AT Tip-A-Day #13: UDL—What’s the non-negotiable? What are the options?

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) stresses the importance of identifying the non-negotiable student learning goals in a unit in order to help you see the possibilities for flexibility and choice in the other elements of the unit, and that these offer alternatives that can help meet the needs of different students. (Is the goal of the unit to learn the features and conventions of an article, or to learn about early explorers? Does the final product of the unit have to be an article, or can the writing features you are teaching be learned through a different genre?)

 Example: Early Explorers

If the goal of the unit is to understand key events in the life of an early explorer, the means for expression and means for engagement (see yesterday’s tip on UDL) can be chosen to tap the learning styles and interests of the students. The example on the right comes from a fourth-grade class that used its interest in, and understanding of, graphic writing (read: comics) to dramatize the stories of early explorers. They used the features and conventions of graphic writing to highlight key moments and the different voices and perspectives of the people involved.

 This comic was created in Comic Life. Other graphic writing resources can be found here.

Thanks to Rachel Morse for her help with this tip!

 (On Twitter/Facebook: How hard can writing comics be?)

AT Tip-A-Day #14: A Good Read: How hard can writing comics be?

Understanding Comics:The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud is fun and fascinating. And it's a comic!http://tinyurl.com/6oo25er

AT Tip-A-Day #15: UDL—Listen to Your Students…Literally!

We’ve got another tip relating to the UDL principles of providing multiple means for expression andmultiple means for representation. For students who are more expressive verbally than they are in writing, help them show what they know by having them record themselves. There are several options readily available on your, or your student’s, computer (we’re not even considering smartphones, iOS devices and the like!).

 You can use audio recording to create a portfolio of a student’s reading, record science observations, or explain how they solved a math problem. Check out the attached PowerPoint for some examples of student work. You can even record your voice—perhaps to create audio instructions, record class notes, or to create an “audio book” from scanned images. These are just some ideas—the possibilities are endless.

 How To Guides:

Add a recording button to your PowerPoint Toolbar

Add a recording button to Word 2007 (Thanks, Chris Bugaj and the Loudoun County Public Schools!)

AT Tip-A-Day #16: Graphic Writing Features

Annotated graphic writing samples you can use with your class: http://tinyurl.com/6onopt3,http://tinyurl.com/844x6hv

Make your walls (and books, and models, and …) speak with the Portable Output Pen. Touch the pen to a special paper dot, press a button and speak. The pen will reproduce the message when a student taps that dot again with the pen. Messages can be long or short.

Some ideas for using the Voice Output Pen:

• Make your word wall, or any charts you have, speak.
• Have students place dots on their projects and describe/explain their work.
• Support student writing: students add dots to their drawing, record audio, then write.
• Add audio to photos from a class field trip.
• Create audio handouts. Students can listen to the questions and record their responses.
• Create on-the-fly communication boards with text and/or drawings.
• Turn print books into audio books, with a dot for each paragraph. Add prompts and background information with additional dots (write a “?” on the prompt dots).

See the pen here. View a YouTube demo.

AT Tip-A-Day #18: Word Readability Stats

Use Word Readability Stats to challenge kids to develop their writing. Credit to Chris Bugaj!http://tinyurl.com/6wsoeuw

 AT Tip-A-Day #19: Take AIM with Accessible Instructional Materials

This week’s tips all focus on providing accessible instructional materials (AIM). All students need AIM. For many students, that means print. For students with print disabilities, standard print may be inaccessible to them for a variety of reasons. By law (IDEA 2004), instructional materials have to be provided in a timely manner to students with print disabilities.

Making texts accessible may mean providing text with:

• Braille format.
• Large print, either through magnification or electronic text.
• Different contrasts or background color.
• Audio, either computer-based or human.
• Highlighting.
• Supporting media and information.

While some of this can be provided with physical tools (e.g., magnifier, highlighting strip), often you will want to consider providing texts in digital format, since one can then format the text for any of these supports. If you are considering providing digital text for a student with a print disability who needs AIM, you will need to think about how to provide access to both digital text and the appropriate program to use that digital text.

(Learn more about AIM with today’s Twitter/Facebook tip!)

AT Tip-A-Day #20: AIM

Learn more about AIM at http://aim.cast.org/ or at our website's "Web Resources" link.

AT Tip-A-Day #21: Bookshare

Continuing this week’s focus on accessible instructional materials (AIM), today’s tip is about Bookshare. Bookshare is a free, online, searchable library of electronic texts that is available to students with visual, physical, or learning disabilities that prevent them from accessing print. Once students are registered on Bookshare, they can download books, newspapers, and textbooks. They can then access these texts by: using software that reads the book aloud (text-to-speech); listening to an mp3 of the text; displaying the text on a computer screen in a useable size, color or contrast; or reading the text in Braille using a Braille reader. Keep in mind: even if a student is not eligible for Bookshare, s/he may still need access to AIM. In that case, we need to look to other resources (more on that tomorrow).

Visit our Bookshare support site. (Includes guides and links to Bookshare.)

AT Tip-A-Day #22: Read2Go

Read2Go (iOS app) is easy and puts Bookshare books into your pocket. (http://read2go.org/ )"GoRead" is the Android app!

AT Tip-A-Day #23: Build Your Own Digital Books With Bookbuilder

Yesterday we looked at Bookshare, which is a great resource for students with a qualifying print disability. But many more kids can benefit from the reading supports that digital books can provide. Here’s a great resource for finding, and creating, digital books:

CAST, the Center for Applied Special Technology, has created the UDL Book Builder. With Book Builder, you can easily and quickly create a digital book that includes audio support, reading coaches (Pedro, Hall, and Monty in the image above), links, definitions, translations, audio and video clips, and student responses. There are also 3,000 books that you can browse by grade level, subject, and more. Check it out!

CAST UDL Book Builder

AT Tip-A-Day #24: Website

Thanks, Jim Cunningham at MAS for this tip! http://abilityhub.com/index.html for AT for people computer-related disabilities.

AT Tip-A-Day #25: Closed Captioning

Continuing our AIM on accessible instructional materials (sorry, couldn’t resist), closed captioning (CC) is another Assistive technology that can make materials more accessible for your students. Originally designed to make broadcasts accessible for the deaf and hard of hearing, CC is a great example of how an assistive technology support for a disability can also create greater access for all (since with CC we can now watch broadcasts in noisy environments or from far away).

Closed captioning can benefit a wide range of students, not only deaf and hard-of-hearing students, but also English Language Learners, students with auditory and language processing difficulties, visual learners, or any student who might benefit from multiple modes of engaging with information.

Here are two resources that offer CC:

Unitedstreaming  has CC available for many of its videos.

In YouTube you can filter for videos with closed captioning.

Keep your eyes out for more CC resources!

AT Tip-A-Day #26: More on Closed Captioning

See YouTube's closed captioning demonstrated here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QRS8MkLhQmM

 AT Tip-A-Day #28: A Good Read

"Brain Rules" shares the latest brain research. How would classes look if we followed these findings?http://www.amazon.com/Brain-Rules-Principles-Surviving-Thriving/dp/0979777747/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1337612128&sr=1-1

AT Tip-A-Day #30: More on the rate of language processing

Adjust the speaking rate of videos w/ Win Media Player! http://windows.microsoft.com/is-IS/windows-vista/Change-playback-speed-in-Windows-Media-Player

 AT Tip-A-Day #31: Google Docs for Organization and Collaboration

Google Docs is a suite of tools that enables you to create—and share—documents and calendars online (“in the cloud”). As easily as you create or revise a Word doc, you can work on a Google doc. The difference is that others can also work on the same document, at the same time, without worrying about who has the most up-to-date version. The document can also be shared with others (you decide who). This is like creating a website with the ease of working on a Word doc—people can read online your most recent posts! Students can work on a project collaboratively, then share it with you when they are ready. There is also a revision history—you can revert to a previous version if someone accidently erases everything, and can see what each student has contributed to the group work. 

Google Calendar is similar. . Create, or collaborate on, multiple calendars. Share them with others (family, your class, the world, or just you). Attach Google Docs to Calendar events. This, too, can be viewed online. Easy, peasy.

Both of these are available to you from Staff page:

How Might This Support Student Learning?

These tools support learning for all students, but also address several learning challenges:

• For students with organizational difficulties, or who lose assignments and homework, this provides a one-stop solution. Up-to-date assignments are always there, and work can be turned in simply by sharing the work with the teacher.
• Students don’t have to worry about what computers, or software, they have access to at school or at home. Wherever they are, the work is the same.
• The “comments” feature of Google Docs makes it easy for teacher and students (or students and student) to confer on writing more frequently, and when it is convenient for them.
• Students can work collaboratively, letting them “up their game” by building on each others’ work. The “revision history” enables teachers to assess each student’s contribution to the work, and to confer with students about writing choices.

 FYI, Kelsey Cohen, Hommocks librarian, reports that kids at the Hommocks use Google Docs all the time! How about you? 

AT Tip-A-Day #32: Google Calendar in Action!

Caren Lee's Google Calendar! http://www.historymslee.blogspot.com/p/ms-lees-class-calendar.htmlStudents can see assignments with a click and can link to their class.

AT Tip-A-Day #33: The Pen is Mightier Than The…Pen?

 The paper/digital divide is being bridged! Two pens to send you off on your weekend.

 Mobile Digital Scribe Pen

The Digital Scribe pen lets you write on any surface, such as a standard notebook, and captures your writing with a receiver clipped to the top of the writing surface. Connect that receiver to your computer and your writing is uploaded to the computer. Drawings, charts, graphs and doodles become jpeg images. Better still, your writing is transcribed into digital text. For anyone who prefers writing with pen and paper over keyboarding, it is now possible to write on paper and then later be able to word process that writing. Leave your laptop at home. See it in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-_9-evCAtc

Livescribe Echo Smartpen

The Echo smartpen records audio and syncs it to what you write. Tap the record dot on the special paper (the notebooks are affordable, and you can print out your own Livescribe paper) and begin writing. The camera in the pen links the sections of your writing to that part of the audio recording. Tap on a particular section of your writing to hear that part of the audio!

Therese Valdez, MHS mathematics teacher, writes and narrates her class notes with an Echo pen, which she then posts to her website. Students can go to her website (http://www.mamkschools.org/education/staff/staff.php?sectiondetailid=3858&linkid=nav-menu-container-4-48778 ), view her notes, and listen to her explanation for each part of the work in the notes. For students who may lose focus in class, who may be reluctant to speak out, or who simply need to access the material more than once, this helps overcome those barriers and makes the class more accessible.

AT Tip-A-Day #34: Scholastic Summer Challenge

The Scholastic Summer Challenge encourages students' summer reading. Now track it with the Scholastic Reading Timer app.

AT Tip-A-Day #35: Boardmakershare for Visual Supports

 Today’s tip comes from Ann Rushe. Thanks, Ann!

 www.boardmakershare.com is an amazing resource of online teacher-made materials using Mayer-Johnson picture symbols. This is a great tool to provide visual supports for students who struggle with language and reading.

 It's free to sign up. Just create a user name and password. You can browse through thousands of pre-made boards by category, age or content area.

 You can find calendars, schedules, rebus style books, how to books, multiple choice question sheets, communication boards, recipes, social stories and more. You will need a Boardmaker CD to print out materials. At each of the elementary schools you can find an extra copy with one of your resource room teachers.

I like to use Boardmaker to make sentence strips to use on voice output devices while reading books with repetitive text. Below is a link to a bibliography of books with rhyme and repeated lines along with helpful resources:

http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster2/repetitivebooks.html

AT Tip-A-Day #36: News-To-You

News-To-You--symbol-supported news articles, worksheets, games, and activities.

http://news2you.n2y.com/

We all spend time with on a keyboard. Some of us are faster, some slower. We touch type, we hunt-and-peck, and we somehow get the job done. For students with disabilities, keyboarding skills can be essential. Keyboarding skills offers important advantages. Depending on the disability, students can:

• Produce legible, polished-looking work.
• Write faster.
• Make changes without cross-outs and erasures.
• Remember spelling patterns from the layout of the keyboard.
• Write for longer, without the fatigue or pain of using pencil and paper.
• Write with a font size and contrast that helps them see what they are writing (if they have a visual disability).

Typing can also be a foundational skill that enables them to use other assistive technologies. They can use:

• Text-to-speech
• Word prediction
• Spell and grammar checkers
• Electronic note taking apps 

Without keyboarding skills, these tools are not available to them. Often the next—non-keyboarding—option for them is a much less effective, more disruptive, option. In short, keyboarding skills are generally the gateway to a student’s ability to word process.

There are several website available for learning touch typing on our Diigo site:http://www.diigo.com/user/mamkschoolsat/typing

Also, check out this – the 2010 Ultimate Typing Championship Final (over 160 wpm!). The action starts at the 2:00 mark: http://youtu.be/m9EXEpjSDEw

 AT Tip-A-Day #38: Hear What You Type

Hear your words as you type with text-to-speech programs (e.g.,SOLO). Set it to repeat letters, words, and/or sentences.