Louisiana LACUE Presentation

[Deborah]

This week is the 2008 Louisiana LACUE (Louisiana Association of Computer Using Educators) conference in Baton Rouge. Today, several of us involved in a pilot project presented about Using Voice Tools to Personalize Instruction. It was a good session. We even had some of the students in the pilot course come and share about their experiences. The students are learning algebra through our virtual school. The course, a hybrid, uses makes extensive use of online voice tools to give students another avenue to access the course content. The students are part of a pilot course at the School for the Visually Impaired.

What I found fascinating was to hear the perceptions of the online teacher, the classroom teacher, and the students. The students discussed the different components of the course that they found helpful - some love the audio podcasts that their online teacher uses to share the content with them. One student really likes to email in his answers to the math problems, while others prefer to explain their answers verbally.

My part has been to figure out some of the technology tools that we would use to provide the interactions. Some tools have been easy to incorporate, while others have taken more time to figure out.

We all had a good time sharing what the experience has been like from different perspectives. I think that we all came away appreciative of the fact that today's technology makes it much easier to differentiate instruction to meet the needs of all learners. We also celebrated the collaborative nature of the project.

Deborah