Guest Post: Bring Universal Design for Learning to Life

Today is National Digital Learning Day!  To celebrate we’ve asked educators across the state to share their ideas on different facets of digital learning in the classroom. Daniel Dyer, from the Idaho Assistive Technology Resource Center, submitted the following blog post on Universal Design for Learning (UDL)—a framework that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn—and UDL technologies.

Teachers…

• You can substitute inflexible educational material with interactive content in your classroom. 

• You can provide new and engaging educational experiences for your students that are customizable to their individual learning styles. 

• You can make your curriculum accessible for students who need reading/writing, auditory, visual, physical, or communication support.

How…

• Use the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework to provide students with various ways to access and interact with educational material.   http://www.udlcenter.org/

• Use technology from the ground-up to make your curriculum as accessible and engaging as possible.

Why…

• UDL is vital for the success of some students. 

• UDL is helpful for all students.   It enables learning and demonstration of knowledge in new (and yes!) completely valid ways.  http://www.youtube.com/user/UDLCAST

 Software for UDL

• FREE downloadable software is available from the Free Technology Toolkit for UDL in All Classrooms

The iPad as UDL Hardware

• The iPad is engaging and can be interacted with through touch, vision, hearing, and speech. 

• Endless education activities can be adapted for/with the iPad.  

• The iPad has built in tools (Found under device Settings-General-Accessibility) for students who are blind, have low-vision, hearing impairments, dyslexia, intellectual and mobility disabilities. 

Essential iPad Apps
1.     iBooks – Free
Access books and textbooks in an engaging format with videos, interactive quizzes and electronic study tools.  Reading support can be enabled through enlarging the text, or listening to the material via the iPad’s built in voice reader.
 
2.    Dropbox – Free
Transfer files wirelessly to and from all of your computers, phones and devices. 

3.    App Writer US - $29.99
Snap a picture of printed text and let App Writer convert it to electronic text through OCR technology (on iPad 3 or 4). 
App Writer will read text aloud and provide word prediction support for struggling writers.  

4.    Notability - $1.99
Take class notes and generate written assignments with Notability.  It allows the inclusion of multimedia content in notes, such as photographs and audio recordings of lectures. 

For more information on UDL, assistive technology, and assistive Apps contact the Idaho Assistive Technology Project.   Access webinars on Assistive Apps at http://idahotc.com/assistive-technology/Trainings.aspx.