Individual Learning Project Benefits?

This semester, I based my individual learning project on differentiated instruction. There were so many different directions and topics I could have chosen, but I really wanted to pick something that would maybe help further my knowledge in the field of study that I am working on. Differentiated instruction was the perfect fit, being that it would be beneficial to me as a future Special Education teacher! It was not as hard as I thought it would be to motivate myself to work on it throughout the semester, which was great because I usually got all of my work done earlier in the week! The downfall of choosing something that I was really interested in learning about was that it was a little harder for me to motivate myself to work on my other homework as well.

PhotoCC: val_godel

Differentiated instruction is a pretty broad topic. There are so many components that go a long with it, and so many different things to learn about it. The most challenging thing about creating a project out of this, was choosing and narrowing down topics to write and learn about. I decided to learn about how I could use this in the classroom as well as at home. Being a future teacher and aspiring mother, I wanted to give myself a wide range of information that I would be able to use in real life. The best part of creating this project was that I got to use a lot of the information that I learned from research, and in cooperate it into a few of my other classes and other assignments.

I learned a few things about myself during this project.

1. I did not know half of what I thought I did about individualizing education
2. Getting my homework done early relieves so much stress–will for sure continue to do so
3. I am happy with my major
4. I am more ambitious about experimenting with different technology resources than I thought!

I also learned how to manage my time a lot better. At first, I was used to just doing my homework that was needed to be done, and never really did any thing extra. Having to work on this project throughout the semester while adding onto my other homework, really taught me how to manage my free time a little more conservatively. I am really proud of myself by the way I manage my time now! I feel that I have came a long way from freshman year of college. This project not only taught me a ton about how to adapt learning material to all kinds of learners, but also gave me more confidence and excitement about my future profession.