Universal Design in Education - A Blog for July 3-7

UDL Resources on CAST website

2006-07-07T09:41:00.000-04:00

Check out PD Resources on the CAST website http://www.cast.org/pd/resources/index.html

Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age
http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/

TES book online - Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Education in the Digital Age
Chapter 2: What Brain Research Tells Us About Learner Differences
Chapter 3: Why We Need Flexible Instructional Media
Chapter 4: What Is Universal Design for Learning?
Chapter 5: Using UDL to Set Clear Goals
Chapter 6: Using UDL to Support Every Student's Learning
Chapter 7: Using UDL to Accurately Assess Student Progress
Chapter 8: Making Universal Design for Learning a Reality

Access the teacher created books: Several of the books that have been created by participating Massachsuetts teams of educators and parents are ready for posting, downloading, and using with your emergent readers. These books were designed specifically to support emergent literacy of all young stduents, especially those with cognitive disabilities. Enjoy and please give us feedback to share with others. (login: cast; password: cast)

Facilitators for Next Year

2006-07-06T15:45:00.000-04:00

Interested in being a facilitator for next year - sign up now (name and email).

Interest Groups

2006-07-06T15:43:00.000-04:00

Add an interest group to continue discussions

George Sugai's Links

2006-07-06T11:32:00.000-04:00

George Sugai, george.sugai@uconn.edu
PBIS website: http://pbis.org
PBIS Research Literature: http://pbis.org/researchLiterature.htm

The UDL and PBIS PowerPoint posted: http://www.pbis.org/pastconferencepresentations.htm#presentations
Universal Design Learning and School-wide Positive Behavior Support.

SWIS: School Wide Information System http://www.swis.org "The School-Wide Information System (SWIS) is a web-based information system designed to help school personnel to use office referral data to design school-wide and individual student interventions." In the beginning, starts off as a discipline tracking system.

Research
Judy Cameron is interested in the basic psychology of learning processes and the application of learning principles to education. Her primary area of research concerns the impact of rewards and reinforcement on people's motivation and performance. Take a look at her publications: http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/edpsychology/nav03.cfm?nav03=14260&nav02=14211&nav01=13954

David's Thursday Morning Highlights

2006-07-06T08:58:00.000-04:00

email from Diigo, showing interest in having educators try out Diigo. Sign up, if interested http://www.diigo.com/.

Demonstration of how text and visual media complement each other in a science research project that CAST is currently doing. Example: understanding how we see.

2006-07-06T08:02:00.000-04:00

A bunch of people asked for the Neverlost Slides. Here's one, the others will follow in the resources link below.

Text to Speech Technologies for you to try.

2006-07-06T07:42:00.000-04:00

We have posted (on the resources link, look down where the group blogs are) the resources for text to speech engines, from the freebies to the very expensive. You can check them out by clicking on the links attached to the paragraphs.

David

UDL Power Point Slides

2006-07-05T23:12:00.000-04:00

Go to http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/toolkits/tk_procedures.cfm?tk_id=61 to download Power Point slides to your computer. Add your own text and present this slide show to your colleagues.

David's Wednesday Morning Highlights

2006-07-05T12:18:00.000-04:00

What is del.icio.us? (http://del.icio.us) del.icio.us is a collection of favorites - yours and everyone else's.

Use del.icio.us to:

Keep links to your favorite articles, blogs, music, restaurant reviews, and more on del.icio.us and access them from any computer on the web.

Share favorites with friends, family, and colleagues.

Discover new things. Everything on del.icio.us is someone's favorite - they've already done the work of finding it.

Explore and enjoy.

Where do I start? Anyone can browse del.icio.us and see what others find interesting. To keep your favorites on del.icio.us, you must first create an account.

Diigo (http://www.diigo.com/) is a beta program that allows you to tag web information the best way to collect, share and interact on online information from anywhere. Invitation-only beta. If you're interested in an account, please send your inquiry to info@diigo.com

Resources for Wednesday morning

2006-07-05T11:34:00.000-04:00

WebBased rersources that support literacy

Image Detective www.edc.org/CCT/PMA/image_detective/index.html
PowerPoint Tutorial: multimedia composing www.edc.org/CCT/dig_lit/web
ReadWriteThink: http://readwritethink.org

Thinking Reader: for more information link http://www.tomsnyder.com/products/product.asp?SKU=THITHI

Social Studies

Image Detective: www.edc.org/CCT/PMA/image_detective/index.html

Tuesday Afternoon: Assessment and UDL

2006-07-05T10:35:00.000-04:00

Here's some references on assessment:

Dolan, R. P., Hall, T. E. et al. (2005). Applying principles of universal design to test delivery: the effect of computer-based read aloud on test performance of high school students with learning disabilities. Journal of Technology, Learning, and Assessment 3(7).

Assessing Effects of Technology on Learning:Limitations
of Today’s Standardized Tests, Michael Russell and Jennifer Higgins
http://www.bc.edu/research/intasc/PDF/EffectTechOnLearn.pdf

Fireworks only!!!!

2006-07-03T20:59:00.000-04:00

Some people wanted a bulletin board to meet up for fireworks. This is a good place. If you post comments below, you can check back to see if others have left notes. Good luck.

Click on the word comment, just below and leave a note. You will need to sign in, just like you did when you made your blog.

David

2006-07-03T14:09:00.000-04:00

When you need support - mentoring, scaffolding - in creating lesson plans for all learners, you can find help here:

http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/toolkits/tk_procedures.cfm?tk_id=21

More specifically, to set goals, look here:
http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/udlgoalsetter.cfm

To think about your class and what it needs:
http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/classprofiletool.cfm

To help in choosing or adapting materials, look here:
http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/udlsolutionsfinder.cfm

Resources for Monday Afternoon, July 3

2006-07-02T11:09:00.000-04:00

1) Some sources on Individual Differences and Universal Design for Learning:

A collection of course websites from participants in: Meeting the Challenge of Individual Differences: http://projectsfromudl.blogspot.com/

Chapter 2 in Teaching Every Student, Individual Differences: http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/chapter2.cfm

Taking Art as an example:

(1) Art and Individuals with Autism : http://www.jessicapark.com/
http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/art.html

(2) Art and Individuals with Motor disability: http://www.paulsmithfoundation.org/index.html

(3) Art and Individuals who are blind: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18524841.700
http://www.armagan.com/

(4) Poetry and individuals with OCD: http://understanding_ocd.tripod.com/ocd_poetry.html

(5) Art and individuals with Alzheimer's: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/arts/design/30kenn.html?ex=1151985600&en=aaa967878334b22d&ei=5070

(6) A huge compendium of art by individuals with disabilities: http://nadc.ucla.edu/links.cfm

Resources for Monday Morning, July 3

2006-07-01T14:26:00.000-04:00

Resources on Learning and the Brain - General

A very nice first look at the structure of the nervous system in a tutorial
http://www.stanford.edu/group/hopes/basics/braintut/ab0.html

Great introductory videos online for many aspects of brain and its functions: http://www.learner.org/resources/series142.html#

An introduction to nervous system from McGill that uses many features of UDL:
http://www.thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/index_i.html

A second introduction with lots of accessible articles from New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/brain

A nice tutorial that works your way through the brain's structures from the middle out:
http://web.psych.ualberta.ca/~iwinship/studyguide/brain_study.htm

A navigable atlas of the nervous system: a nice feel for the brain as neurologists see it: http://www.msu.edu/~brains/humanatlas/

A virtual spin around the human brain:
http://www.brainmuseum.org/Specimens/primates/human/qtvrbrains.htm

A source for Illusions and the brain:
www.illusionworks.com

http://psylux.psych.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/html/shadow___ball.html

http://psylux.psych.tu-dresden.de/i1/kaw/diverses%20Material/www.illusionworks.com/html/shadow.html

Resources on Universal Design for Learning - General

CAST's website on Universal Design for Learning:
http://cast.org

Teaching Every Student website:
http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/

CSS Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS design; http://www.csszengarden.com/

Tutorials and Guidelines for practicing UDL:

Tutorials on UDL: setting goals, choosing materials and methods, etc. http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/

The value of Structured Documents: http://www.webaim.org/techniques/word/#create

Universal Design on the Web: Great comprehensive website of resources for accessible web design http://library.uwsp.edu/aschmetz/Accessible/pub_resources.htm#Guidelines

WebAim’s site on Web Accessibility http://www.webaim.org/

Introducing the Institute Blog

2006-07-01T10:26:00.000-04:00

Welcome to the Harvard Institute on Universal Design for Learning.

This Blog will be a central place where we can post notes and media for the institute. On each day, we will post websites, resources, and media that are relevant for the main topic sessions of the day.

The added value of a Blog is that you may also post comments or resources to share with the rest of us. We hope you will take advantage of this feature, making the course Blog become more valuable as more and more people contribute to it.