Auditory Learners/Differentiated Instruction

With all the attention presently being given to Differentiated Instruction in the classroom, understanding our students and how they learn is a must in order to differentiate effectively.
Howard Gardiner's Multiple Intelligences identifies those who have strengths in the Verbal-Linguistic and Musical-Rhythmic subcapacities as being highly auditory. Getting students and teachers to understand and identify what strengths are found in a classroom of learners will help generate a more engaged learning community, in the end, that is what differentiation is all about. Coming up with a "Choice Board" which does not take into account the learning styles in the classroom is a waste of the teacher's time and a cause of frustration for the students.
Those who are auditory learners can benefit from listening to a passage rather than reading it themselves. A podcast that is well mastered with musical intros will be far more appealing to some students, and create an opportunity for success, which may not have been present before.
In terms of the students who benefit from auditory material and instructions, I also think about some of my struggling readers/writers. I often have one particular student use Kurzweil3000 software that scans and reads the text that the rest of the class is working on. I also have a couple of students that use DragonNaturally Speaking to "dictate" their responses, which are then printed out later.
In the end even though technology seems to be moving faster than we can keep up with it, the exciting reality is that more than ever before we have the technological tools which will allow all of our students and opportunity to take meaning and communicate and share their understanding of the material we are teaching