Susan Demirsky Allen tells us in her PowerPoint that differentiation is the "recognition of and commitment to plan for student differences. A differentiated classroom provides different avenues to acquire content, to process or make sense of information and ideas, and to develop products." She continues to provide examples that explain how to differentiate in the classroom. Allen specifically tells us that differentiation is not tailoring a learning schedule to each different student. It is also not giving all of the students the same work even in ability or achievement grouped classes. She suggests grouping the students into different categories to give them work that they can succeed at. This does not sound like a good idea to me. The students in the "slower" group might feel discouraged and develop low self-esteem. They might also give up all together and decide that school is a waste of their time. Also, students are complex. They cannot be perfectly fit into neat little categories.
I have not really experienced differentiation in my own high school. In the classes I took, everyone was expected to do the same work. Everyone also had the same due dates unless they missed school for a legitimate reason. My closest experiences to differentiation were the AP English classes I took in high school. This is because we had a different curriculum than then regular college preparatory English students. I find it hard to believe that everyone could be graded fairly if different students are given different work. It would not be fair for a student in the "smart" group to earn a "C" in the class while a student in the "slow" group earns a "B." 
Although I cannot see how differentiation would be fair in a school system, I can see how technology would fit in. Students could use iPads or laptops to complete computer generated quizzes and homework assignments with the difficulty level based from scores on their last quizzes. After the students are divided into their different groups based on whatever criteria the teacher chooses, they could use laptops to work collaboratively on a shared Google document to complete assignments. There are many ways that students and teachers could use technology for differentiation. I just cannot see how it would be fair to give a harder working student in a "smarter" group a lower grade than a student who does the smallest amount of work to get by in a "slower" group.
