of the features of UPad.  I can just imagine uploading textbooks or novels into Upad and having students take notes as their reading.  Literature Circles could be so rich using this App.  I can see students learning how to study again using this app it makes reading so much more engaging.  Unfortunately, it is only available on an iPad and there is not a laptop version yet. 

Using just a computer, creating a student portfolio page using Yola might be a great alternative.  They can create multiple pages based on subject matter or create a blog to record their monthly writing projects.  Pictures, videos, scanned copies of work can all be added to their Yola site.  The biggest catch to this is that students must be at least 13 years old to have a site.  While this is the rule for many other sites like Facebook and BlogSpot, students always find a way around this rule.  But if you are teaching younger students it is not recommended to head down this path.  I am still looking for a blogging/student website place for upper elementary students to explore.   

This week has been filled with new experiences for me.  My group is using Wiggio to communicate about our team project.  This is another first for me, wiggio might make my mind go wi I have struggled to figure out how to join a group but finally a group added me to their WikiSpace.  While Google Groups was a good initial place to meet classmates.  I have found it difficult to track things there.  I will press on and to continue to connect with my peers using this method even though I am struggling with it  Maybe I need to watch another video on using Google groups effectively. The Twitter Feed is full of ideas to explore and the resources tab has even more sites to check out.  I have posted my favorite collaboration tools I discovered this week at my Pinterest Site on Collaboration.  Teambox is one site I would like to explore further.  I can picture using it for team projects.  The part I really like about this site is as the teacher creates the teams and invites participants they can see the work of each student.  This would help the teachers monitor the progress of the groups as well as see who can use a little extra guidance.

As an AmeriCorps RAVEN member, I am working with another member to build a Trello site for other members across Alaska.  While I am still fumbling through the site, I can see it as a wonderful way to share ideas about multiple topics and support each other.   I like that is is set up like quick notecards and not extensive writing to post documents and share links.  I hope to be a productive contributor to our Trello site.