In this update, I explore the role assistive technology, specifically the LiveScribe pen and paper, in assisting people with learning “disabilities” in their studies.

Learning Differences (a.k.a. “learning disabilities”)

As Professor Cope points out in his lecture[1], traditional teaching is aimed at students “in the middle of the classroom”. Cope and Kalantzis explain that “traditional educational media were grounded in an architecture of sameness”[2]. As such, the term “learning disability” as applied to a student may simply mean that the student is not able to learn from the traditional pedagogical models in the same way as his/her peers. For this reason, from this point on, I will refer to people with learning “disabilities” as people with “learning differences.”. As Cope and Kalantzis highlight, in their chapter in Conceptualizing E-learning, through differentiated learning “learners no longer have to be the same to be equal.”[3]

Differentiated Learning

Differentiated learning, in its essence, is about providing a teaching experience in which students can learn in in their own way and at their own pace. A differentiated learning ecology provides all kinds of learners, be they typical learners or ones with learning differences, the opportunity to learn in ways that suit their learning styles and needs.

Cope and Kalantzis provide 4 principles for what they call “pedagogy of productive diversity”:

“1. The Differentiation Principle: Architectures of pedagogical sameness are no longer logistically necessary, as perhaps they were in the era of didactic pedagogy. It is not necessary that learner do the same tasks at the same time and in the sameway. It is not necessary that they work through and complete a task at the samepace. With today’s dashboards, on-the-fly learning analytics, alternative navigation paths, recalibrating systems, and adaptive learning mechanisms, new educational media make the organizational intricacies of productive diversity evermore manageable. In fact, managing learner differences becomes easier than onesize-fits-all teaching because there is not the dissonance of bored or disaffected students for whom the pace of learning may be wrong.

2. The Design Principle: In reflexive pedagogy, learners are positioned as designers of their own knowledge. Students are scaffolded by their teachers and digital learning environments to encounters with available knowledge resources in the world, in all their multivocal and multimodal diversity. They remake that world according to the disciplinary scaffolds that are the studies of science, or art, or language. They are positioned as disciplinary practitioners—as scientists, as art critics or artists, as critical readers or writers. Now knowledge producers more than knowledge consumers, every artifact of their knowledge (re)making is uniquely voiced—a notion that we have called “design” (Kalantzis, Cope, Chan, and Dalley-Trim 2016). Learning is no longer a matter of replicating received knowledge from memory. The evidence of learner activity is to be found in designed knowledge artifacts—for instance, students’ projects, worked examples, online discussions, models, or the navigation paths they have taken though games, simulations or intelligent tutors. As active designers, the world of knowledge is redesigned by learners, revoiced according to the tenor of each learner’s interest, identity, and experience.

3. The Collaboration Principle: One unfortunate consequence of personalization with educational technologies can be to individualize the experience of learning, reducing the learning relationship to a lone student with their computer. However, in technology-mediated learning environments designed on social media principles, complex structured social interactions can also be managed. And as soon as the social comes into play, differences become visible may be deployed as a productive resource. Different perspectives prompt deeper discussion. Providing structured peer feedback exposes learners to different perspectives and ways of thinking. Sharing work-in-progress and finished work highlights different points of focus and different angles on knowledge. In these ways, learner diversity can be harnessed as a resource for learning.

4. The Comparability Principle: Under the principle of comparability, where assessment rubrics are pitched at a high level of generality, students can be doing different things but of comparable cognitive or practical difficulty. Learners no longer have to be the same to be equal.”[4]

LiveScribe Assistive Technology as an Enabler of Differentiated Learning

Livescribe technology allows students to make notes while recording the lecture at the same time. This video shows how students with learning differences use the technology and the ways it assists them in their learning.

Here is an explanation of how students can use the LiveScribe pen and paper to make and review notes.

Because the pen allows students to take notes during a lecture, in whichever way they see fit, for example, through drawing or copying a diagram, while recording, students are able to produce notes that reflect their understanding of the materials during a lecture rather than having to transcribe the content of the lecture and consume it later, upon review. The ability to hear the lecture in its entirely later enables audio learners to re-experience the lecture. Visual learners are able to repeat snippets of the lecture that correspond to their drawings so that they can elaborate upon their initial understanding of the concept when they review their notes.

Finally, throughout this course we have discussed the importance of knowledge-making rather than knowledge consuming. Making “pencasts” using the technology creates the hybrid opportunity to consume knowledge and then to create knowledge. Here is an example of a “mathcast” using the LiveScribe technology. As you will see, there are additional functions in LiveScribe that allow the learner to upload and share their materials, allowing students to engage in more reflexive, rather than didactic, pedagogy.

Concluding Thoughts

Traditional pedagogy arose at a time where handwritten notes were the only way to record the spoken instruction provided by a lecturer. Livescribe technology allows students with learning differences to accommodate their needs for differentiated learning in traditional learning ecologies.

[1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/elearning/lecture/Bk6lw/differentiated-learning-part-7b-personalized-learning

[2] pg. 40 Bill Cope & Mary Kalantzis, “Conceptualizing e-Learning (chapter 1)”.

[3] Pg.41Ibid.

[4] Pgs.40-41Ibid.