Tech to D.I. For: Technology and Differentiated Instruction

I just posted a podcast to the LMSD Podologue of my presentation last week at the Pennsylvania Educational Technology Exposition and Conference (PETE&C) in Hershey, PA. My topic was technology and differentiated instruction -- web resources for D.I., technology-enhanced strategies for D.I., and powerful ways technology and D.I. might be combined.

As a part of the presentation, I introduced a public wiki -- Tech 4 D.I. -- that I set up to promote the use of technology to differentiate instruction. The wiki includes all the links from my presentations (and then some), and all are invited to add links and add to the annotations for the links. In addition, I set up pages to share ideas, tips, and strategies for using technology to differentiate content, process, product, and the classroom environment. Please visit the wiki and contribute or join in a discussion on any of the pages.

Understanding by Design Podcasts

I have posted four podcast episodes to the LMSD Podologue from presentations given at the third in-service day for Lower Merion School District new teacher assistance program (NTAP). These are very basic introductions to the Understanding by Design framework with a focus on Stages 1 and 2 only. The first episode is an introductory overview of UbD and how it relates to Differentiated Instruction. This second deals with big ideas, standards and benchmarks, knowledge and skills and how that all can be expressed as enduring understandings in the UbD framework. The third episode introduces Essential Questions to focus teacher design and inspire and direct student learning. The fourth episode deals with the importance of developing summative performance-based assessments aligned to the standards and benchmarks, enduring understandings, and essential questions in Stage 2 of the UbD framework.

From Podcasting to Pilot to Student iPods - Podcast

I finally finished preparing and uploading to the LMSD Podologue a three-episode series of a presentation given in Apple Seminars on October 25, 2006, at the Chester County Intermediate Unit and, again, on December 7, 2006, at the Bucks County Intermediate Unit. The presentation was titled: iPod, uPod, wePod, theyPod: from podcasting to pilot to student iPods and the presenters included Virginia DiMedio, Director of Information Technology for Lower Merion School District (Ardmore, PA), and Mary Kirchner, World Languages Chair at Lower Merion High School, along with me.

The presentation was in three parts which made it easy to split the podcast into three episodes. The first part of the presentation describes the initial use of podcasting in LMSD as a tool for professional development (me), the second part tells how LMSD got started with student podcasting through a pilot project in the 2005-06 school year (Ginny and me), and the second part tells how LMSD got started with student podcasting through a pilot project in the 2005-06 school year (Mary).