The Loudon Co. Public Schools in Ashburn, VA, has an extensive web site with many, many resources.
The have a UDL section to the web site at:
It includes Overview of UDL information as well as Planning and Technology Tools. There is a link to a pocket card with UDL information and to sample UDL Lessons and Resources.
Check it out!
This is a web site that combines curricula + wiki to yield Curriki. (A web site where the community shares and collaborates on free and open source curricula.) This is a project started by Sun Microsystems to develop works for education in a collaborative effort.
They are focusing initially on developing an online repository for K-12 curricula in the areas of mathematics, science, technology, reading and language arts, and languages. They want this repository to attract everyone from educators, students and parents, to programmers, instructional designers, authors and public officials throughout the world to contribute or freely access quality learning materials. (A very similar concept to Wikipedia, which most of us are familiar with.)
You can find lesson plans, teaching activities, student worksheets and more. You can contribute by sharing your favorite curriculum resources. You can collaborate with teachers in your school or educators around the world. If you join (it’s free) you will be able to collect resources in a personal collection, to modify those resources to meet your specific needs, to contribute your own resource information, and to participate in the educational community by providing feedback and comments.
Check it out at:
TeacherTube is a free resource for videos, documents, audio and photos that relate to teaching. The videos, documents, audio and photos are searchable in channels, including: history education, health, math, reading, writing, social sciences, science, physical education, career & technology education, languages, fine arts, tutorials, special education, and elementary, middle school, high school and college areas .
This web site also has areas where you can set up a group to share information and for blogs.
Teachers’ Domain is an online library of more than 1,000 FREE media resources from the best in public television along with lesson plans for English Language Arts, Mathematics, Social Studies and the Arts. These classroom resources, featuring media from NOVA, Frontline, Design Squad, American Experience, and other public broadcasting and content partners are easy to use and correlate to state and national standards. [http://www.teachersdomain.org/]
The National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) at WGBH recently has received funding from the National Science Foundation to develop a version of the Life Science portion of the Teachers Domain digital library that is accessible to users with hearing, vision, and physical disabilities.
AND…You can help develop the lesson plans that are accessible to students with disabilities and earn a stipend. Read on….
This comes from: Mary Watkins
Director of Communications and Outreach
Media Access Group at WGBH
Email: mary_watkins@wgbh.org
http://access.wgbh.org
One Guest Street
Boston, MA 02135
617 300-3700 v/fax
617 300-2489 TTY
The Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), a nonprofit research and
development organization, is working with NCAM to conduct research with
teachers of students with disabilities to inform the development of the
accessibility features for the Teachers Domain library. As part of our
research activities, we are currently looking for teachers of students with
hearing, vision, or physical disabilities who are interested in planning six
life science or biology lessons incorporating resources from the life
science section of the Teachers Domain digital library and then carrying out
these lessons with their students. The lesson planning will take place at
teachers’ convenience. The research involves documenting how teachers use
the Teachers’ Domain digital library for planning (using interviews and web
statistics), the lessons they planned (collecting copies of the lesson
plans), how the lessons are being implemented (using teacher
questionnaires/logs), and how students respond to the lessons (through
student questionnaires, work samples, and assessment tasks built into the
lessons). Teachers will receive a stipend of $800 for planning six lessons,
carrying them out in their classrooms, and participating in data collection
activities.
If you are interested in participating, please contact our project partner at EDC, Babette Moeller.
Babette Moeller Email: bmoeller@edc.org
Arcademic Skill Builders is a nonprofit web site that features free online educational games offering a new approach to learning basic math, language arts, vocabulary, and thinking skills. Inspired by arcade games and the intense engagement they foster between the game and player, the site’s programs stem from experience, systematic observations, and research in understanding student learning in school and social situations.
The site offers single-player and multi-player games in activities that include:
Check it out at http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/
Free lesson plans help bring Google Earth into classrooms!
“Google Earth Lessons” is a free public resource created by teachers, for teachers, to give educators tools and ideas for using the free Google Earth software in their classrooms. Using the ideas and resources found on this site, teachers of all subjects and grade levels can incorporate Google Earth into their curriculum.
A section called “Google Earth How-tos” gives educators the basic skills they need to use the software, and a discussion section includes threads for exchanging ideas on a variety of topics.
Users also can search for lessons by content area (social studies, math, science, language arts, & cross curricular), share lessons with others, search through a library of screenshots, and more. All that is needed to use the lessons is a free download of Google Earth software.
Check out this great web site from PBS (Publics Broadcasting System) that allows you to experience the difficulties that students with learning disabilities and other disabilities face day to day in the classroom. There are opportunities for you to feel your own disabilities in the areas of reading, writing, math, and attention as well as resource information and ideas for helping students with these problems. (Just click on the title “Misunderstood Minds” link to go to the web site.)
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
