Using Technology to Customize Instruction

I ran across an link with several interesting thoughts today. It hit at the heart of a potential huge strength of technology. Technology has the potential to customize education (differentiation) for each individual student. I really enjoyed its links to Adaptive Learning Technology Companies like Achieve 3000 or The Aleks Corporation. I could see great potential with this type of curriculum integration at our school.

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Life grows when...

I am currently reading Art as Experience by John Dewey for an Art History course that I am taking. As you know, Dewey is a revered education psychology contributor. He writes, "Life itself consists of phases in which the organism falls out of step with the march of surrounding things and then recovers unison with it--either through effort or by some happy change. And, in a growing life, the recovery is never mere return to a prior state, for it is enriched by the state of disparity and resistance through which it has successfully passed. If the gap between organism and environment is too wide, the creature dies. If its activity is not enhanced by the temporary alienation, it merely subsists. Life grows when a temporary falling out is a transition to a more extensive balance of the energies of the organism with those of the conditions under which it lives" (13). I have been contemplating a few of Dewey's ideas for awhile now. Here are my app...

Infographics: An Easy Way to Increase Visuals in the Classroom At the Wisconsin Association of Teachers of Foreign Languages conference this past weekend, one of the sessions was about the use of infographics in the classroom. Infographics visually organize information about a topic. Doing a simple internet search for infographics about an idea (world religions, periodic table, derivatives) provides you with a variety of charts and pictures that can help students look at information in a new way. If none of the results give you what you were looking for, you can also create your own on a number of different sites. Infogr.am and Piktochart are two popular ones. Piktochart also has an option that you can use to break down the infographic in visual chunks as an alternative presentational tool for a PowerPoint. You could also have your students use an infographic as an alternative to making the classic poster. As with all material you bring into the classroom, review info...

The More I Lecture, the Less I Know They Understand

Josh S. sent me this interesting article regarding lecturing in a classroom. It is really common to hear that lecturing is bad, and that hands-on inquiry is good. However, this article puts the debate in a new light. It isn't that lecturing is always bad. Sometimes it may be good. However, lecturing prohibits the teacher from truly knowing what the students know.

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