Reaching and Engaging All Learners Through Technology: Reflection

             As I reflect on this course and how it has change my mindset about the use of technology in my classroom, I have come to realize changes that need to take place in order to provide opportunities for students to be successful. As a teacher, I need to rethink my planning and how I differentiate the needs of students. Integrating the Universal Design for Learning Guidelines and Differentiated Instruction in my plans and curriculum will definitely be the biggest changes that take place within my classroom.

            However, there are a few immediate changes that I plan on making to add technology into my instruction. As a Reading Intervention Teacher of early elementary students, my focus is on working with struggling readers. There are several assessments that we use to track student growth with DIBELS being one of the assessments. Even though this assessment provides information on the progress of students, I plan on adding digital diaries as a type of assessment in my classroom. A student’s academic performance can easily be documented with the use of digital diaries (Salend, 2009). By using Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) and other technology tools for recording student products, both parents and students will not only be able to see growth but will also be able to hear the difference in skills from the beginning of the year to the end.

            Another immediate change I plan on making into my instruction is adding supportive technologies. Using supportive technologies, I can provide extra help for students in three ways: remediation, compensation, and extension (Bray, Brown, & Green, 2004). Because I work with students in small groups for thirty minutes a day, I will not be able to add supportive technologies everyday. However, supportive technologies can easily be added at least once a week and maybe even more depending on the skill. Students love playing games and working on the computer, and I consider these supportive technologies high engagement activities.

            Managing a differentiated classroom with the use of technology is definitely a mindset. How I view my students and the role I take and give my students plays a big part in the success of my classroom. Using technology to support differentiated instruction provides students with multiple avenues to reach their goals along with providing them with 21^st century skills. It is my responsibility as a teacher to provide opportunities for students to use technology in the classroom. “The excellent online resources that make information accessible to everyone means that integrating content into the curriculum is limited only by the teacher’s imagination” (Lemke and Coughlin, 2009, p. 55).

References  

Bray, M., Brown, A., & Green, T. (2004). Technology and the Diverse Learner: A Guide to

            Classroom Practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Lemke, C., & Coughlin, E. (2009). The change agents. Educational Leadership, 67(1), 54–59.

Salend, S. (2009). Technology-based classroom assessments. Teaching Exceptional Children,

            41(6), 48–58. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.