Differentiation

Differentiation 

What and How and Does Technology Impact it?

Not all students are the same, some may differ ethnically, ability-wise, in family setups, and in personalities. A teacher needs to recognize and accept that their students may not have all the same needs and skill and that it  the teacher's job to alter and present lessons in a way that all his or her students will fully grasp and understand the knowledge they are being taught. Doing this is differentiation in the classroom. 

In a differentiated classroom a teacher can change content process, expected outcomes and even the learning environment to meet a child's needs. Differentiation is based on the individual children's needs, not the grade-level's. To help teacher's effectively teach in a differentiated classroom they can look to Blooms Taxonomy Questions for some guidance. 

I have seen differentiation be extremely effective in the classroom, but I have also seen it fail and/or not be used in the classroom. Teachers in my high-school have used to to help students with learning disabilities be successful in the assignments and fully understand it. I feel that the growing availability of technology to schools is important and beneficial to differentiation in schools. It opens new doors and ways to explain and manipulate content and lessons in ways that may not have been able to work before technology. For instance, a student who may miss a large amount of schools do to illness can now use a robot with a web cam to still attend and interact with their teachers and peers at school while home or in the hospital, this in my opinion a way that differentiation is being aided by technology.