Differentiated Instruction Using Technology: A Guide for Middle and High School Teachers
By Amy Benjamin 
For middle and high school teachers, 161 pages.  $26.95

The goal of Benjamin's book is  to advance teachers' skills through using technology to meet the different needs and learning styles of students.  Her book starts with the basics of differentiation through chapters  on foundations (overview of differentiated instruction and technology), different terms used in differentiated instruction,  tiered tasks, and unit menus. She then focuses on chapters that utilize technology such as using technology to construct learning centers, differentiated instruction in whole-class, differentiating traditional tests, e-communication, online web support, assistives and tutorials, and databases for instructional decisions. She concludes her book with models such as WebQuests.

The author thoroughly explains the basics of differentiation instruction.  For example, she shows through many examples how tiered tasks can be organized by Bloom's taxonomy, going from concrete to abstract, decreasing the scaffolding, increasing depth, increasing complexity, and classifying/categorizing. She emphasizes that these tasks differ in quality not just quantity. Benjamin asserts that the students doing the least sophisticated task should have the most technology to help them scaffold their learning. Likewise, she carefully explains the unit menu design. It  should have four to six choices that are substantial, take comparable amounts of time, and are challenging. She illustrates  how teachers can use essential questions (How do villains operate?) or more focused thematic unit questions (Why does Cassius want to assassinate Caesar?) to help in differentiating. Her unit menus employ different learning styles.

Then Benjamin explores the use of numerous technologies in differentiated learning. She suggests that learning stations become e-centers. She ask three questions  of technology:

1. Does the technology version of my lesson offer a true advantage over the traditional version?
2. Does the technology simplify what needs to be simplified and elevates what needs to be elevated? and
3. Am I using the technology to its proper advantage, or am  I just creating an onscreen workbook?
   

She suggests converting lectures into PowerPoints so absent students can be given the PowerPoint, special education teacher can get a copy to help students in that room, accelerated students can extend or add details to it,  the classroom teacher can adjust the level of the presentation to meet the needs of  a given class, and the classroom teacher can provide visuals and graphics with their presentations. Furthermore, teachers can create virtual museums, zoos, field trips, and expeditions through PowerPoint and the Web.

Benjamin provides other examples of how technology can benefit students and their teachers in differentiated classrooms. Students can prepare for tests through chat room study groups or through IMing  another student for help. Teachers can communicate to students about course expectations and tests through email. The teachers can prescribe for an individual student certain websites or a school created website to assist in the learning process. Benjamin explains that websites due to the difference in vocabulary, graphics, and text offers differentiation. Teachers can use spreadsheets and charts to have students analyze which questions they missed and what topics those questions focus on. The teachers may have students use online quizzes or lower level activities such as those from Quia.  The instructors may use district databases to get baseline academic information on the students for class groupings.

Although this book incorporates many technologies, the use of a digital camera is hardly mentioned. Likewise, the author does not promote  global communications due to the “dangers inherent in having  their young people communicate directly with strangers.”  This reviewer has found that when students do communicate globally, they focus much more on what they write and how they write it.  This reviewer would have liked to have seen a WebQuest on one side and the elements of differentiated instruction  on the other side. Also, since the book's 2005 publication date, educators have been using blogs and wikis  to structure learning for their students.

Teachers who want to learn about differentiated instruction and how technology can assist in differentiation will want to read this book.

Dr. Harry Grover Tuttle focuses on assessing and improving student learning through low- and high-tech tools.

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