PATINS UDL Project

The American Chemical Society (ACS) has launched Bytesize Science, an educational, entertaining new podcast for young listeners. Bytesize Science translates cutting-edge scientific discoveries from ACS’s 36 peer-reviewed journals into stories for young listeners about science, health, medicine,energy, food, and other topics. New installments are posted every Monday and are available free of charge.

Go to:  http://feeds.feedburner.com/bytesizescience

It’s a great way to make science more fun and accessible for today’s students.

The CITEd (Center for Implementing Technology in Education) web site (http://www.cited.org/) has a technology matrix that compares various technology that might be used for math, reading, writing or assistive technology.  This may help you decide what technology might be best for you.

If you have never been to the CITEd web site before, I recommend that you take the 7-minute tour of the site so you know all of the things that are available here…and there are a lot!  You can save information into kits that can be distributed to others for sharing/training purposes. There is research to support what you are doing.  Throughout the web site the focus is on UDL and best practices.

Also, CITEd and Don Johnston, Inc., joined forces to produce a series of webinars on a variety of topics dealing with UDL which are archived at:  http://www.donjohnston.com/prof_services/VIP.html

Let’s discuss which of the components for implementing UDL (from CAST’s Systemic Change Planner) you think are the most important and why. What problems are you anticipating as you being to implement UDL and how do you plan to deal with them? All of you will encounter some problems – let’s help each other by suggesting ways to deal with them.

There are 8 components listed at the CAST site:

• Technology infrastructure
• Digital content resources
• Administrative support
• Teacher training and support
• Redefined roles for special and regular educators
• Collaborative curriculum planning
• Parent and community involvement
• Creative funding

For the Systemic Change Planner go to:
http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/systemicchange.cfm

Tina

Please think about which forms of flexibility strike you as most important for improving the quality of assessment:

• flexibility in presentation
• flexibility in expression and strategic supports
• flexibility in engagement

Please tell everyone what you might try to do differently in assessing students and why you will be doing these things.

Will it be “fair” to offer different assessment options to students in your class(es)? Why or why not? Will these options be available to all of the students or only to ones you choose?

Tina