Differentiation and Collaboration through Technology

Throughout this quarter, I have been working on adapting an important lesson in my content area and enhancing it through the use of technology. This is a lesson that I have used many times in order to scaffold student's understanding of theme, but using the technology enhanced the lesson by allowing for more student collaboration and differentiation.

After creating the lesson, I realized how much it would support student learning through visuals. When I did this without technology, our white board was a mess of crossed out ideas, circled ones, and it was not visually appealing. Using a concept map would help to show student's the steps. But it will also help students to collaborate and use each other's ideas to create the best idea.

The lesson not only increased student collaboration, but allowed for easier differentiation for me as a teacher. Instead of having to work 1-1 with students, I can simply prompt them to look at other student's ideas and have students use each other's ideas as scaffolding. For students who struggle, seeing exemplar ideas is always a great way to differentiate and scaffold for lower learners. Also, I differentiated that when student's finished revising their theme, they could support other students by leaving them hints for how they could revise. This allows the more knowledgeable other to support lower level student's learning, and allows quick learners to practice the skill more.

One concern I still have is monitoring the computer program. I specifically had a paraeducator supporting me in doing this, but then that eliminates a para from supporting. Because the lesson is so student focused, including students supporting students, I think it would work out ok; however, in the school I am in, it would be a risk to ask a para to work to manage the resource over working directly with students. On reflecting, maybe a better way to do this would be to request one student to support me by assigning a role like "website manager" to ensure appropriate answers. This is still one part of the lesson that I want to improve and revise, but I really want to teach the lesson first to see the best way to revise it. We will not be covering theme until next year, so I am excited to see how the lesson works out.

At first, I was very nervous about using technology in a lesson because my mentor teacher hardly ever uses technology. Another teacher I work with uses it, but often it is just added on and doesn't always make sense or support student learning. I was surprised as I started thinking how much the technology would enhance the pedagody I had previously used in my lesson. It was a much stronger alternative to no technology, where the visuals were messy and it took a long time because the teacher was the "collaboration" for students. I think that this revision truly enhanced the lesson and will allow for my students to collaborate better, as well as allow for differentiation, mostly provided for by students themselves! I am excited to try the lesson in the near future.