Teaching with Technology has taught me to really pay attention to how my students respond to the modes of formative assessment I offer. While I work in a program that naturally lends itself to project-based assessments, I need to be aware of the limitations. “Organizing groups based on ability levels should be done sparingly.” and “Cooperative learning groups should be rather small in size” definitely changed my original model for setting up team projects (Pitler, 2007). The creation of a UDL made me plan lessons in a way that would include multiple forms of delivery to meet the needs of the diverse learners that may be in my classroom. In a college environment, students are responsible for seeking learning counselors and acquiring paperwork unlike the IEPs provided by the primary and secondary school system. Chapter 10 of Web 2.0 New Tools, New Schools included tools that I will implement such as WebAnywhere to address the needs of visually impaired students. The text-to-word feature in Microsoft Word can help my hearing impaired students by being able to listen to my lessons; a consideration that never dawned on me before this class.
“The way to gain insight into learning processes is not by giving an end-of-unit test, but by examining the interaction between a student and curriculum over time, assessing performance and the factors that underlie it. What cues does the student attend to? What strategies does the student use? What motivates the student? This interaction also involves studying the effects of different aspects of curriculum. What changes in the content presentation are helpful? What kinds of feedback and supports help build skills? What content and what kinds of activities are most engaging?” ( Rose, 2002). I need to use Assessments for Learning instead of Assessments of Learning. The use of Web 2.0 tools helps me to monitor students in an ongoing formative process to make changes and intervene when necessary, but also allow the students creative control over their own learning.
The lack of effective professional development really hinders the use of technology in the classroom. The “one-day professional development session, often after school when everyone is tired and focused on other issues” is a terrible model and has a negative effect on the entire educational system (Solomon, 2007). I have taken the knowledge from this course and have a mission to help my fellow colleagues move into the 21st century with technology using the resources from this class; I recently created a wiki where I have put links to open source software and tutorials for teachers to utilize as well as scheduled visits to classrooms for one-on-one assistance. One of my colleagues has taught an online class for a year and has a group project as one of the assignments; his suggestion to his students was to meet at Starbucks one day a week or email each other. With the knowledge gained from this program I was able to offer a better way; google docs with chat. We need to change the educational system one teacher at a time.
Here are the results of my team's efforts to create a Universal Design for Learning for diverse learners that incorporates effective professional development:
Resources:
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
Rose, D., & Meyer, A. (2002).Teaching every student in the digital age: Universal design for learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Chapter 7.
Solomon, G. & Schrum, L (2007). Web 2.0: New tools, New schools. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education.
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