Eclectic Technology

What can we do to help students learn and to provide teachers more time to work with students? How can technology play a role in this? To answer these questions the post discusses a book by Daniel Willingham, "Why Don't Students Like School."

The authors state that the book can be boiled down to this statement: "Students don’t like school because school isn’t set up to help them learn very well." As the days of the one-room school house shifted due to the Industrial Revolution classes moved from small multi-age groups to larger groups based on age and that has not changed significantly. Differentiation is discussed but it is not always easy to differentiate in a classroom with 25 or more students, and today we are told we must personalize education to meet the needs of each student.

One way we may be able to meet this need is with the use of "adaptive learning software." This post continues to explore some of the pros and cons of this.

There are some schools that are using adaptive software with success, and Carpe Diem-Meridian, a public school in Indianapolis. Click through to the post to learn more. Would you like to see adaptive software become a part of your school, so that some students would be using software that targets their skills while you work with others in smaller groups?