This site offers a comprehensive list of online tools that can support UDL Principle 3: Multiple Means of Engagement along with specific information about the site. This list includes:
> Options for Engagement: 3 Especially Engaging Programs
> Websites that support, re-enforce, extend and enrich learning
> Blogging Platforms Commonly used in Classrooms with a sample of class blogs
> Tried and Tested Projects that Engage
> A variety of "Interesting Ways"presentations by Tom Barrett
This site offers a comprehensive list of online tools that can support UDL Principle 1: Multiple Means of Representation along with specific information about the site. This list includes:
A concise, accessible, and current main text for the Introduction to Inclusive Teaching course. It is the only inclusion textbook available with a consistent, integrated emphasis on Universal Design for Learning (UDL)--an important, contemporary educational philosophy focused on using strategies and tools to help ALL students by accommodating their differences. This text also provides foundational information about children with disabilities who are included in today's classrooms, and the most effective strategies for teaching them alongside their typically developing peers. Featuring new case studies and sound research-based teaching and learning strategies, this hands-on text offers pre-service and in-service teachers a practical, flexible framework for effective instruction, classroom management, assessment, and collaboration in today's diverse classrooms.
After reading this article, it sounds like Forest Lake Elementary has created UDL (Universal Design for Learning) environments in their school. In my opinion, by applying UDL principles, a personalized learning environment can be realized.
To challenge and support each child at his or her own level, the educators of Forest Lake Elementary deploy a powerful array of digital-technology tools.
"More important than the gadgets themselves, of course, is how the teachers use them to create personalized lessons and a productive environment where each child is engaged. Here are Forest Lake teachers' top tips on how to do it."
Here are just a few of those tips:
> Deliver Instruction through Multiple Forms of Media
> Gather and Use Immediate Feedback on Students' Understanding
"Learning Goal: Participants will be able to explain how the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework helps educators address systematic learner variability. Essential Questions: Why are curricula limited if they are designed for the 'average' learner? What makes learner variability systematic? Why is it important for educators to know about systematic learner variability?"
( This video is Closed Captioned) Empowering the Next Generation: This is the video that we introduced at the 2009 ULD Conference.
"By offering a curriculum that is suited to individually unique learning abilities, propensities, and characteristics as well as tools that utilize the state-of-the-technology for this (it is expressed as “Leveling the Playing Field” in this video), it is possible to create smart learning based on learners’ autonomy and engage today’s students. Learners can become engaging students when all elements—the curriculum content, teaching-learning methods and strategies, and tools used for these—establish a balance."
"I found myself in a classroom with nineteen ESL learners in South Boston. Our task was to guide the students through the creation of fictional characters with individualized traits and customs and, finally, to create fictional narratives about these characters. Seven of these children were not yet fluent in speaking or understanding English. Also present in the room were three Special Needs students, each with their own cognitive and developmental challenges."
"UDL assumes that the student diversity is the norm, that educators must prepare a flexible curriculum and pedagogy that meets all of the diverse students’ needs. The end result is a learning environment with high expectations for all learners."
"Last week, I looked at the shifting paradigm of how we view students with learning difficulties. Starting with the assumption that all students can succeed, we are compelled to re-think our expectations and most importantly, re-think our planning - with ALL our students in mind. This is directly in line with my first blog of "finding the cornerstone" - that is having an informed academic and social profile of your class.
In my mind, the most crucial element in designing instruction for student success is that it must be done collaboratively. More specifically, it requires a "partnership between special and general education - a partnership that embodies shared responsibility, commitment, resources, and accountability" (O'Shea & O'Shea, 1997). This makes me think of the current structures we have in place at most schools where there is typically a cadre of general education teachers and one special ed teacher (LA). My experience in schools is that these colleagues certainly do collaborate but primarily in the "retrofit" stage of a child's lack of success. In other words, lack of student success leads to a request for assessment by the LA, which then leads to adaptations or even modifications for that individual student - sometimes with little correlation to the general instructional practices happening in the classroom."
"In this post, we examine 16 Apps for Elementary Students with Non-Verbal Learning Disability (NVLD).
New apps on the iPad can assist students with remediation as well. While apps are not as advanced as specialized software right now in terms of full support for specific academic skills, they are improving. Most apps that have been developed to date focus on the remediation aspect and not support. There are huge advantages to using an app for remediation or to bypass the challenges associated with NVLD on the iPad: the ability to manipulate the information on the screen, high level of engagement, mobility, and full interactivity. Here are our recommendations for apps for elementary students that have difficulty with the above-mentioned areas."
Glad to see that there's an app for that - going the extra mile for our students who struggle with their learning should not be impeded by our lack of research! There are a number of very valuable links here:
Once we understand that our students with learning difficulties incite better instructional design for all students, we begin to see that the curriculum itself also needs to be re-evaluated - It cannot continue to be a "one size fits most" approach (Rose, Meyer, Hitchcock, 2005).
Engaging special needs children requires a distinctive skill set, not least among them patience. But modern technology also has plenty to offer in the way of tools that foster communication and motivation. So if you are the parent or teacher of a special-needs child, put your iPhone to good use and download these iPhone apps. They will help both you and the little one make the most of their day.
This site offers a comprehensive list of online tools that can support UDL Principle 2: Multiple Means of Action and Expression along with specific information about the site. This list includes:
> Online Art Options > Offline Art Options > Mind Mapping Options > Online and Offline Options to Support Organization > Online Multimedia Options
A review of some select apps with descriptions and potential use in supporting the principles of UDL in instruction and student learning.
"Universal Design for Learning (UDL) provides a framework for course structure, individualized instruction, assessment, and academic engagement. Universal Design for Learning has the potential to maximize learning opportunities for all.
The following are a few applications available for the iPad, iPod or iPhone that can help support a UDL-based learning environment"
"Our Technology Principal and Director of Instruction at the time wondered what it would be like if every student in grade six and seven had a laptop that was embedded with the Performance Standards Rubrics for Writing in its word processing software. They wondered how boys in particular would benefit from being able to produce and edit text with a laptop as they often struggled with the handwritten editing process. The results were clear. Not only did the achievement gap between boys and girls narrow significantly, but All students improved in their writing with a significant percentage now exceeding expectations on tests. In addition, having this powerful tool in the classroom for every student allowed for multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression and multiple means of engagement in several subject areas."
The aspiration to expand learning opportunities for all individuals is gaining ground in education policy, practice and research through the growing field of universal design for learning (UDL). As Harvard Law School Dean and civil rights champion Martha L. Minow has written, “Universal design for learning is one of the few big and truly transformative ideas to emerge in education over the past two decades.”
Join the presentation, "Built in Moodle: The Universally-Designed Digital Learning Environment", on November 29th at the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference at the Radisson Conference Center in Manchester, NH. Learn how to empower your instruction and engage your students using Moodle!
From the SIGMS of ISTE, Beth Poss and Chris Bugaj explore how library media specialists can enhance the learning of all students by infusing Universal Design for Learning principles in their practice. They will highlight the use of digital text and other assistive technologies.
1. Strategic, goal-directed learners. They formulate plans for learning, devise effective strategies and tactics to optimize learning; they organize resources and tools to facilitate learning; they monitor their progress toward mastery; they recognize their own strengths and weaknesses as learners; and they abandon plans and strategies that are ineffective.
2. Resourceful, knowledgeable learners. They bring considerable prior knowledge to new learning; they activate that prior knowledge to identify, organize, prioritize and assimilate new information. They recognize the tools and resources that would help them find, structure, and remember new information; and they know how to transform new information into meaningful and useable knowledge.
3. Purposeful, motivated learners. Their goals are focused on mastery rather than performance; they know how to set challenging learning goals for themselves and how to sustain the effort and resilience that reaching those goals will require; they can monitor and regulate emotional reactions that would be impediments or distractions to their successful learning.
Arts & UDL in the Classroom, Part One: Meeting Diverse Learners / Richard Jenkins
"As I began thinking about possible art activities, I asked myself:
> How do I get all of these diverse learners to engage with the activity and their learning?
> What adjustments do I need to make in my own lessons and pedagogy in order to meet the students where they are, given their strengths and challenges?
> How can I do this do this in a way that is inclusive for all of these students and challenges them to reach for and to meet the established learning standards?
Seeking answers to these questions, I turned to brain science and UDL (Universal Design for Learning). In future posts, I will share what I learned and how I applied it to teaching this diverse group of learners."
Universal Design for Learning Series has been launched!
The EXPLORE sessions provide background information on UDL, explain the neuroscience basis of UDL, and introduce key features of the UDL framework.
FEATURED TOPICS
Learner Variability and Universal Design for Learning» This session features Drs. David Rose and Todd Rose discussing how UDL addresses systematic learner variability. It also includes real examples of how two educators apply the principles of UDL to meet varied learner needs.
On November 17, 2011, the National Center on UDL (www.udlcenter.org) will introduce a new professional learning resource, The UDL Series.
The UDL Series is a free online collection of rich media presentations (typically 15-20 minutes in length) that help educators to build UDL understanding, implementation skills, and leadership ability. The first session, entitled “Learner Variability and UDL,” features Drs. David Rose and Todd Rose discussing how UDL addresses systematic learner variability. It also includes real examples of how two educators apply the principles of UDL to meet varied learner needs.
The UDL Series will be inaugurated on Thursday, November 17, 2011. The UDL Center recognizes that educators are busy. Once launched, it will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at www.udlseries.udlcenter.org.
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