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.