Podcasts guests, edtech innovators, and neurodivergent advocates, Rick Butterworth and Tisha Poncio, candidly explore the limitations of a lecture-based educational landscape, discussing the reasons it didn’t support them when they were students and why that remains true for those who operate similarly.
Tisha shares a personal anecdote that fuels her differentiated learning strategies, admitting:
"I didn't know I had ADHD, [I] didn't have any idea. When you experience that and then you get into the adult world or you're teaching and you see other students struggling like you did, you just want to help them. And so you start learning and designing and putting architecture together to support them so they don't have to feel that way, and that is really where our passion comes from."
Beyond the fact that lectures aren’t a sufficient engagement method, today’s learners simply require differentiated learning that’s accessible, adaptable, and applicable to real-world skill development.
Read on to learn the effective teaching strategies that Rick and Tisha recommend for educators craving innovation in classrooms today.
The importance of differentiated learning strategies
Rick and Tisha discuss the value of digital portfolios versus traditional portfolios to better support an already technology-dominant society. After disclosing his journey with dyslexia, Rick speaks personally about why digital portfolios should supersede traditional ones:
…”If you allow me to showcase what I've done through other means of media, whether that's through images, through videos, through sketches, whatever it is, then I can represent my abilities far greater than just writing, I don't know, three paragraphs on a piece of paper.”
Rick expounds on this idea, claiming that digital portfolios let you customize them to match your personality. Writing a few paragraphs isn’t going to represent the truth of you as a student or creative, but exploring diverse methods of expression will instantly. In this respect, learners can better target EQ. As Rick states, “Work these days…it’s not about IQ. It’s EQ as much as IQ and it’s important to be able to represent that.”
Both Rick and Tisha agree that portfolios are the new standardized test because they showcase what can be designed, created, and measured to represent who we are every day. Portfolios are the new application. For these reasons, Rick and Tisha name the byproducts of implementing differentiated learning in classrooms.
Increased student engagement
Tisha reflects on how students began to engage with her digital portfolio assignments. She witnessed them looping back to particular aspects for refinement or to add and create something new.
She expresses, “They started asking me, ‘can I add this? And what if I put this in there?’…They can build something that we can’t even imagine that is far better at measuring their knowledge and experience and expertise than a standardized test.”
Non-linear mindsets
One of the ways for educators to effectively facilitate differentiated learning methods is an understanding of who they are as well as who their students are. Tisha offers some guidance for educators when considering differentiated learning models. She concludes:
“So it comes back to: teachers have to learn who they are in a sense and then learn who their students are so that they can guide their students to which medium is going to be best for them.”
Tisha also discusses the various products out there to show the outcomes of learning, but that it’s more about adopting a non-linear mindset in a conventionally linear education system. Tisha states, “...When we talk about differentiated learning, it can’t be linear.
Nurture life-long skill development
Rick expresses that digital portfolios and differentiated learning promote a continuous process that helps people understand patience and discover habits long-term. He states:
“We’re in a world now where we're consuming things and we're just go-go-go with everything. And inside the school, doing a project or test, it's literally a ‘do it and ignore it.’ You don't have to come back to it. But when you go into the real world, constantly looking at ways to improve whatever it is that you're doing, whatever job you're doing, there is always that process of improvement, and that's what portfolios do."
Accessible and adaptable learning environments
Tisha and Rick explore with podcast hosts, Joe Wolff and Ryan Kochevar, that implementing effective tech tools in school also holds hands with accessibility. Typically an afterthought in technology, the educational landscape requires edtech to be inclusive in order to be effective.
Listen to the episode
Check out the full episode below, where Rick Butterworth and Tisha Poncio discuss personal and professional anecdotes on changes in the educational landscape that demand differentiated learning strategies.
Differentiate learning in your classroom
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