Universal Desiign for Learning

[Guest guest]

I needed to write summaries of the work shops I attended at the NDSC this past weekend for GiGi's Playhouse, so thought I would send them on to the lists too. Universal Design for Learning : Meaningful Access to the General Curriculum for All Students We are all very familiar with the concept of Universal Design as it relates to moving through our day. Some very common examples would be. closed captioning, side walk ramps, automatic door openers, elevators, easy grip tools. All of these were designed to break down barriers for people with various disabilities but society is discovering that we ALL use and benefit from making the environment more accessible. Mom's with strollers, bikers and someone bringing home a rolling cart of groceries all use curb cuts. Deaf people are 7th in line for using closed captioning, the majority of people using CC are hearing people. It's so much easier to build in Universal Design right from the start then to go back and retrofit. It's also less costly than individual solutions and benefits more people. With that in mind, Universal Design for Learning seeks to provide those same benefits to the classroom curriculum. They view the current curriculum as a physical barrier to learning due to it's lack of diversity in it's presentation. The typical school curriculum works for only a small number of learners where as the Universally Design approach would reach all learning styles and remove barriers for those with learning disabilities, or simply different learning styles. CAST has based UDL on extensive research into brain function and the fact that we *all* have different learning styles and just as UD in our environment helps more than just the people with disabilities, UDL will also benefits every student in the classroom. They are currently involved in having UDL implemented in all classrooms making the curriculum accessible for all students in the same way as we are striving to make society more accessible to all people. The research presented at the conference was worth the presentation alone. UDL utilizes both high and low tech modalities. Low tech examples are having a student watch the movie version of a novel, supplying an audio version for those with reading deficits. Offering back ground information to make the text more understandable- for example if a student is reading about 'Hide and Seek' but has never played the game, it would be imperative to that student's comprehension to be given a definition and example of the game. If you ask a child to make a prediction of a story, the child needs to understand what prediction means, an example of one and hints on to make your own. They have a wonderful examples of high tech ways to embed information into text at their web site : http://bookbuilder.cast.org/explore.php These books are all free and also allows teachers/parents to create their own. Firefox browers also has an add-on called "click speak" that will read any text on the web. Firefox is free and is used in place of Internet Explorer. You do not have to remove Internet Explorer to use it and can easily go back and forth between the two. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ This was a very extensive presentation that covered how and why the current curriculum fails students with disabilities, research that supports the failings of the standard curriculum for all learners, and also a plan to break down the learning barriers in schools using legislative and grass roots means of parents presenting UDL to their local school boards. Be sure to visit their excellent website : http://www.cast.org/ It's loaded with free resources, recommendations for recourses already using UDL along with more information on the research.http://www.cast.org/products/index.htmlHere are UDL Guidelines: http://www.cast.org/publications/UDLguidelines/version1.html contains lots of practical information you can use right now. http://www.advocacyinstitute.org/UDL/ Help to have UDL be implemented in every school. Carol in IL AIM doihavtasay1 GigaTribe doihavtasayMom to seven including , 7 with TOF, AVcanal, GERD, LS, Asthma, subglottal stenosis, and DS.My problem is not how I look. It's how you see me. Join our Down Syndrome information group - http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/DownSyndromeInfoExchange/ Listen to oldest dd's music http://www.myspace.com/vennamusic