Changing School Culture - Using IT to Cope with Individual Learning Differences in Schools

This presentation is based on a project which is currently in progress in conjunction with the Curriculum Development Institute (CDI) and two partner schools. It focuses on the use of information technology (IT) resources to explore and establish learning and teaching strategies for coping with individual differences in primary classrooms. The teachers involved have developed a resource base that supports innovative delivery models for implementation in their classrooms. In preparing these resources a careful selection is made of appropriate IT resources and tools that can be used to cater for individual learning differences. These resources are designed to run on an online Integrated Learning Environment (ILE) which provides students with the flexibility of working at their own pace at any time from anywhere. The idea is to assist teachers to make use of this tool in an effective way so that they can easily adapt their teaching strategies for specific contexts in order to enhance classroom learning and achieve a beneficial educational outcome. Through continual refinement, the system will then become truly adaptive and sensitive to individual learning differences. The ILE allows teachers to use a variety of teaching strategies, provides a secure basis from which teachers can plan lessons to meet the needs of all students in the class, and, allows teachers to use a wide range of learning resources to provide students with opportunities to develop initiative and independent learning and enable students to enjoy learning through use of IT and be motivated by it.