June 27, 2008
“I see the future…”
The most apparent change for 2013, at least in my little world, will be my awareness, knowledge and use of technology in my classrooms. My students will be blogging, and making captioned videos, and working on group projects through wikis, and speaking to each other through instant messages and discussion rooms, all using animated speaking avatars that represent them. Students would be inclined to fight to get into my classes. There would be riots… were it not for my use of UDL and the fact that by having so many OPTIONS for learning that students wouldn’t even need to take my classes in the traditional sense in order to learn. They could learn independently on the Internet from the class websites and content management systems I will create. They would be motivated, as their little affective brain networks fire, to learn on their own. They would use their strategic synapses to navigate our open-source resources in their own individualized pathways toward the outcomes they determine (unless they are actually being graded by me, in which case they would gleefully choose an assessment preference from a list of aligned choices.) And I would be so incredibly versed on the minds of my students (and probably heralded as the guru on adolescence) because of vast knowledge I would learn from their varied expressive networks exploding with neurons in their tiny widdle brains.
Oh, and my support network of professional teachers, PEUT (People for the Effective Use of Technology) would have chapters all over the U.S.
June 25, 2008
UDL – Wed Morn – Goals, Materials, Methods & Assessment
Type of Educator: Classroom teacher
To determine if a classroom teachers curriculum is UDL compliant I would suggest the following “look for” questions.
To determine if GOALS are universally designed I might ask myself:
- Does the language of all goals and benchmarks reflect the same standards (level of achievement) for all students? (YES)
- Do the goals or benchmarks specify a specific path or method for achieving the benchmark? (NO)
- Does the goal specify the central thuoghts in our content… and what is not central to our content? (YES)
- Do the goals help my students to understand the WHY/WHAT of today’s lesson — why it’s relevent, why it’s important, what they need to accomplish?
To to determine if MATERIALS are universally designed I might ask myself:
- Do the materials come from a flexible list of options that provide students the opportunity to choose a method of expression?
- Do I have hands-on materials?
- Do the materials come from a list that reflects a variety of objects the students are likely to be familiar with and some with which they are unfamiliar?
- In computer class, are the options for media varied and reflect the variety of technologies available in the classroom?
To determine if METHODS are universally designed I might ask myself:
- Am I using a variety of instructional methods with students? Methods that address different intelligences and ways or organizing the content?
- Am I allowing the students to access their background information and background vocabulary and attach new information/vocabulary to that? (Vocab trees, etc.)
- Am I providing choices to them?
- Are my methods fun?
To determine if ASSESSMENT are universally designed I might ask myself:
- Am I providing choices of assessments?
- Am I providing clear and specific criteria in my rubrics that communicate the steps to achieving a good grade (success)?
- Do I have criteria for success that reflect the variety of strengths in my students?
- Are the students motivated by my assessment and reward system to put forth their best effort to complete the work?
June 24, 2008
Tuesday Morning Reflection
Page 70 of the Teaching Every Student text notes that “the ‘universal’ in universal design (for learning) does not imply one optimal solution for everyone. Rather it reflects an awareness of the unique nature of each learner and the need to accommodate differences, creating learning experiences that suit the learner and maximize his or her ability to progress.”
What experiences as a professional have you had that illustrate this quote?
I teach basic computers, digital music and videography as content courses to students with LD at my school. This is only my second year teaching. I am creating my own curriculum, which is a tall order in itself. I feel I have been able to create solid lessons for most of the concepts I need to teach. And I feel I have created lessons that utilize a broad range of teaching strategies for my students. Yet, many days I am surprised by the variance in responses to my lessons that I see in my students. Some days one or two students will jump into the content and re sculpt it into their own relevant knowledge, leading the other students on an intellectual adventure. Those days are great days. Some days several of the students will make insightful comments and show real engagement. Those are good days. Some days I am met with the blank stares of the non-comprehending zombies. Those are bad days.
But MOST days I a met with all three responses and few more sprinkled in for flavor.
I have done my best so far to anticipate how my students will respond to lessons. But this takes strong relationships with each and alot of time trying to figure out how they learn. If I am prepared I will have a graphic organizer for Aiman, an extra challenge for Ben, a non-reading lesson for Raleigh… I have been taught that this is differentiated instruction. I know it is related to Universal Design for Learning though I am unsure exactly how the two interact.
But, related to the quote, I am mostly unsure that my methods “maximize his or her ability to progress.” It really seems as if I am running to keep them up to speed. I wonder if Universal Design would change this feeling?
June 23, 2008
Personal Story
Ah, the PowerPoint lecture.
As a tech teacher you’d think I’d be completely enamoured with PowerPoint presentations. All the glitz and glam at the click of a button. But, as a SPED teacher I feel they are often abused and misused and not utilized in a way that is conducive to sound learning. And I am secretly plotting their takeover, one LCD projector at a time.
My, er… issues… have come from my experiences. Allow me to explain.
I took a seminar for credit once at a local community college. It was all pretty new material to me and content I am still interested in. In each class the content information was presented in bold black letters on a big, white, 6′ x 6′ screen. Each day of the seminar I sat in my chair as the teacher(s) read from their PowerPoint, bullet after bullet, line after line, at a standard reading speed with few breaks. As they whizzed through the bullets I was usually frantically scribbling my notes, trying to capture, at the very least, the important words in each bullet before they moved on to the next slide.
I found, to my confusion, that I was hardly ever writing the same bullet that the teacher was speaking about as they spoke about it; I was always a bit behind or frantically trying to get ahead so I was prepared when they clicked to the next slide. My mind would be split between what I was writing and what I was hearing. There were occasional moments of twittering excitement when the teacher(s) veered away from the LCD screen to ask a question or expand on a bulleted point. But afterwards, conscious of time, they would whirl through the next bullets even faster to make up for their divergence. Unfortunately, the teacher(s) did not print out the PowerPoints ahead of time… when I asked if I could get a copy before the day’s seminar they responded, ”I don’t provide them ahead of time because then there would be no reason for students to come to the seminar; they’d just get the PowerPoint offline and not come. And during class I don’t want to waste the paper.”
The result was that during class I was hardly ever able to gather my thoughts enough to listen to the teacher(s) expanding questions, let alone think about an answer. I was hardly ever finished gathering information from a screen before they moved on. And I can not think of more than a handful of times when I was able to actually digest what they were talking about and commit it to partial understanding.
In the end the class content is a blur to me. I am a smart, savvy woman, or so I like to think. I want to learn about the topic so I can use it in the future but I was unable to grasp more than a superficial understanding of the content in the format it was presented. I felt bad. I feel dumb. I did learn a bit after the hours of the class when I could gather all the info around me and… just… think… for a moment. But that was when no one was around to answer my clarifying questions or reflect on my thoughts. The PowerPoints were so packed with bulleted lists and information that they were like reading a tech manual. So I am unsure if I got it right and actually pulled out the important points. I took the class but I don’t feel educated.
Now, I’m ready to found my own organization — People for the Effective Use of PowerPoints, (PEUP). And I’m ready to think long and hard about the concepts of Universal Design in Learning and how I can learn to use PowerPoint in a way that enhances the many, diverse learning styles of my students, including ones like me.
Join PEUP. Slowly we can take over the world… one LCD projector at a time.
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