6. DIFFERENTIATED INSTRUCTION AS A SIGN OF DISTINGUISHED TEACHER The 21st century is customizable. In ten years, the teacher who hasn’t yet figured out how to use tech to personalize learning will be the teacher out of a job. Differentiation won’t make you ‘distinguished’; it’ll just be a natural part of your work.

Differentiation will also be a whole lot easier than it was when I started teaching. Back in the day (i.e. five years ago), differentiation involved guessing at what each of your students might need and running off five different copies of a given worksheet.

As technology advances, it will become a whole lot easier to collect real data on how your students learn best and automatically tailor their experience to meet those needs. As devices become cheaper and it becomes more feasible to get closer to a one-to-one ratio, you’ll be able to push out that content to each individual student.

Awesome.

(Nota bene: Check out the School of One project that the New York City Department of Education is currently beta testing.)