Using Digital Tools to Individualize Instruction

As part of their Extending the Digital Reach report, Education Week also published an article highlighting how ed-tech tools are changing the ways in which teachers can differentiate their literacy and reading instruction. This report, Digital Tools Aim to Personalize Literacy Instruction, focuses on how new technologies can transform learning by providing individualized instruction. Education Week talked with Graphite, a division of Common Sense Media, and a Pepper partner, to gain insight on some of these new tools.

Graphite specializes in providing teachers and schools with free research-based classroom tools. They provided some suggestions for helping teachers create personalized literacy opportunities for students. Here are some of their recommendations:

1. Customize Texts to Each Student's Reading Level - Online programs such as Raz-Kids and Newsela provide topical reading at a variety of levels.
2. Allow Teachers to Target Specific Reading Skills - Apps, such as Lexia Reading Core5, are now available that allow teachers to target reading skills that students need to develop.
3. Diagnose and Respond to Individual Students' Strengths and Weaknesses - Software, such as Read 180, will analyze a student’s reading and then provide additional texts and vocabulary based on their assessment results.
4. Encourage Teachers to Offer Customized Supports - “Digital tools and interactive e-readers can also allow teachers to customize the reading experience for students—and make themselves an integral part of each student's reading process.”
5. Have Students Show What They've Learned in Different Ways - Differentiation. Tools such as, BookBuilder, give students opportunity to write, edit, and publish their own writing and ideas.

Technology can provide support and opportunity for students to experience learning on a level that they understand. It gives teachers an opportunity not to just “teach to the middle”, but to teach each student as they need for learning and understanding.

Pepper Reading Courses are available to help you apply new literacy instruction concepts to your classroom. Also, be sure to check out Graphite in the Pepper Resource Library to find technology tools to meet the needs of individual students.

More About OER

Last week we introduced the topic of OER, Open Education Resources, based on Education Week’s report, Extending the Digital Reach. The online education resource, Edutopia provides an “OER Resource Roundup” to help us navigate through this maze of technological information. OER is part of a global movement to make content - teaching, learning, and research resources - available under open licenses. This means the content would be free for people to reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute. This allows educators to legally harness the full power the Internet has to offer for our students and classrooms.

Watch this short video that explains “Why Open Education Matters”.

OER, and the open sharing of these resources, has great potential to give teachers support, encouragement, enable collaboration, and promote best practices.

OER Commons, is a nonprofit designed to support and build a knowledge base for teachers as they use Open Education Resources. The OER Commons website offers resources for curriculum alignment, quality evaluation, social bookmarking, tagging, rating, and reviewing.

What are some example of OER?

• Full university courses.
• Interactive mini-lessons and simulations.
• Adaptations of existing open work.
• Electronic textbooks.
• Elementary school and high school (K-12) lesson plans, worksheets, and activities.

Edutopia’s Resource Roundup also provides a great “jumping off” point for teachers to begin looking for OER materials. This site provides a variety of links categorized for easy searching. And, of course, don’t forget to check out the resources located in your Pepper Resource Library. If you are looking for OER, or just interested in finding out more, chances are other Pepper teachers are too. Reach out to your Pepper Learning Community to find out how other educators are using OER.

Using Educational Technologies: Open Education Resources

Education Week just published a report titled, Extending the Digital Reach, in which it explores a variety of ways that technology is impacting and changing education, specifically focusing on personalized learning approaches. In one particular section, the reports focuses on the vast array of Open Education Resources that have become available to educators. The article, aptly titled, Flood of Open Education Resources Challenges Educators, highlights the difficulty of finding, evaluating, and using a piece of software or app in the classroom.

So, what are Open Education Resources? Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for everyone to use, whether you are an instructor, student or self-learner. Examples of OER include: full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical materials, games, simulations, and many more resources contained in digital media collections from around the world. According to Edweek’s report, “[Teachers] can find hundreds, if not thousands, of free pieces of content to accomplish their mission with students, but how to find the right one, aligned to the right standard, for the right student, at the right time? That challenge lies at the heart of personalized learning, whether conveyed through teachers, technology, or some combination of the two.”

As many districts move away for using solely textbooks for instructional materials, teachers become overwhelmed at the availability of tools to choose from. The report also states that “last year, the U.S. Department of Education appointed Andrew Marcinek its first open education adviser to help schools embrace the use of openly licensed resources to free funding for digital learning. The department also launched a high-profile campaign to #GoOpen with digital instruction—encouraging districts to use open-ed resources.

The issue lies, not in “needing more content”, but finding the tool and then using it well. EdWeek provides some good tips to help schools and districts curate their OER.

Finding the Right Resources

• Discovery by machine, by educators in classrooms, by employees—often former educators—paid to do the curation work
• Content could be games, videos, text, simulations, interactive activities, and more

Evaluating the Resources

• Using rubrics/systems established by each organization
• Decision point: Is this resource worthy of inclusion?
• Resources may be trashed here

Tagging Chosen Resources

• Type of content (text, video, game, etc.)
• Subject
• Grade
• Instructional standards (common core, others)
• Technical requirements
• Keyword

Publishing

• Vetted resources are published on the ed-tech platform

User Searches

• Educators look for content; sometimes students and parents do, too
• Curated content is identified
• Teachers add selected items to their lesson plans/playlists to sequence learning

Reviewing and Culling

• Based on educator feedback, usage statistics, and/or effectiveness criteria, providers remove old/ineffective content from their platforms

When you use Pepper, you’ve already got some great places to go for Open Education Resources. Start by visiting the Pepper Resource Library. Better Lesson, Common Sense Graphite, and STEM Builder all provide great OER that have already been checked out and organized by educators. Be sure to check out these great resources and see how you can use them to further engage your students.