I selected this topic because it is extremely timely and relevant to me at this point in time for my teaching career. I am about to start working with a student population that I have no prior experience and minimal knowledge of their countries, languages, or their cultures. My students will be primarily Pacifc Islanders. This over-arching catagory includes Chuuk, the Marshall Islands, and Samoa. These island are found in the areas of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia.

Researching this topic I was fortunate to find the site created by our Professors Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope, New Learning: Transformational Designs for Pedagogy and Assessment. Their writings on the topic of learner diversity gave me a better understanding of the many factors to consider as I move into a classroom of learners who I want to feel included, respected, and important members of our learning community.

"Learning is effective to the extent to which it engages with learner identities. These are deeply diverse, complex and multilayered. Learner differences should be measured and taken into account both in terms of the dimensions of ‘gross demographics’ and the more subtle and variable ‘lifeworld attributes". 

"Effective learning engages the learner’s identity. It builds on the learner’s knowledge, experiences, interests and motivation. In any learning community, there is a great deal of diversity, and this is because the everyday lifeworlds from which students come are always varied. A pedagogy of BELONGING brings this diversity into the classroom, values it and uses it as a resource for learning."

This chart provides a graphic that made me realize that diversity is a lot more than ethnic, socio-economic, and learner's level of content understanding.

Demographics and Life Attributes

http://newlearningonline.com/learning-by-design/learner-diversity

One of my go-to resources for tools that I can apply to my classroom is Edutopia.org. http://edutopia.org. Naturally, I searched Edutopia for articles on learner diversity and found this incredible resource that all teacher's from middle elementary to college would find useful.

In the article, "100+ Tools for Differentiating Instruction Through Social Media", the author, John McCarthy, provides a wide-ranging list of web-based tools with all the information you need to determine it is one that will work for your classroom. It includes a detailed  spreadsheet explaining the type of tool, if it includes an assessment, and how the tools provides content differentiation, process differentiation, and product differentiation.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ihsTwYr1kFx9Jb08Z2w5i1MWoxYkRXZbTP4Gcbodp6I/edit?pref=2&pli=1#gid=0

If I had to recommend one of these tools, it would be Google Drive. Google Docs, provides an easy interface for students to work collaboratively on papers or projects with a real-time ichat feature, comment, and suggestion features. The "search" feature allows students to research their topic and easily embed video, attachments, and site their resource without leaving the document.

 "For educators differentiating instruction, social media tools embrace collaboration and global access to people and other resources. We give students a variety of learning experiences that incorporate the capability to:

Exchange ideas
Provide positive, constructive, and kind feedback
Provide avenues to connect content with our learners' many different interests."

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-social-media-tools-john-mccarthy