TeachTown®: Basics was designed by a team of autism researchers led by Dr. Christina Whalen, PhD, BCBA-D, Chief Science Officer, who co-founded the company while working at the University of Washington Autism Center. The intervention curriculum addresses early childhood learning standards, and uses prescriptive and adaptive intelligence to deliver direct instruction. At appropriate intervals, children are motivated with games and rewards. Teachers can view progress reports online and receive a monthly email report to track accountability. The program contains over 800 On Computer Lessons and Off Computer Activities, and delivers thousands of concepts in six essential learning domains: Mathematics, Language Development, Language Arts, Adaptive Skills, Cognitive Skills, and Social and Emotion Skills.
Dwayne Abrahams on 29 Jun 12Differentiating instruction is a time-tested way of thinking about meeting students' needs as they make progress toward achievement or learning targets. Differentiation is an elegant mindset that suggests to teachers a framework that permits them to engage students while focusing on learning results, and digital technologies offer many opportunities to differentiate instruction in meaningful ways. However, differentiating instruction takes a concerted planning effort on our parts as teachers and teacher educators. This is especially so as we develop a mindset that differentiation can be effective. In this post, I propose a three-phase approach to planning differentiated instruction: Where do we start planning for differentiated instruction with technology, What are considerations for who we teach, what we teach, and how we plan? How do I put it all together?
