Reflection

As an ongoing part of my Reaching and Engaging All Learners Through Technology course this semester, I joined several classmates in a Differentiation Station social networking group on facebook we called Engaging Learners Through Technology. To help me implement the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Differentiated Instruction (DI), I will return to that social network for specific online resources as well as camaraderie and collaboration. I found the real human “link” to my peers as valuable as the hyperlinks they shared in their posts and comments. As I begin developing lessons using the UDL approach, my fellow facebook teachers are available to review my plans, make suggestions, and provide counsel. My first efforts to incorporate UDL were greatly improved by the feedback I received from my social network. I plan to be an active member of the group even after the course is ended.

One of the immediate adjustments I will make to my instructional practice comes as a direct result of my collaboration with my colleagues on the social network. We shared so many websites, software and hardware ideas with each other in this forum, I found myself losing track of the websites I wanted to use, even when I bookmarked them. I began using the social bookmarking tool, www.delicious.com, to organize the websites we recommended to each other. Using tags, I can identify the websites with key words to help me find them later when I am ready to integrate them into my lesson plans. I will introduce www.delicious.com to my students as a resource for them to classify and share their online resources.

It is every teacher’s responsibility to know “what technology is capable of and how it can be used to foster student success” (Bray, Brown, & Green, 2004, p.3). In order to efficiently and appropriately integrate technology into my instructional practices, I need some system of referencing which tools might be a good fit for which students. While the social network is an appropriate venue to alert my fellow teachers about a new website or strategy, it is not practical way of storing information. I started collecting ideas so I could filter them the way the tags in www.delicious.com categorize websites. I began an Excel spreadsheet to gather strategies I plan to use in my lessons to customize instruction using technology. The pertinent information for each item includes what learning style or profile the strategy or tool addresses, an example of how it has been used, availability or access information, who or where the idea came from and their contact information, web address, and even pricing. I expect at some point when my “anthology of technology” grows too large, I will link it to an Access database so I can make queries instead of resorting the data in Excel.

The best practices I have learned in this course emphasize matching the right technology to the right student (Center for Applied Special Technology, 2009). While getting to know the student and careful planning are important, being flexible is also an important factor to successful technology integration for differentiation. My own attitude and beliefs are part of the equation, too (Laureate Education, 2009). I must embrace all the challenges and rewards associated with using technology as a full member of the learning community that is my classroom, modeling flexibility for my students, my fellow technology users. Just as technology is an adaptable tool to meet students at individual readiness levels, encourage them, motivate them, and support their learning; technology is a tool serves me as the teacher in the same ways. Technology helps motivate me and encourage me through the social network with my peers. Technology meets my individual needs as a novice teacher collecting new strategies and ideas to use in my instruction. Technology supports my learning: through courses like this one and through online collaboration. I believe that modeling is a powerful catalyst for students and that includes being open to the potential benefits of integrating technology for learning.

References

Bray, M., Brown, A., & Green, T. D. (2004). Technology and the diverse learner: A guide to classroom practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Center for Applied Special Technology. (2009). UDL guidelines, version 1.0. Retrieved from http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/udlguidelines

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Putting it all together. Reaching and engaging all learners through technology. Baltimore: Author.

Yahoo! (2010). Retrieved from delicious: http://www.delicious.com/