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Doug Johnson is a great read for his blunt, in your face honesty and his point about how technology companies are trying to differentiate is a great one. I think, however, we should extend this to schools as well. If your school is great, say why, but dissing the competition is no way to compete. If you think your school has no competition, think again. So, read this in light of the arriving and coming competition on the edulandscape and have an honest take on how you should "sell" the virtues of your school. If you can't talk about how great your school is and have to resort to how bad the other one is, prepare for a day when you'll shutter the windows and wonder how they're going to keep the bugs out of your empty building. Wake up and smell the wires burning their way into your student's computers and tablets, great teachers are just a click away and we've all got to learn how to blend and trend our courses, teaching, and to bridge our classrooms to add real value as teachers. It isn't hard as you think but if you just sit and teach like you've always taught, you're setting yourself up for some unpleasant days. You can't do everything but you can do something to improve yourself. Next practices are an important part of your best practice. Always innovate and never settle. Standards are only the beginning, you must have purpose if you're going to be a great teacher. Doug says: "But what I do know that when competitors trash each other, I tend to tune out. And I flat out hate it when I know they are lying - and I will NOT buy from a liar. A salesman recently promoted his video storage service by stating "unlike YouTube, we don't own your movies." That's just not true. (YouTube doesn't own your movies, GoogleApps doesn't own your Docs, CIPA, FERPA, etc. do not ban social media.)"

As I'm reading on inquiry based learning, I came across another article, I'd like to share. In this article, it discusses how inquiry-based learning projects are driven by students. This very much aligns with the questions we ask on the Flat Classroom and other projects. The one point of meaning that I'm working to understand (and finding different answers depending upon the site) is that some differentiate that students should develop the questions rather than teachers "handing them" the questions. I have a lesson plan I sent through Diigo where the instructor designed a lesson around the question "Can there be giants?" and called in inquiry based. Under this article, it may not be called true inquiry based, and yet, I'm wondering if the question is intriguing and of interest and can be used in a way to teach if it really matters where the question originates.  My class is a mix of student-created inquiries (Freshman project) and project-generated inquiries (Digiteen, Flat Classroom). Interesting. Look forward to reading and understanding more (and sharing with you.) This is another nice article on the topic. Feel free to share yours. "Inquiry-based learning" is one of many terms used to describe educational approaches that are driven more by a learner's questions than by a teacher's lessons. It is inspired by what is sometimes called a constructivist approach to education, which posits that there are many ways of constructing meaning from the building blocks of knowledge and that imparting the skills of "how to learn" is more important than any particular information being presented. Not all inquiry-based learning is constructivist, nor are all constructivist approaches inquiry-based, but the two have similarities and grow from similar philosophies.

An autobiographical writing skills powerpoint and activity including a differentiated lesson plan and more traditional one. I like having different options. This is for older (high school) students.

"We are looking at the impact of the child-parent relationship. If parents have an open relationship with their children and are able to discuss their online activities with them we find incidents of cyber-aggression are reduced and children are less likely to engage in cyberbullying or be the recipient of it,"

Some more ideas for behavior management including some tips from experts. If your students don't mind the first time it is time to rethink. (Fred Jones Tools for Teachers is also a great book for this as well as Todd Whitakers - what good teachers do differenty.)

Want to add voice comments to your Google Doc. Here's how from the educator's technology blog. Many students say that this helps them feel more connected to teachers. Think about it, if they struggle with writing, they might struggle with reading and this is the kind of differentiation that can really help some kids.

This article talks about how today's teaching is going to change the business world. Sadly, I think that much of the teaching they CLAIM happens (such as mobile learning and differentiation) may not be as widespread as they think. Either way, this generation is different and I do think they expect to be a truly mobile workforce. Of course it will be interesting to see how the kids who are lucky enough to have personalized learning feel about the workforce.

Students from our two schools were grouped together to study an issue of social justice using web 2.0 tools. These tools help students put the best practice of collaborative learning into play by working with others to problem solve. Tools such as VoiceThread allow teachers to practice differentiated assessment. Being socially connected, students believe their contributions matter and they feel a stronger degree of responsibility to support their new partners. Students want an authentic audience to express themselves too.

You gotta take 30 minutes to see and experiment with this tool! Simply amazing.

Perhaps the most awesome tool I have seen online! Watch the Demo. Try it for yourself. For ELL, but can be used to differentiate at any level. It does this for you, and allows you to control what you want.

quiz what is differentiation good starter

GREAT article, complete with links to lesson plans and rubrics. Elementary-school focused. Ten Tips for Personalized Learning via Technology To challenge and support each child at his or her own level, the educators of Forest Lake Elementary deploy a powerful array of digital-technology tools. Discover what your school can learn.

Helps evaluate how challenging a text is (by % of Academic and other low frequency words).  Identifies key vocabulary and helps teachers compare different articles for differentiation.

Great presentation on how to use RAFT for writing across the curriculum

Overview from the educators at CAST aligning the digiteen project with UDL guidelines. Digiteen is a project that uniquely allows for digital citizenship education in a project based learning format that also differentiates in powerful ways. Thank you so much for the people at CAST who provide so many great tools and also provide excellent resources for UDL.