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Using technology to differentiate instruction across grade levels
Recently, I was introduced to Clickers by a colleague who decided to begin to utilize them in his undergraduate and graduate classes. A clicker looks like a TV remote with few buttons, which are used to indicate each user's response to a presenter's multiplechoice questions. The presenter can easily be an instructor who poses questions in a specially designed PowerPoint presentation and who can then see the students' responses in real time. Students can also see the summarized responses to each question, but cannot see each student's individual response. Only the instructor has access to this information.
My colleague was very excited about the fact that these Classroom (or Student) Response Systems, as they are frequently called, were soon going to be integral to his classroom interaction with his students. He explained how he could facilitate discussions, by polling the students' opinions and discussing the reasons behind their opinions. He described how he could encourage peer instruction, by allowing students to discuss their answers with each other before they respond to the question. He even talked about how he could save time, by asking students to use clickers during a class exam. What made me even more excited about this technology, however, was the fact that the real-time information provided by the students can also be used by instructors to modify their instruction and address the needs of their students before they leave the classroom. I immediately thought of the impact a Classroom Response System could have on helping teachers differentiate instruction in real time for those students who are too shy to reveal their lack of understanding in front of their classmates.
According to Tomlinson (2001), differentiated instruction is based on the premise that instruction should be adapted to the students' different learning styles, interests, and ability levels. Therefore, teachers who use differentiated instruction are expected to show flexibility in the ways they teach their students and organize their curriculum. In a classroom where differentiated instruction is the foundation of instructional decisions, teachers adapt their instructional activities and selection of materials to each student's linguistic and cultural background, academic ability, interests, and learning style.
Information and Communication Technologies, like Classroom Response Systems, for example, when...