Taking The Stigma Out Of Learning With Immersive Reader

I love to read. If I am not working or spending time with my daughters I am reading. But when I was in elementary school reading was what I dreaded the most. In my classes we had the "blue birds" and "red birds" reading groups. I was a blue bird. A weak reader. Stuck in a group with the other weak readers. Thinking back on that time as an adult it was a deflating time as a kid. I know the teacher did it so she could work with us in a small group but the rest of the class knew we were the weak readers.

Whether students need help in reading or other aspects of learning the subtle differences some teachers do to provide more accessible learning, while unintentional, can have devastating effects on students. Different color handouts for various reading levels or pulling students out to get extra attention all can stigmatize, cause anxiety and push students away.

Inclusion means that learning together is a better way that benefits everyone. Inclusive learning is about embracing all. It's making a promise to each student to do all we can to help them belong to the community of learners.


This is where #Edtech can help.

Keep in mind, our focus is to create environments where every student can succeed. It's not on a singular app or website or tool. It's how these tools support learning and strong pedagogy.

Immersive Reader from Microsoft is one of the strongest pedagogically focused edtech resources out there. It is a powerful tool that can help all students become stronger readers and writers while letting them do it when and how they need it. Students can turn it on when they need it and use any of the features they want any time.

What makes it great?

• Breaking down sentences in to individual word parts like syllables and parts of speech.
• Line focus
• Changing fonts and colors for students who are dyslectic or have vision impairment
• Read aloud
• Translation in to multiple different languages, with read aloud
• Picture dictionary

This is just a sample. There is so much more that it can do! Immersive Reader WORKS ON ANY DEVICE and can be found in a multitude of products both from Microsoft and others. And its FREE!

Immersive Reader is just one tool that you can use to create more inclusive spaces. Microsoft Translator and Office Lens (both, you guessed it, free!) are others. Check out the learning paths in the Microsoft Educator Community for any time professional development (yep, free) to learn how all these Learning Tools can support you and your students!

4 EdTech Ways to Differentiate in a Student-Centered Classroom

Co-Written with my friend and business partner Shaelynn Farnsworth

In all the work that Shaelynn and I do with teachers across the US and beyond we see educators creating amazing learning environments for students. From the use of 1:1 technology to enabling students to learn authentically, these really are incredible times to teach and learn.

However, among all the flash and pageantry there is struggle. Educators are looking for ways to personalize the learning environment for every student while trying to find ways to differentiate; it can become paralyzing. On the one hand, they have the traditional methods of accessing content and assessing what students have learned. On the other, they have rooms full of technology but aren’t yet taking full advantage of that that technology can do for each student.

Carol Ann Tomlinson said it best:

“At its most basic level, differentiation consists of the efforts of teachers to respond to variance among learners in the classroom. Whenever a teacher reaches out to an individual or small group to vary his or her teaching in order to create the best learning experience possible, that teacher is differentiating instruction.”

Differentiation isn’t just something that some students need or some teachers have to do, differentiation is responsive teaching and a part of every classroom. Each student comes to the classroom with a variety of past learning experiences, prior knowledge and individual learning needs and styles. Whether it is to help a student who struggles to understand basic content, a student who just needs a little push to go deeper or a student who far exceeds our expectations and needs the opportunity to go further, differentiation should be and must be a part of every classroom.

Differentiation comes in many varieties. Teachers can differentiate in four classroom components based on student readiness, interest, or learning profile:

• Assessment – Understanding what students know and still need to learn
• Content – What the student needs to learn or how the student will access the information
• Process – Activities in which the student engages in order to make sense of or master the content
• Products – culminating projects that ask the student to rehearse, apply, and extend what he or she has learned in a unit

(There is also some evidence that differentiation of the classroom environment, the design of the learning space, furniture used, etc, can also help with differentiation. If you want to learn more learning space design check out the work of Bob Dillion.)

When we layer technology into these 4 components, the process of differentiation becomes less daunting and more accessible to each student. Here are 4 Edtech Ways To Differentiate In The Student-Centered Classroom:

Assessment-Sometimes seen as a four-letter word in the world of education, assessment, if done correctly, can provide a mountain of valuable information that can help teachers determine where students are in their learning and where the teacher needs to go in their teaching. Particularly, formative assessment is the driver of differentiation of assessment. Formative assessment acts as a GPS, providing valuable information both the teacher and the learner. It provides timely feedback to inform instruction and make adjustment. When assessment is used to adjust instruction it crosses over into the “formative assessment” realm. This crossover helps teachers and students to see it, not as a test, but more as a process.

Technology isn’t necessary to do any type of formative assessment. However, if we layer in the effective use of technology into formative assessment we can not only reach students where they are in their understanding but look at trends over time and respond accordingly in our teaching.

Some Of Our Favorites:
Poll Everywhere
Quizziz
Nearpod
Flipgrid
Recap App

Content-When many teachers consider differentiation they look to content as the way to do it for most students, and rightly so. Content is the foundation of learning and skills are applied. Therefore, if we can provide a way for students to access that content at their level, we can better meet their learning needs. Each student is (and should be) held to high standards. But we know not every student is on the same path for their learning. Through the differentiation of content we can level the playing field for each student.

Technology has made it much easier and frankly more possible to differentiate content in new and exciting ways. In some cases, students can be given the same content, however it is tailored to their individual needs either through raising or lowering the reading level, providing more visualizations or still meeting standards but providing content that is interesting and exciting for students.

Some Of Our Favorites:
Newsela
CK12 Flexbooks
MyOn
The Kid Should See This

Process-Differentiation of the processes by which students learn is another traditional way that teachers provide different learning paths for students. For many students the instructional practices are outdated and do not meet their needs. If we want to create an environment where each student can find success no matter their learning profile than we have to look beyond traditional pedagogy and meet students where they are at and how they want to consume information.

Technology makes the differentiation of process easier. Accessibility tools built into modern devices make it easier for us all to use those devices more effectively and efficiently. And many of those tools can benefit all students. In addition, the idea of gamifying learning is gaining steam to provide an environment that is familiar to students, but also is fun, challenging and rich with varied learning opportunities.

Some Of Our Favorites:
Breakout EDU
Duolingo
CommonLit
Read & Write For Google Chrome

Product-Ultimately, students need to demonstrate their holistic understanding of the content. Traditionally that is done through a summative project. However, this method is flawed when we produce a list of items that students must include, the specific font to use, the number of cited sources, etc. That isn’t a project, that is a recipe. And recipes don’t belong in the classroom. Students need freedom of choice in how they demonstrate their understanding. That doesn’t mean it’s a free-for-all. We can provide creativity, choice and freedom within boundaries.

Technology is truly transformational and students should be able to demonstrate understanding through a variety of transformational ways. This differentiation of product can look different for each student, however, at the heart are the same learning goals. Through the effective use of technology students can do incredible things while still demonstrating what they know and how they know what they know.

Some Of Our Favorites
BookCreator
Instagram and Snapchat
SeeSaw
Canva

Want to learn more? You can grab a copy of our resources from our FETC 2018 Presentation or inquire about a workshop on EdTech Ways to Differentiate in the Classroom by contacting Steven, http://www.web20classroom.org/contact

What Exactly Is Differentiation?

Meeting the needs of all students. Modifying instruction so all students learn. Providing for student choice when completing an assignment. All of these, and others were given as basic definitions to the question of what is differentiation as the weekly #edchat got underway on Twitter.

Our topic this week was to try to come to an understanding of what a differentiated classroom looks like. For me, this was one of the most engaging discussions because there is so many opinions as to what true differentiation looks like.

Here is just some of what was said:

• Today I felt less lonely as a teacher and see that lots of the ideas I struggle with alone we are all struggling with as a group of professionals. Differentiation looks like a set of beliefs about how students learn and how students teach that can change our approach in the everyday classroom work towards more inclusive and more creative activities and teaching objectives. I believe it is best achieved with good classroom management as a basis and let's not forget school or staff's support. It doesn't work that well if I use it in one subject and the other teachers don't, for example.
• Differentiation is synonymous with equity. It is about giving each student what he or she needs to be successful. It is about our mission and vision for schools. Do we want to reach ALL STUDENTS or some students? If we are differentiating effectively then we are attempting to reach them all. The challenge for schools is that we are too traditional in many cases and are under the unfortunate misconception that students will all learn at the same pace. It is about getting students to reach academic standards at their own pace. For some this could mean taking college courses in grade 11 and for others it could mean taking college courses later.
• Differentiation involves first- identifying where students are with good quality surveys (interest, learning styles, MI, right/left brain...) as well as pre-assessments to identify prior knowledge so that we can build on that. Classroom learning is driven by quality assessment- we can then differentiate the process (the how) and products (giving students choice and variety in how they can show what they learned).
• Differentiation is a convenient umbrella term that means different things to different people. Regardless of how one defines differentiation, there can be general consensus that teaching so all children can learn is a good thing.
• In general, I find providing choices for formative and summative assessments goes a long way toward allowing every child to demonstrate success. In addition, I try to provide multiple ways for the same information to be understood - visually, auditorially, kinesthetically, etc...The trick comes in combining brain-based, best-practices, differentiated instruction within the confines of a rigid, antiquated system which values numbers and standardized formal assessment. Teaching students how to think, how to problem-solve, how to attack difficult questions or problems, how to express their thoughts clearly and succinctly, and how they learn best, should be goals of all educators. When students are adequately armed with the above skills, they will be able to succeed in any situation or learning environment.
• When planning DI one must have a repertoire of teach strategies, know students, identify variety of instructional activities, and identify ways to assess.

You can read the rest of the comments here. And the archive here.

There were several interesting points..

Differentiation is not specific to one group. In the past I have read and been told that differentiation applies only to "labeled" students. I even have a book on my shelf called Differentiated Instruction which stresses the needs for DI in the Special Education classroom. DI is not just for Special Ed, gifted, ESL, whatever label you want to apply. Its for all students.

Several people talked about interest surveys, inventories, studies....whatever you want to call them. While these might work they are not the best (in my opinion) indicators of how a student really learns or their particular learning style. The only way I found was to actually take time to observe my kids. Talk to them, ask them questions. Instead of handing them a survey on the first day of school why not just plain ask them how they learn best. If you are working with younger kids present various types of learning activities where they have to demonstrate different learning styles and see which kids gravitate toward which styles. The point is to get to know and connect with your students. Then you can understand how they learn best.

Can you meet the needs of every single student you teach? If you are teaching 5 kids, 10 kids even, probably. More than likely if you are a middle school or high school teacher you could be teaching over 100 kids. You have to realize that you can't do something different for everyone, no matter what your administration tells you. (I say that because mine always told me I had to provide different instruction for the over 130 students I taught. Oh and I only saw them for 50 mins a day. Yours may be telling you the same.) So what do you do? Shake things up. Once you understand your students (by connecting with them) you know one day you might need to do an activity that gets them up and moving around. And the next day an activity where the students have to create. And the next day an activity where the students are reading and discussing with their peers. You can't walk into the classroom day in and day out teaching exactly the same way. First, that's boring. Second, you are going to reach more students when you vary your instruction. Have fun with it! Dress up, sing, draw, kids love it when they see their teacher as human. (And they might just learn lots!)

Several participants brought up the fact that not only instruction needs to be differentiated but assessments as well. Student choice is an important part of any classroom, not just ones that are focused on DI. When doing and assignment or project. Offer student choice in the product. Wanna create a blog, great! Wanna write a rap, record it and post it to the class wiki? Awesome! Wanna create a logo using Photoshop? Super! You may not think of all the ways students could demonstrate their learning and you know, that's ok. Let the students tell you how they would like to demonstrate it. I bet they will show you, through their product how they like to learn.

Finally I want to share with you an amazing activity that one of my friends, Russ (@RussGoerend) is doing in his 6th grade Language Arts/Social Studies classroom. For me (and several others) I think it is an activity demonstrates what true Differentiated Instruction is while still adhering to the mandated curriculum. Head over to his blog and read more about Skills Based Journaling

What do you think? What do you do or have you seen in terms of DI that works? Is there such a think as DI? Should we even be concerned with it or is it something that is a major factor in the classroom?

Imaged used under a CC License from Flickr. View the original here.