How does access to technology serve to meet diverse learning needs? Meeting and helping students understand how to meet their own learning needs, design their learning, opens the door to all other learning. I am only with them for a short time, if my purpose is to ‘teach’ them all I know in that timeframe, I am doing them a great disservice. By using technology to meet individual needs, I am helping to set them up as learners for life.
Without technology in the classroom, there would be much more uniformity in what would become a traditional, slower-paced, teacher-centered classroom. The ability to design learning creates intrinsic motivation, collaboration, interest, and greater authenticity in what the learner is doing. It is almost a cycle that feeds off of itself...Student has access to technology, student designs learning to meet his/her needs, student is motivated to learn, student learns through process and product and the cycle starts again.
The beauty of having access to technology to meet individual needs is that the teacher can ‘get out of the way of the learner’. The teacher can move over to the passenger seat, hold the map (that they have collaborated on creating), and allow the learner to drive. The teacher becomes a facilitator of the learning happening in the hands of the learner. The landscape is forever changed due to the access to resources the learner has (technology).
I will be collecting data and artifacts to document how two students use technology tools to meet their individual needs in the classroom. This will be an organic data collection. I am not informing them of this plan. I am simply taking note of when I see evidence or they share evidence of designing their learning to meet their own needs. Artifacts will consist of data printouts, if applicable, anecdotal notes, and student reflection.
All content areas, skills, strategies, standards, and/or targets can be addressed or met through this goal. My data collection will serve to show evidence of student design and ownership in all content areas.
