Adaptive Tech

Why is living in this generation so much better for teachers and students? Adaptive technology! Adaptive technology enables programs to differentiate automatically based on answers from scholars. Our school uses a program called iRead. This program allows student responses and answers to dictate the next move. For example, if a scholar in Kindergarten has mastered their letter sounds then the program will advance them to something further, such as CVC words or rhyme. This technology is amazing because scholars are always being challenged but on a differentiated level. These programs also provide teachers with a great deal of data to look through, which is amazing because it can also be used for differentiation and remediation plans.

At our campus we use these programs within our blended learning model, as they also provide small group lessons to scholars to either differentiate higher or lower to differentiate. We use this to also provide us with a smaller student to teacher ratio when we pull for small group intervention or for guided reading. From the ITSE standards for students, this truly aligns with evaluating and selecting information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks. It is also smart to teach your students about adaptive technology and why "everyone gets what they need." Explain to them why the computer screen or tablet screen next to them may look different from their own and why that is okay.

There are so many amazing benefits of having adaptive technology within our classroom and I believe that it truly is going to be the future of every classroom. Please share your experiences with adaptive technology and how it has either been a challenge or a success within your classroom!

BYOD

For my course through Johns Hopkins University, I have been posting about education technology regarding trends and opinions through different articles. In addition I am also implementing the ISTE Standards in my classroom lessons through my knowledge of these new tools and technological advancements. Something that is a hot topic in the education tech field right now is the idea of BYOD. BYOD stands for Bring Your Own Device and it is becoming a trend in the education field. It falls under the ISTE Standard, Research and Information Fluency that enables students to apply digital tools to gather, evaluate and use information.

BYOD is when students are able to bring tablets, computers or phones into the classroom environment to use for research or educational purposes. I believe that teaching scholars about technology and coding gives them an immense advantage especially when we start this in the earlier grades. We all want our students to have the option to go to college or obtain an advanced degree and in this generation, most of these programs require a vast knowledge of technology. I think that there is a lot that we can teach our scholars in order to prepare them for the real world with technology. In addition, it requires a great deal of self-discipline to work with technology and not get distracted (Even I will admit that when writing this post I stopped and checked email, when I knew I should have stayed on topic the whole time). If we can teach our scholars to have this self-discipline and to avoid distractions on the Internet, this will further prepare them to use technology in a way that will grow them academically.

I teach Kindergarten; therefore, it is a bit trickier to implement BYOD, as many of my students do not have devices of their own to bring. Fortunately my school has been given a grant that enables us to have a blended learning model. We have 12 iPad’s, 4 chrome books and 4 laptop computers in my classroom which enables us to differentiate and have more blocks that involve intervention. If I taught a content area with children that were older and had devices to bring in for BYOD, I would definitely implement it. I think that there is immense value in teaching our scholars how to use technology and how to be forward thinking and entrepreneurial. Please share your ways in which you have tried BYOD!