Universal Design for Learning aka UDL

 I know what you are thinking, "universal", akin to that "one size fits all" costume you bought for the pink power ranger that was not truly "one size fits all" just to mess with your friends and co-workers.  Thankfully you had enough sense not to wear it to work, but the memory remains...

In this case "universal" doesn't mean one size fits all.  It is about building your lesson plan to meets all types of learners, from people who can read and understand, auditory leaners (that's me!), to visual leaners and many more in between.  After reading about UDL, I realized that I truly had a grasp on the preparing lessons for this instinctively.  In elementary and high school I had an extremely hard time personally as an auditory learner.  I rarely took notes, instead I focused on the lectures and remembered what was said and discussed.  This led to many problems of being accused of cheating, not paying attention, etc. etc. even though my grades were always good.  There was only one class that I couldn't handle auditory learning in, and that was math.  It was way easier for me to look at the book and figure it out for myself.  Having come from a background where I wasn't in the "norm" for learning, I am extremely sensitive to the needs of non-traditional learners.

We have recently been working on a lesson plan to teach our peers or a classroom.  I am actually going to be teaching some of my fellow colleagues in the theatre program how to use Qlabs to create ordered sound cues.  To be honest, I'd already planned on doing this anyhow, as I have a ton of experience using the app and I want my students to surpass me, so I am giving them the benefit of my hard work in hoping they can build on top of what I teach them.  To do this, I will be preparing an instructional video before hand to guide someone through the process of creating a Qlabs session and adding a file to the cue list.  I will also show them how to compress and consolidate the session as well in the video.  I will then take the video after I have made it and cut out the key parts and make a power point presentation and instructional guide with pictures and text as well to assist any that may want it that way while I am demonstrating how to do it live.

Another part of the UDL I really enjoyed and was already doing naturally is setting clear goals.  I have a goal to have everyone work on getting sounds for a very short play.  There will only be 3-5 people working on this, and they have volunteered because they want to learn how to use Qlabs more effectively.

The one thing I can't change all the way is giving people options.  Even though I would like to provide an abundance of options, at the end of the day we are going to use Qlabs as it is the most commonly used app for sound cues in the industry.  While my initial lesson is just a very rudimentary introduction to lining up sound cues in order and choosing sounds, my more advanced lessons later on will also focus on the more robust features of Qlabs such as video projections, autoforwarding, cue calling, lighting cues, etc.  At the end of the class we are going to go over the sounds that were chosen for the short play and do a read through of the script with the sounds added that day.  We should be able to have a group feedback about the choice of sounds and the appropriateness to the play which will provide immediate feedback.  Since I am giving each person a small section of the play, but telling them that they need to work together to unify the sound of the play, that will create an atmosphere that will foster collaboration and community.  All of these things are part of the bigger UDL picture.

Graphic courtesy of www.cast.org click on picture for direct access.

Now after seeing how the UDL is laid out, I can honestly say, that since I prepare most things digitally, that providing a censored version of my own lesson plan to students would be absolutely no problem at all, and would probably cover most of the spoken material I would go over.  Seeing as I like to play around with video apps and programs, making videos would give me a legitimate reason to write off that costly habit as a work related expense, and make my significant other happy about me getting the new toys.  It's a win win for everyone.

SOURCES

“5 Examples of Universal Design for Learning in the Classroom.” Reading Rockets, 18 Dec. 2019, www.readingrockets.org/article/5-examples-universal-design-learning-classroom.

“Until Learning Has No Limits.” CAST, 21 Aug. 2020, www.cast.org/.

“The UDL Guidelines.” UDL, 31 Aug. 2018, udlguidelines.cast.org/?utm_medium=web.

Motivating Students for Maximum Potential!

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Motivation is described as The Holy Grail of instruction by Mark Gura in Make, LEARN, Succeed: Building a Culture of Creativity in Your School, but much like the Holy Grail, it is extremely elusive and no doubt guarded by a not-so-harmless cute little bunny rabbit.

Much like the ISTE Standards state, as educators, it is our responsibility to stay current with research that supports improved student learning outcomes from various legitimate and reputable resources. Though when it comes to motivation, it is hard to find research that points to a singular right direction.  People are motivated by various things.  Take for example in How People Learn II, the authors suggest that there are some people who prefer performance goals over mastery goals, and the behavior of each differs greatly.  Performance based people typically do such for praise and recognition, whereas mastery based people tend to want to learn not just one way, but several of accomplishing tasks so that they can apply them to different aspects of their life.

Which gets us into goals.  I was actually a bit conflicted on this one.  I honestly think you should set goals, not easily attainable ones, but ones that are attainable, but just barely.  I know from personal effort that when I hit roadblocks is when my creativity starts to kick in.  I absolutely love a challenge, especially when someone tells me that I can't do it, it just makes me want to do it even more.  However if you set impossible goals, such as "develop warp technology using a mirror and a spoon" then you are setting yourself up for failure.

That of course brings me to my favorite topic, stereotype threats.  Yes, this is one of the only things I 100% agreed with in this book, as far as effects.  The causation I think they entirely missed.  I believe Miguel Ruiz states it best in his book, The Four Agreements, people take on agreements that they don't even realize.  Some of this agreements come from society, some come from family, some even come from the government.  If people are constantly and often told they are "bad", "stupid", etc. then eventually there are two things that happen, one is that most humans desire to feel as if they belong, and they accept those harsh and nasty words as what their identity should consist of, because they want to meet people expectations.  The other is that if you hear something enough, you eventually believe it, that is how brainwashing is actually performed.

The most important thing for motivation, out of every thing I read, in my opinion boils down to one little word "choice".  Gura, Make, Learn, Succeed, quotes from research performed by Richmond in 2012 "Not surprisingly, if students see a direct connection between what they are learning and their own interests and goals, they are likely to be more motivated." (Richmond, 2012).  Now, that says nothing of choice, but if you have 20 students in a classroom, there is a strong chance that not all 20 of them are going to like every single thing.  One of my favorite projects I have done recently was to choose a playwright and give a sort of biography of him and present a sort of "modern" twist on one of his works.  I chose Alfred Jarry and his play Ubu Roi.  Needless to say it is not a kid friendly play, however everyone in my class had to choose someone else.  So instead of all of us having to learn about Shakespeare or Aristotle, we got to learn about an author whom we liked, research them really well and then present to the rest of the class.  I learned about 5 different playwrights, of which I would have never looked at myself, and even wound up like one (Chekhov) that I would not have given the time of day to previously.  These are the things that can help people to get motivated to learn.  I mean, we can also come up with some handy tools to use as well.  I mean Minecraft has an education edition, it's uses are not as limited as you might think and you may have students that can teach you as well.

Citations

National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2018. How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/24783.

Ruiz, M. (2017). The four agreements: A practical guide to personal freedom. San Rafael, CA: Amber-Allen Publishing.

Gura, M. (2016). Make, Learn, Succeed: Building a Culture of Creativity in Your School. Eugene: International Society for Tech in Ed.

Podcasting for an educational tool

 We were challenged to make a podcast with a partner this week in our class.  I partnered with the wonderfully brilliant Dana Walker, and here is the end result.

Kami-Dono · Education Learning Pod Cast

Authentic Intellectual Work Thoughts

Part 1:  Authentic Intellectual Work/Authentic Instruction & Assessment

What is Authentic Intellectual Work?  “Authentic intellectual work refers to the complex work adults do to make informed decisions and accomplish tasks. It involves original application of knowledge and skills, rather than simply routine use of facts and procedures. Therefore, for students, authentic intellectual work results in a product or presentation that has meaning or value beyond the classroom.” as described straight from Wikipedia.

You are asking yourself, “Well yeah, but we all use what we learned in school on the job, how is this different”?  Well, did you actually do anything that actually could have been a job while in school?  That is what Authentic Intellectual Work is all about.  It is the application of knowledge and skills into assignments or projects that would create an end product that hold value outside of the constrained walls of academia.  What does that mean?  Let’s say that an english teacher assigns her class a project where they have to create a social media profile for a famous English Author, like Shakespeare.  You have to write a bio, mention date of birth, hobbies, interests, make a few posts that would be accurate.  You have the same amount of research being done that you would for a long report or essay, however, you are learning how to create engaging social media as well.  That is a skill with immeasurable value outside fo the classroom.  But let’s drill down a bit more into Authentic Intellectual Work shall we?

There are three main parts top the framework of Authentic Intellectual Works and are as follows:

Construction of Knowledge

The construction of knowledge as I see it is looking into your own past experiences, finding similarities to prior problems and then using your prior knowledge, skills, and insight to come up with a solution for the challenge at hand.  I actually use this quite a bit.  I have read quite a bit of literature, and some of it was old English gentleman diaries and such, or watching documentaries about things, and some of it has come from the type of games I play, called Role Playing Games.  I have applied knowledge I acquired from these things and used them to solve challenges in real life.

Disciplined Inquiry

My interpretation of disciplined inquiry is basically looking for things that match the same problem you are currently facing with things from your past, that are pretty much same-same with minor variations.  In my own prior professional life, this was much like the same process in which we would do legal research.  Bob sues Linda because she ran him over while he was jogging at night dressed in black from head to toe and wearing noise cancelling headphones with no reflectors on.  In this situation, Linda is my client, I would look for precedent with similar variables, someone dressed darkly, getting hit in the middle of night, and wearing something that would not only prevent them from being seen, but be so distracting they could not hear in their environment.  If I could find a case with all four of those criteria where the defendant won, I could very well use the same strategy for my client.  If I couldn’t find one case that had all four in it, I would have to Frankenstein a few cases together and work from there to develop a good defensive strategy.

Value Beyond School

Students need to present their findings/knowledge in a way that would represent what one would expect in a real world work environment.  I gave a great example earlier in regards to creating the social profile for Shakespeare.  There are a lot of businesses that have no idea how to work with social media, or don’t have time.  You can make yourself very useful to people by being able to do things of that nature for them.

Part 2:  2017 National Education Technology Plan Update

I found the plan used by Maggie Bolado to be my favorite one.  Coming up with a plan to get students to design an app to help a visually impaired student to navigate the campus was not only ingenious, but the students who participated learned a real life skill that has value outside of the classroom.    According to an article by Brittany Hainzinger from App Developer Magazine, since February 2020 there has been a 198% jump in the number of total apps in Appy Pie.  Coding is an extremely useful skill to practice in the classroom because app development is where you are going to see your next nouveau riche boom come from.

Part 3:  Triple E Framework 

The example regarding the app development from Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education is definitely on the Extension side of the Triple E world.  It gave the students ways to connect to the real-world.  They were receiving feedback from people submitting feedback and requests in from their developer account.  It literally hit all three keys for Extended learning, it allowed students to learn outside of the typical school day, it bridged school learning with everyday life experiences and it allowed the students to build skills (coding, which actually develops logic, so helpful even outside of coding) that they could definitely take to several corporations or decided to live the dream and just work for themselves making apps to sell with a 30% Apple tax.

Citations

Framework for Authentic Intellectual Work. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved September 3, 2009, from
          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framework_for_authentic_intellectual_work

Hainzinger, B. (2020, May 29). Increase in app development since start of COVID-19. Retrieved September 04, 2020, from https://appdevelopermagazine.com/increase-in-app-development-since-start-of-covid-19/

 U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Technology, Reimagining the Role of Technology in Education: 2017 National Education Technology Plan Update, Washington, D.C.,

2017.

Intellectual Property. It IS NECESSARY to know what you are doing.

 I have had the most unfortunate consequence of being the stage manager for a show that was cancelled due to changes being made that were not approved by a copyright holder.  It was one of the hardest moments of my life.  We had 8 of the cutest girls in the world and for a majority of them, it was their first time at the community theatre I was volunteering at.  These girls had put their heart and souls into this production, coming to every call, even when they weren't worked with on several occasions.  The director of the show had decided to cut parts of songs out, change scenes around, change iconic phrases, and all the while telling everyone he had the copyright holder's permission.  He thought that since we lived in such a small community he could get away with it, that no one would tell a big company in New York what a small little town was doing.  He was wrong, dead wrong.  It literally became headline news, he resigned and moved on, but that was a very big issue, the theatre, according to contract, the fines could have literally destroyed this extremely old group that had been around for 70+ years, and why?  Because someone changed a work, which is basically using someones intellectual property without the correct permissions.

The ISTE Standards for 2016 has seven core areas, 1) Empowered Learner, 2) Digital Citizen, 3) Knowledge Constructor, 4) Innovative Designer, 5) Computational Thinker, 6) Creative Communicator, and 7) Global Collaborator.  Today I am going to focus on Digital Citizen, 2c: demonstrate an understanding of and respect for the rights and obligations of using and sharing intellectual property.

Having had a career outside of teaching in the past, I have worked for fortune 500 corporations, I have been a paralegal in a corporate office, general law office, and even a bit of family and real estate practice.  I had two areas of law that I actually studied quite a bit and still keep up with and those are ip and criminal law (ip is intellectual property for those not in the know).  Intellectual property law when it comes to the digital world is really still in its infancy, I honestly think that putting a jury of "peers" or a judge who may not know anything about how technology works is extremely bad for these cases.  There are instances where code is considered "copyrighted" and thus an "ip" and then is not used for years and when someone else comes up with this very simple code a patent troll strikes, but that is another topic for a completely other blog.  What my goal here today is to help some of my fellow theatre teachers out with avoiding any pesky legal issues regarding this copyright issues.

First I would like to say that just doing a random google search for pictures or sounds is a huge way to get in a world of trouble.  Even if you use an enhanced google search feature for images and click on a choice, for instance "Labeled for reuse with modification" you may still have restrictions and may be violating someone's intellectual property by not giving them a proper citation in the program for the use of the picture used.

I picked president Obama because, well he is so photogenic for one, and tons of people have pictures of him.  In the screen shot below I chose the "Labeled for reuse with modification" option.  If you notice it is actually from a .gov site.  17. U.S. Code § 105 - Subject matter of copyright: Untied States Government works basically states that if this work was created by the US Government, it is practically public domain, so the US Government is a great source for getting pictures and such that you are free to alter and use how you want.  

While a free picture from good ole' Uncle Sam is good for you, keep in mind that you might still want to give credit in a program and such if you are using the image.  If you can actually get who took the picture, you should give them credit, however you are not actually required by law to credit works that are in the public domain because they are not copyrighted.  There is a catch though, you do still need to worry about claims of plagiarism, so it is always best to state that if a particular image was used, that it was acquired and cite the source, especially if you manipulated the image in any fashion.  Take for example the changes I made of the picture below.

I ran this through an artificial intelligence program that emulates a Van Gogh style drawing.  I would want to state that this picture was "Modified from the original source from Pete Souza using Corel Painter Essentials" to avoid any issues of plagiarism and trying to pass this off as my own and not only that, but identifying the program I used as well.  Basically, I still couldn't be sued, but it would look bad at a professional level, and trust me you don't want that on your portfolio.  I know that some of you looking at this are like "the town I teach in has less than 1,000 people in it, why should I care?"  The reason you should care is your students will reflect to the world what you taught them.  If your students go out and make fools of themselves in mass, then it will definitely reflect on you and your program.

I recently designed a bunch of animated slides for a production of the musical "A Year of Toad and Frog" and it was a blast.  I was very careful in selecting what I used, for the most part, I took old landscape paintings that were considered public domain and took pictures of them or acquired pictures that were public domain marked online for use.  I ran them through a water color AI program to reconstruct them a bit, then I added some slight motion in them to make them move a little.  It worked out quite successfully.  However, there are other licenses that are royalty free you can use in most cases.  That licensing is called Creative Commons licensing.  There are 7 types of licensing, the two I work with the most are CC0 (literally public domain) and CC-BY which allows you to edit to your heart's content as long as the item you make is setup as CC-BY itself and you attribute the original creator.  You can click on a link for all of the explanations of all 7 types.  You will find that even if you pay for the use of Creative Commons item that it is often not nearly as expensive as going through these big companies that have to pay for their fancy New York building's rent.

Another source I like to do is buy sound bundles that come royalty free.  Sure it is generic music and SFX, but guess what, I am not getting sued and I don't have to attribute it either.  You can also get plenty of stock photos and video you can do the same with.  I use the site Stack Social to purchase various software and stock music/pictures/sfx/video bundles.  Most of these come with commercial usage rights and are not terribly expensive.  I would definitely rather spend $20 on 5GB of stock items that I may only like 1/10 of the product than have to pay the fine for violating copyright for just one show.

Of course the only way to be 100% sure that you aren't going to have a copyright issue is to create the work yourself.  You can create your own sound effects, pictures for projections and even animations by using various devices and software.  A good microphone (any condenser microphone, Blue Snowball or Yeti, and various Samson microphones) can be acquired on the cheap if you know how to search for them.  Creating sounds isn't as hard as you may think and the software Audacity is open source and free and I know professional people who use it for editing from home (voice actors and radio people), but if you aren't in the mood to create a sound or don't have the technical know how, you can find Creative Commons sounds as well.  For video, believe it or not most cell phones, especially iPhone 6s and above actually shoot pretty decent video, you can always go up to a DSLR if you want, but most of those weren't meant for video (though the Sony A6100 and up series does a great job with video too).  The problem with these devices though is that the sound quality can be a bit sketchy without getting an external microphone, and on the iPhone8 and above that requires using the lightning to 3.5mm adapter which becomes tricky if you are shooting video and your battery is not fully charged and even then, if you are shooting over 2 hours, you have to disconnect the microphone to get it to charge.  Even for the DSLR's it is a bit rough as you have to use a 3.5mm jack on most of them.  I have an a6000 which has to have a special adapter for an external microphone, so trust me when I say if you are going that route, start with an A6100, it is the A6000 with a 3.5mm jack.

When discussing this with students, I would suggest you don't sugar coat it.  You can find stories about ip infringement, I mean, just try and upload a video on youtube with a popular song on it, you will get a notice that it either can't be uploaded due to the copyright on the song or you can post it without moneytization available to the video.  That is a really good real world experience you can show them in the classroom.  It is actually a felony in some respects, that US code in front of movies is not a joke.  Grant it, most of the time those suits are settled before ever going to court, so you won't hear about them, but people who download music or movies and share them in torrenting and such get hit with heavy and life crushing fines imposed on them by over zealous corporate lawyers.  Most of these suits never make it to trial, but there are a few who have.

I leave you with a list of sites you can use to find art and sounds that are licensed either public domain or creative commons.  Be sure if you are using the creative commons search you are using the advanced features to avoid anything you can't change or might have to pay to use.

Creative Commons Search Engine

The Open Clipart Project

Freesound

5 Websites to Find Creative Commons Videos - now this one is a list of 5 sites, it includes Vimeo and YouTube.  Please keep in mind that some Creative Commons will require you to pay for use if you are making any changes (this includes anything, cutting part of it out, changing the volume level in the source video, etc).

Anyhow, thank you for actually making it all the way to the end.  I am actually pretty passionate about this, and I am willing to bet that many of you are probably saying right now "I've pretty much done all of this without permission, yikes".  Which goes back to my initial story at the start of this post.  We had a director that was mad because one of the parent's didn't want to be in the play due a condition the director had.  The director had offered a part to his kid thinking he would definitely take the part, and he didn't.  So the director went and cast another actor that the parent hated, which didn't have the effect the director wanted it to have, so he started cutting lines for the kid's role, and parts of songs where she was supposed to be prominent.  The director actually bragged about it to me, and I knew at that point I had taken up a stage management position that was going to require me to walk on a very delicate tight rope.  It got to the point where the parent finally said enough was enough and reported the changes to the copyright holder.  It was a big mess, but suffice it to say, this guy was actually pretty chill about the situation, especially since his daughter was being used as a tool to anger him.  In short, what I am saying is that if a parent is peeved off about their kid not getting the part they thought they should get in a play, you might want to be careful if you are violating ip in any form or fashion, it is a quick way to get a huge fine, and you should train your young and upcoming technicians to do it the correct way, so you don't have to worry about fallout for petty things that could destroy your program and tarnish your district's reputation.

Introduction to me, myself and I

 Hi, my name is Kelly Rhoads, as of today, August 26, 2020 I am 39 years old.  I currently have 2 degrees.  I have a BA in Communication with an emphasis in Advertising and Public Relations and a post-bacculerate in Paralegal Studies.  I am one class away from having a BA with a double major in Acting/Directing and Theatre Management.  I am also currently working on an M.Ed with a pedagogy in Theatre.  I want to teach theatre to middle school to high school aged students.  Sometime in the future I do plan on working on getting a Ph.D in Theatre Management.  I am married with two kids, my eldest kid is a Senior in High School this year and my youngest is a Junior.  Both are fond of the performing arts.  In my free time, I enjoy things other than theatre, such as playing video games, reading, and exploring places I have never been to before.

I want to use this blog to share ideas and information about teaching theatre.  We all have been there, having to figure out how to make a special effect work with a limited budget or we cast someone who did well for the audition but then they get cold feet.  We also have to work in a classroom as well, and nothing is a boring as a wash rinse repeat cycle of the same old game plan, year after year after year.  I am hoping all of you will share with me as much as I share with you.