UDL@UVM Blog

Universal Design for Learning at the University of Vermont

July 2, 2010
by zahrens
0 comments

1 Easy Way to Record Audio While Taking Notes. (UDL @UVM Product Highlight)

UDL @ UVM Product Highlight

Product: Livescribe PulsePen
Website: Livescribe.com
Cost: $159.00 – $190.00 (New $ Used)
Where to Buy: Amazon.com, BestBuy, Target, AppleStore, Staples

What does it do?: This pen allows you or students to record notes and drawings and simultaneously record the audio being lectured or spoken. These notes can then be placed in an audio file for portable use, they can be embedded into a website or a blog and at any point the audio can be referenced from when it was said at the location of recording by clickling on writting. In order to do this you need to use the LiveScribe Notebook Paper.

How it works: Watch this video

Example:

BLOG EXAMPLE
brought to you by Livescribe

For more uses and examples go to the Livescribe website.

UDL Benefits:
Students
1.) Record lectures and replay if something was missed.
2.) Just record the audio and take notes later
3.) Share notes with other students.

Faculty
1.) Post audio and written notes to the web
2.) Highlight important concepts and share to students
3.) Represents the same material in multiple ways: UDL Principle 1.

April 27, 2010
by Universal Design for-Learning
Comments Off on Short and Sweet: UDL in a youtube nutshell

Short and Sweet: UDL in a youtube nutshell

Check out this 4 and a 1/2 minute video entitled, ‘UDL At a Glance’:

It’s made by CAST, an org that is really making UDL a reality in schools, probably near you!
Cheers from the UDL@UVM Team!
Puja

April 13, 2010
by Universal Design for-Learning
Comments Off on A collection of UDL resources

A collection of UDL resources

Presentation PPT file and TRIO Documents, and CAST UDL Representation Sheet
“I’m Autistic” on You Tubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKzY3u_cUhk
Neurotypicals on wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurotypical
CAST Resources
http://www.cross-plus-a.com/balabolka.htm

http://mywebspiration.com/
How to Keep Students Engaged in Class
Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants- Marc Prensky
UDL Multiple Means of Representation Sheet
Diigo (online collaboration tool)
CAST UDL Blog (Example of how to facilitate a class or training session and keep info organized in a blog)
UDL Online Training Modules! (CAST)

April 6, 2010
by Universal Design for-Learning
2 Comments

UDL Consultations and a 12 year old scrutinizes teachers, education and creativity – do you see similarities? .


I feel that this video provides a unique look at the architecture of education, in a way that is not formally addressed. It questions play and imagination. I think, if anything these thought processes are important to keep in mind when generating ideas. Children and their creative imagination place no value in judgement. They are thus more apt to create free flowing ideas and unique ideas. Children are not expected to be bound creatively by the limitations of practically. Or, as Adora points out in her example of the children that created glass art in a public exhibit; their designs were not influenced by the difficulty of actually creating the subject yet professionals now go to this exhibit to use these exhibits as inspiration for their own work. This example highlights the uniqueness of the child imagination. Something that I think is definaley lost in higher ed.
I had a teacher in entrepreneurship who encouraged such thought. It was clearly difficult to do correctly, because it made her lectures sometimes appear aloof and near laughable. Her attempt to apply imagination to real world context was hard to do. This teacher urged us to disregard all practicality when thinking of business ideas or marketing campaigns. This first year class is based on this theme of creative invent-ism. It ends as a senior with an in depth analysis of the market and 5 year financial forecast of one specific business. During this process this teacher encourage a looseness of creative thought that is generally associated with children. The objective was to not be bound by obstacles but to remain creative, resourceful and imaginative in the face of challenge while still being able to apply the solution through an effective business strategy.
In regards to UDL and our consultations I feel that this video falls right in with the faculty implementing more engagement and student expression. It may not be easy for a more traditional lecturer to embed multiple means of expression into their course or their assignments because it is not a customary thing to do, it may not even be practical. But at the same time it is like giving all of your students one color crayon to complete an assignment. As a child you get a whole box of crayons with 64 DIFFERENT colors. The analogy that many people take for granted make when it comes to creativity, childhood, and education is that; as we get older, our colors are taken away from us. UDL principles and its applications, when done correctly are akin to bringing these colors back.

March 26, 2010
by Universal Design for-Learning
0 comments

Better Learning by Design Conference – University of Vermont – May 17-19, 2010

The University of Vermont, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Project invites you to attend “Better Learning by Design.” This three-day conference gathers nationally known experts and offers the opportunity to become knowledgeable in the theory and application of UDL principles. As defined by The Higher Education Opportunity Act of 2008, UDL is “a scientifically valid framework for guiding educational practice that provides for flexibility in the ways:
-Information is presented
-Students respond or demonstrate knowledge and skills, and
-Students are engaged in the content
visit the conference website

March 23, 2010
by Universal Design for-Learning
2 Comments

The Moral Arc Of The Universe Bends Towards…UDL?

039BlackMan%20and%20Flag%20March1965.jpg
Forty-five years ago yesterday, I stood before the Alabama state capital building with a diverse (a word not in our lexicon of ethnic adjectives then) crowd of people on a rainy afternoon and listened to the Reverend Martin Luther King, a very tired Martin Luther King, deliver these words: “the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice.” 25000 people cheered and then slowly made their way back to the airport to board the two-prop DC-3s that would take them back to where they had come from. Today, those planes seem ancient!
I had flown to Montgomery with an interfaith group of ministers and parishioners from Syracuse, New York where I was learning to be an urban teacher.
cr_teaching1964.jpg
It had been a tumultuous week in the South and I was far enough distant in age from my parents to finally take the risk and do something big to act out my evolving social consciousness, an action I knew they would not condone. I only joined the last day of the march. But my presence was welcomed by those that had walked the 54 risky miles from Selma. My presence was not welcomed by some others of those along the way into the city who decorated the route with an occasional Confederate Flag and called us names and shouted at us to go home where we belonged. We were well protected by national guardsman on the edges of the march and seasoned parade marshalls who helped us close ranks to gain some distance from angry onlookers. I expected to hear what I heard then. I knew I was safe as long as I stayed with the crowd.
I did not expect to hear what I heard yesterday as the United States House of Representatives passed the most important piece of health care legislation since medicare was signed into law by Lyndon Johnson on July 30, 1965. Racial and homophobic slurs were thrown at John Lewis, Andre Carson, Barney Frank, James Clyburn and other Democrats who decided to walk through Tea Party protesters at the Capital building rather than enter through another entrance.
How far have we come? And how far have we to go? Why, as King said, when the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, do such actions inspire such hateful reactions? Surely the passage of this health care bill is another act of civil justice for thousands of citizens of this country. And yet we have the specter of hundreds of adults emulating the very behavior we legislate against in our schools. Bullying. Overt bullying, modeled and taught and sanctioned seemingly by one of our two political parties, with no one from the minions standing up and saying, “stop.”
This is a very scary time in the brief history of our democracy. Frogs die rather than escape when water in which they swim is slowly heated degree by degree to the boiling point. The political climate in this country is becoming more and more toxic for democracy, degree by degree, slur by slur. The legislative branch of our federal government is broken. I feel like a frog in a country where the air around me is becoming increasingly poisoned and pieces of my world are dying.
It makes me wonder how many of those Tea Party shouters, or even their elected representatives, had good teachers and successful school experiences? I wonder how many were ever with teachers who thought much about their learning? I wonder what their schools were like? I wonder where they learned that it was okay to behave like that. That it’s okay to send faxes of trees with noosed ropes hanging from their branches to the majority whip of the United States House of Representatives and other minority members of congress.
Universal Design for Learning, for all its good points, does not directly address issues of classroom climate. Much is inferred from the application of UDL principles, but UDL is contentless when it comes to relationship building as a pre-condition to learning. UDL, for all its good points, does not directly ask that faculty teach students how to recognize and deal with difference – differences in opinion, differences in gender, differences in ethnicity, differences in intellectual preparation, differences in prior knowledge. I wonder if it should? Is UDL merely a set of strategies to enhance the metabolism of learning in educational settings? Or is it also a set of strategies that embraces openly and explicitly that the teaching/learning dynamic that UDL promotes is also a moral framework that asserts that the right of every student’s learning to be respected. I would like to suggest that UDL is a moral framework that accedes to every learner the right to be recognized and heard and challenged and yes, pushed in a learning environment that nourishes and extends their humanity, never ever diminishing it before their peers or anyone else.
UDL is but one link in this particular universe, the moral universe of the classroom. A second and equally necessary link is the diversity that exists within the classroom itself, the diversity of natural human differences that invite the presence of UDL strategies. There are other links, I’m sure. But let me end here by asserting that our work is moral work and the outcome of this work is just – as in “justice” – learning. It is my hope that as a result of the work we are doing, the children of our students will never learn to bully from watching their Moms and Dads bullying people with whom they have a disagreement. It is my hope that those Moms and Dads would have learned when they were in college that they were smart enough, that their voices would be heard, and that they were important contributors to a learning community in which everyone was better off for the presence of each one. Maybe we can make Representation, Expression, and Engagement operational principles for just learning. I know it’s a stretch, but maybe???

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