Grace Rubenstein's article found on edutopia.org entitled "Ten Tips for Personalized Learning via Technology" is an informative and useful list of ways that current technology is being used in classrooms.
The list has been derived from effective technology integration at Forrest Lake Elementary School, in Columbia, South Carolina. Seeing the list of available technology at this school made me very envious.
This helps illustrate that having the right tools for the job is essential. However, as Rubenstein points out, it's not just about the gadgets themselves, but how well they are implemented and used for instruction.
A couple of the things on the list don't really have anything to do with technology, but are simply good differentiation practices. The final tip is an important one to remember and try to use: plan with your colleagues, so that you have more time to focus on your actual teaching and implementation. If you can work collaboratively to plan lessons or units, and develop resources that work for all teachers who will be teaching the same grade level or course, this will save lots of time and effort for everyone while still producing valuable teaching resources.
This list is not ground-breaking news, but it is a nice, compact way to see some good ideas presented together. There are also some links in the article to view some other resources, so I will definitely be bookmarking this page as a handy future reference.
I really have to agree with the final tip that was mentioned in the article, plan with your colleagues. I can not begin to express my feelings about how important common planning time is. Excellent article.
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