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Special Agents of Δ Academy

Thursday 12:00 - 1:30 Session: N12 6th - 12th Level Ballroom C Room

Making Educational Technology Work Routinely for

All Students

Imagine you have just designed a terrific student-centered lesson. For some of your
students it works, for others it does not. Why do some students learn from

educational technology and others seemingly do not? It comes down to three basic

factors; what experiences students have had before your lesson and how they

interpret the lesson based on those experiences, what they pay attention to during

the lesson, what their peers attend to and share with them. Students vary in all three
of these aspects, so we must take account of this during our lesson. In my session,

I’m going to lean on the work of Magdalene Lampert and others to describe

classroom-tested strategies that support all students in these areas. Rather than

leveraging technology to offer students different experiences, we can differentiate

their experiences within the lesson by embedding different supports for our
students. For example, some of our students frequently lose focus during a lesson so

we include repetition of ideas during the lesson by asking students to restate and

rephrase each other’s thinking. Other students have trouble tracking what is being

talked about during a lesson, so we point at what is being discussed so that all

students can connect the verbal language to symbolic language. This session will be
highly interactive, and educators will walk away with strategies they can use right

away on Monday.

David Wees

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