In olden days, only a few people in a class were able to achieve learning standards. But nowadays, technology suggests many approaches to develop every student equally while learning. What educators need to do is to provide students with individualized Instruction. Individualized Instruction is a method of instruction in which content, instructional technology (such as materials) and pace of learning are based upon the abilities and interests of each individual learner. Let’s learn about individualized Instruction in greater detail and how educators can provide it to students by using the 21st century technology.
Individualized Instruction (also called Differentiated Instruction) is an instructional theory that allows educators to face nowadays’ educational challenges by considering diverse student factors while planning curriculum and delivering instruction. The factors include learning styles, learning abilities, interests, etc., of each individual student found within a classroom. Old traditional classroom methods aren’t enough to provide students with Individualized Instruction. So, 21st century teachers are searching for many technological approaches that drive them to provide students with multiple learning approaches.
Individual Instructions for students with different learning styles:
As mentioned above, different students have different learning styles. Some students learn by visualizing, some by hearing, some by reading while many others do so by experimenting. Technology helps educators to provide students with resources that help them adopt their own learning style. A list of such resources is as follows, explore them to provide each learner with the respective technological approach.
Visual Learning:
Visual learning is a learning style in which ideas, thoughts, concepts, processes and other information are represented and associated with images, graphs, charts and videos. Students understand and learn just by visualizing.
Pinterest : Pinterest is a pin board style photo–sharing web platform. This site allows users to create and manage theme–based image collections such as events, interests and hobbies. Educators use it to help students explore and discover visual learning resources.
VariQuest: VariQuest provides many visual learning tools such as, the Poster Maker, Perfecta, Cutout Maker, Awards Maker, Cold Laminator, Design Center and VariQuest Software- featuring thousands of curriculum-aligned templates, eDies and graphics designed specifically for schools.
Auditory Learning:
Auditory learning is a learning style in which students learn by hearing.
Prizmo: Prizmo, an app for auditory learners, has highly accurate OCR technology with 40+ languages to read the imported photo documents.
Speak it!: Speak it! is a good solution for listeningbased learners. It’s an easily operated app; just enter the text you want to speak and press the “Speak it” button.
You may check our previous article “List of Great Free Tools to Create Podcasts”
Kinesthetic Learning: It’s a learning style where learning is done by experimentation.
There are many educational apps available on the App Store and Google Play that help students learn from experiments (moving, touching, dragging, etc. ).
Online tools for Individual Instruction:
The above mentioned are the different learning styles and their respective technological learning approaches. It takes much time and effort to analyze every student’s performance and the 21st century technology provides educators with the best tools that help them deliver individualized instructions to each student. Example: Power My Learning
Power My Learning: Power My Learning is a great tool for educators to deliver Differentiated Instruction by customizing the learning experience for each student. It provides a powerful set of free tools to help differentiate instruction and support learning in and out of schools.
Social Networks help you deliver personalized instructions:
If educators ask questions directly, only a few students respond to them and many people don’t respond due to shyness or because they’re unable to express themselves. Social networks are the best solution to engage such students because every student finds things interesting when displayed online. They can easily collaborate and share their views. Educators can also observe them from anywhere, create groups for projects and quizzes, assess them through online activities and also deliver personalized instructions. There are many educational social networking platforms that provide teachers with many classroom management tools.
Example:
Schoolfy: Schoolfy is a free educational platform that welcomes teachers from across the world into its community. It provides teachers with a private social network where they can add their students, parents and other teachers. It also provides students with tools that include setting homework, sending documents, creating calendars and students’ assessments.
You may also learn about more tools like this with our previous article: Best Tools Connecting Teachers, Students and Parents.
Individualized Instructions through Polls:
Sometimes we can’t concentrate on every student’s individual needs, but it helps us if we know what students need if we make them participate by sharing their opinions on a lesson plan, an assignment or on a test. Polling facilitates the creation of an interactive learning environment.
The link below provides you with online tools to create polls.
5 Tools to Create Classroom Polls & Quizzes
This is how technology helps educators deliver individualized instructions to each individual student for advancement of their learning. We hope this information is helpful for you to know how technology can be used to provide students with individualized instructions. Out of many, we’ve covered few such tips in this article because we’d like to hear about the rest from you. Please feel free to share with us your personal views and your ways of using technology to deliver individualized/differentiated instructions.
