Class # 9 - traditional AT, UDL and more blogging!!!

I can not believe we are down to our last class, hard to believe. The time went by so quick and I have learned soooo much!! Tonight we looked at some traditional assistive technology that is still being used in schools such as Kurzweil 3000 and Read Please. These are great tools, but like Barbara mentioned, Kurzweil is quite expensive and therefore may not be an option in some schools. Our school has most of the textbooks scanned into Kurzweil and placed in a drive on the server so it can be easily accessed by students. Most texts now come with digitalized copies which make it easier to use in these types of text to speech programs. Plus it is not uncommon to see a set of headphones from a student’s neck so they could easily use this both in and outside the classroom without looking "out of place" so to speak. Also, students can take these CD copies of the text for home use and the textbooks can stay in the classroom for those that have computer access at home. Students love this; it lightens their load in their book bags! The poor junior high students who have 9 different courses often are carrying ALL their textbooks around with their scribblers, binders, pencil cases etc. Some of their book bags are bigger than they are! We also re-examined the Universal Design for Learning. By using the UDL framework we eliminate difficulties in learning that arise when diverse students try and work in rigid learning setting. The UDL framework minimizes barriers and maximizes learning for ALL students! Below is a link to an excellent website called the Learning Center where teachers shares their experiences with UDL-based Teaching and Learning in the form of videos and lesson plans. More free stuff...YEAH! Click her for this great link! My group is having so much fun with our second assignment where we create a blog full of material for an ecosystems unit to be utilized with a diverse group of grade 7 students. I found myself still working on it for almost an hour after class and added a few more things to it the next morning. What a great way to quickly and easily organize useful information for units. I think I am going to start this for all my units, it is like a one place stop and shop! Before when I came across a good website or video I would add it to my favorites but my favorites is now a couple pages long! Using a blog for each unit, all the material is there in one place and I do not need to go through pages of favorites or forget what I have in my favorites. I can easily scan through a blog like this and pick and choose what I want to use based on the students I have that year, awesome!! By having this information and links in a blog if a student is missing from class it is more accessible for them to access missed information this way. You can send them to the blog and direct them to a certain activity or video! I have all my students in a contact list so it would be very easy to send this information or link it to my homework page. I can not wait to see the other blog sites so I can build my resources so I too can minimizes barriers for my students and maximizes learning for ALL students!