Hello, and thank you for joining me for personalization and differentiation in action. By the end of today's tutorial, we will be able to answer the following essential questions. How are personalized learning and differentiated instruction related? And how are differentiated instruction strategies and personalized learning incorporated in lessons and units?
Let's talk about how differentiated instruction and personalized learning are related. To begin with, these ideas are not the same. We're going to look at four different ways in which they differ, and this will also shed some light on how they're related.
The first way we're going to look at is teacher-designed versus teacher-designed and student-designed. Differentiated instruction is solely teacher-designed. And that just means the design depends on what the teacher feels the instructional needs are. So the teacher tries to tailor the instruction to meet the different needs of the students, and this is usually based on their learning profiles.
Personalized learning, however, does incorporate student design because the student is going to be collaborating with the teacher in the design. This doesn't mean it's personalized instruction. It's personalized learning because it's self-paced based on the student's progress and tailor to the students preferences and their interests.
Next we have same goals versus same goals and/or different goals. Again, we'll start with differentiated instruction. For differentiated instruction, the goals for the learners are the same. So all students are working towards meeting the same standard.
It's just the way that they meet it that's been differentiated. The content's been differentiated to meet the standard. The process, the product, et cetera has been differentiated to meet the standard. But the standard or the goal is the same.
With personalized learning, the student and the teacher collaborate and identify goals together. And then they develop a learning plan, and that's what they use to meet those goals. So each student actually is meeting a different standard and they have a unique goal. Some of these might be the same and some of them might differ from each other.
Next, we're going to look at teacher support versus teacher support and network support. In differentiated instruction, the teacher supports a group of students or individual students. And they do this by providing varying levels of content. They also do this through different processes and different strategies. And the teacher definitely promotes demonstration of learning through different products, et cetera.
And this is all usually based on the students' learning profiles that the teacher has put together. The students are supported by the teacher, either as individuals or in small groups during instructional time. This is different than in personalized learning, because in personalized learning the students are actually not that reliant on the teacher for instructional support. The students develop different systems of support, or different networks of support, and these can include peers, maybe experts in the content, maybe a variety of different teachers.
So while keeping all of this in mind-- these are all of their differences-- there is also similarities. So differentiating lessons for particular learners, that can be a way of creating personalized learning. Let's now look at differentiated instruction in a 1 to 1 learning environment. And remember, a 1 to 1 learning environment is when there's one device for each student.
When we're looking at differentiated instruction in a 1 to 1 learning environment, teachers are going to want to use digital formative assessments because this is going to give real-time data of student proficiency. And this is going to help guide instructional decisions-- not after that class period's over, but during that actual class. And we've talked about a couple of different things that allow for this. One is Schoolology, one is Socrative, and one is even just using Google Forms.
The teachers are also going to want to use technology to help with the different reading levels. And rewordify.com is a really great resource for that because it allows the teacher to create multiple levels of the same text. Teachers can also station rotation or workshop models, and this is where there's different stations throughout the classroom that the students would go to during one classroom period as small groups. And maybe those groups are based on similar abilities or different abilities so that there's peer scaffolding going on.
Or the workshop model, which is where students are working in small groups and they can use tools to meet these learning needs. These can be enhanced with technology, especially if you use online adaptive learning programs. The students can use different technology tools within these stations or workshops to get the content.
And an example of this is some students might be asked to create a podcast based on what they read. Some might create a book trailer. Some might write a blog comparing the text to the real-world situation or problem.
And then you might also have flipped lessons. And flipped lessons can be used not only to introduce new material, but also so that the students can play back the video and instructions to reinforce the learning that took place. It helps the students have multiple opportunities to access the content. It helps the students access the content at their own pace. It helps the students go home and self-assess whether or not they need to review, and so on.
Now we're going to look at personalized learning in a 1 to 1 environment. So personalized learning, remember, is where the student and the teacher are collaborating to come up with a goal for each specific student. And differentiation can be a part of personalized learning, but the two are not one and the same.
So one way that we might have personalized learning is that the student my visit a site that allows them to collaborate on real-world problems. And one such site is a flat world project. Another is that they might use the internet to research problems in their community and use the internet to come up with possible solutions for these problems.
The students might use publication tools so that they can create products for real-world audiences. I think that this is so important because we want what we're doing in the classroom to matter in real-life. Writing an essay that only our teacher is going to read is not a real-world production. Writing a blog entry is a real-world production. And we want to have our students using real-world publication tools to create these.
And then students can also use tools to track their own progress and learning, and to collect data. And then the students can even think about what that data means and have it influence their pacing or their decisions on what they're going to do next in the classroom. Obviously, the teacher would also have access to that data. This is really important because, again, it's going to get those students advocating for themselves. And it's going to have them participating in metacognition.
And lastly, teachers and students can collaborate virtually, and they can provide feedback with one another as they're codesigning a lesson. This could be through Google Docs, this could be through a classroom website. The options are unlimited. So let's reflect. Which strategy do you think you'd use more in your classroom, differentiated instruction or personalized learning?
Let's review. Today, we talked about how personalized learning and differentiated instruction are related. And we talked about how differentiated instruction strategies and personalized learning strategies are incorporated in lessons or units.
For more information on how to apply what you learned in this video, please view the additional resources section that accompanies this video presentation. The additional resources section includes hyperlinks useful for applications of the course material, including a brief description of each resource. Thanks for joining me and happy teaching.
Overview
(00:00-00:20) Introduction
(00:21-02:02) DI and Personalized Learning and their differences and similarities part one
(02:03-03:05) DI and Personalized Learning and their differences and similarities part two
(03:06-05:13) DI in the 1:1 Environment
(05:14-07:03) Personalized Learning in the 1:1 Environment
(07:04-07:15) Reflection
(07:16-07:50) Conclusion
Office of Educational Technology
This USDOE site provides explanations of individualized, personalized, and differentiated instruction.
http://www.ed.gov/technology/draft-netp-2010/individualized-personalized-differentiated-instruction
I Teach NYC: Find ways to incorporate blended instructional strategies into your classroom
This page from the NYC Department of Education is a great resource for teachers who are looking to personalize and differentiate instruction.
https://www.weteachnyc.org/approach/instructional-practices/