PATINS UDL Project

There are 3 parts to this week’s discussion. After you read Chapter 4, please comment about the following.

1. Speak about what you will look for in software that will fit the UDL concepts and the needs of your school and students.
2. Tell us if you have any favorite software that fits the UDL concept and works well…and how you have used it successfully with your students.
3. Tell us if you have used some software that has undermined a goal you have set rather than enhancing it, and how that happened. (This will be a sharing of failures, sort of, to serve as a shared warning of things we need to be careful of when we use software products.)

I’m looking forward to hearing from all of the groups with ideas that can be helpful to all of us.

Tina

As you read and discuss this chapter, please think about what “first step” you might take in your school toward providing and incorporating flexible media in the classroom(s) and share some of those ideas. You might think of how flexible media could help at least one particular student and share an example of a lesson that could benefit from the use of flexible media for him/her in particular and the whole class in general.

Please read each other’s ideas and comment and question and make suggestions about them!

Tina

After you read Chapter 2 of the book, please look at the UDL Classroom Template 1: Class Learning Profile that is referred to on page 39. (The template is on pages 178-183 of the book.)  Is this something you could use all or parts of to help you work with students in your classes who come with a variety of abilities and difficulties?

Also, please look at the part of the CAST web site that deals with our book (http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/) .  You will see a link to Tools and Activities on this page. Click on it and scroll way down to two activities, “Your Three Brain Networks” and “Getting to Know You the UDL Way.” I’d like each of you to do at least one of these activities and tell us what you think about the results. NOTE: This is a great activity to do as a UDL team…and you can reply as a team, with only one comment.

Tina

As you read the Preface and Chapter 1 of the book, you will see that they give two examples of class assignments (hatching baby chicks in the elementary school and The Catcher in the Rye in the high school) that provided information and evaluated learning in ways that are different from the typical text-based classroom. Have you ever tried anything like this with your classes? If you have, how did it work out for your students and how did it effect your workload as a teacher?

Tina

Hi Everyone –

Welcome to the review of the book, Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning. I am Tina Jones, the PATINS Coordinator in the southeastern region of the state, based in Madison, Indiana, and I will be moderating the blog as we read through the book together.  I am looking forward to hearing about each of you so please leave  a comment with a brief introduction of yourself.

Tina

If you have any questions about information in the book, Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning,  or UDL (Universal Design for Learning) in general, please post them here in the questions category. Everyone can help to answer the questions that are posted.