Differentiation: Representing Knowledge with Web 2.0

We have to teach skills. We always have and we always will. But it seems to me that a large and explicit part of 21st century learning and the transformed classroom is the notion that skills must become habits. We need to teach our students important skills, but we need to also craft and cultivate learning environments and experiences where learners are constantly provoked to use those skills as part of their learning practice.  We need to instill a learning lifestyle. 

This quote from David Warlick sums up the key to using Web 2.0 tools to differentiate instruction, representation, sharing, and assessment of knowledge for me. We must teach Web 2.0 tools as just that, tools.  They are methods for gathering or expressing knowledge - for being posumers. Web 2.0 tools are not the knowledge in itself. Proficiency with tools (skill) is necessary to create and express but it is not the ultimate goal. As teacher-librarians and classroom teachders we must constantly re-iterate this message - the tools do not replace the teacher (see Will Richardson's blog post "My teacher is an App"), they are simply engaging and accessible methods of representing learning.

Retrieved from Primary Program, p. 35.

I think this passage from The Primary Program points emphatically to the importance of offering Web 2.0 tools as differentiated methods to represent learning:

Representing does more than simply reflect what is in the mind of the learner. It is an important tool for activating the learning process. As people try to communicate what is in their minds through the things they do, make, or say, they create meaning: it is the doing that creates meaning and understanding. Representing “produces a record of our mental efforts …, embodies our thoughts and intentions in a form more accessible to reflective efforts. The process of thought and its product become interwoven …” (Bruner 1996, p. 23). An important part of learning is increasing one’s repertoire of forms of representation. When students can represent their thinking in a variety of ways and discuss the various forms of representation, they learn about their own learning processes. Learning a variety of ways of representing allows students with diverse backgrounds, interests, and abilities to be successful. The accompanying chart suggests some possibilities (Primary program, p. 35).

One of the most exciting discoveries of my Web 2.0 inquiry is the possibilities for differentiation offered by Web 2.0 tools. As Eisner asserts “There is too much labor in our schools – and not enough work. Work is the effort from which you derive satisfaction. We ought to be paying attention to the joy of the journey” (Eisner, 2009, p. 332). By offering students different methods to show their learning, including Web 2.0 tools, we can offer a joyful learning journey where each student feels the work fits their interests and abilities (Dewey, 2009). During my inquiry I discovered several blogs with suggestions for multimodal methods of expressing learning (Kist, 2010) such as Byrne’s “Holiday edition: 5 alternatives to traditional book reports” and Neslon’s “Easy as ABC – an “unwritten” research paper”.  Hos-McGrane recounts a project where students chose the method for completing a project:

There were some who just wanted to print out the photos they'd taken and use them in some sort of poster, while others wanted to revisit tools they had used earlier this year such as SpicyNodes or Prezi. Glogster, for making online posters, was also a popular choice. Some students wanted to use their photos to make a movie using Animoto, others wanted to combine them in iMovie.

Web 2.0 tools also lead to differentiation in assessment (McBroom, 2011; Hos-McGrane ,2011, Sept. 13). While the idea of allowing students some freedom in choosing how they show their learning and using open ended assignments to differentiate is not new, the Web 2.0 tools I explored will allow more options and will connect with student interests, making them more engaged with their learning, more wide awake (Greene, 2009) to the information they are studying and how they communicate that learning to others.
References:

Dewey, J. (2009). My pedagogic creed. In Flinders, D & Thornton, S. (Eds.). The curriculum studies reader. (3^rd Ed.). (pp. 34-41). New York: Routledge.

Eisner, E. (2009). What does it mean to say a school is doing well?  In Flinders, D & Thornton, S. (Eds.). The curriculum studies reader. (3^rd Ed.). (pp. 327-347).  New York: Routledge.

Greene, M. (2009). Curriculum and consciousness. In Flinders, D & Thornton, S. (Eds.). The curriculum studies reader. (3^rd Ed.). (pp. 153-167). New York: Routledge..

Kist, W. (2010). The socially networked classroom: teaching in the new media age. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.