Department of Special Education

What Is Universal Design for Learning?

Terrine Fae Rodrguez trodrigu@austinisd.org

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Department of Special Education

This presentation will introduce UDL history, principals, and technological resources.
This presentation is in support of: Strategy 1: Provide a high-quality, well-rounded educational experience to all students that is rigorous, culturally relevant, healthful, and engaging. 1.1 Adopt policy that articulates the districts theory of action for teaching and learning, reflecting high expectations and ensuring alignments with all educational plans and initiatives. 1.2 Examine the districts curriculum to ensure college-ready rigor at each grade level, clear expectations for teaching and learning, instructional supports to meet the needs of all students, and implementation with fidelity. 1.3 Provide educational program requirements and support for academically under-performing schools, and provide autonomy and empowerment for highperforming schools. 1.4 Improve supports to struggling learners by improving interventions, resources, and training, and articulate these interventions in curriculum and instructional tools. 1.8 Examine special education programs and delivery to ensure adequate supports to teachers and students, and clear parameters for allocation of staff and resources. 1.20 Support campuses in developing culturally relevant training and learning experiences to eliminate achievement gaps, and to decrease over-representation of any student groups in discipline and special education programs. 1.21 Provide responsive, effective, and sustainable support for AISD children and their families living in low-income neighborhoods and in historically underserved neighborhoods, and for students attending low-performing schools. Strategy 3: Ensure that every classroom has a high-quality, effective educator, supported by high-quality, effective Administrators and support staff. 3.3 Develop and implement a coherent, content- focused, best-practices plan for professional development of instructional leaders, support staff, and teachers. 3.6 Provide teachers with relevant data, current technology and ongoing training with scaffolded implementation, and online access to an array of classroom resources to improve instruction and classroom management.

As a result of this training, attendees will: Understand the history of UDL. State the three principals of UDL. Locate on-line resources that support UDL instructional practices for curricular differentiation.

Department of Special Education

After this presentation, the next step for participants is to spread the word: There is a non-profit R & D group out there using research to create guidelines and free resources to differentiate curriculum so that it meets the needs of all learners with the ultimate goal of using technology to make better books.

National Center for Universal Design For Learning: http://www.udlcenter.org Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST): http://www.cast.org/index.html UDL Technology Toolkit: http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com
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Universal Design For Learning is a framework for making curriculum more inclusive. It is a simple concept that parallels the Universal Design movement in architecture.

Before you begin to design or construct a building, you need to consider the needs of all the individuals who will be using the facility. If you follow this principle, you will end up with a 5 better design that in the long run will cost less money.

The principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), were developed by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST). CAST is a non-profit research and design think tank that was founded in 1984. Back then, technology was just beginning to explode. CAST saw the potential. They thought they could use technology to fix kids.

After years of research, the people at CAST had an epiphany. Children are what they are. Every child encompasses a huge assortment of skills and abilities.

We dont need to fix the kids. We need to teach them.

What we need to fix are the books!

Print-based media provided some clear advantages over earlier forms of communication such as oratory. Print enabled permanent recording, was portable, and was, at least by the 20th century, relatively inexpensive. In time, and with these advantages, printed text came to dominate learned discourse, and education became dominated by book learning.

The Future Is In The Margins: The Role Of Technology And Disability In Educational Reform by David Rose, Ed.D. and Anne Meyer, Ed.D.

The researchers at CAST have spent decades studying educational history and theory. They have scoured discoveries in cognitive sciences brought about by technological innovations for brain imaging. Using all they have learned, they established the principles and guidelines for Universal Design for Learning.
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One of the clearest and most important revelations stemming from brain research is that there are no "regular" students. The notion of broad categories of learners-smart, not smart, disabled, not disabled, regular, not regular - is a gross oversimplification that does not reflect reality. By categorizing students in this way, we miss many subtle and important qualities and focus instead on a single characteristic. Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning David H. Rose & Anne Meyer
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Screen shot from: http://www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/whatisudl

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UDL guidelines are simple reflecting core principles that benefit all learners.

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Universal Design for Learning supports rigorous standards for all students. Mutual goals reached by multiple paths.

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There are hundreds, maybe thousands of organizations out there supporting research on educational theory, all with a product to sell school districts. What makes CASTs development of UDL any different? UDL is not a product to buy but a framework for differentiating the curriculum, a way to make better books!

Since first publishing the guidelines for UDL in 2008, CAST has devoted its time to creating tools and resources for classroom teachers, curriculum developers, and software designers. Offering everything online for free. 14

The CAST & National UDL websites both have extensive information explaining this format for differentiation. Practicing what they preach, information is offered in various media. Alongside everything presented, there is research posted substantiating each practice.

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CAST has its own YouTube channel where you can watch all their published videos. http://www.youtube.com/UDLCAST

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They focus is on providing tools for classroom teachers. You can download a linked version of their guidelines.

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One of their web pages is a teacher technology toolkit. : http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com

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You can reduce the clutter surrounding articles on the web and support students with visual tracking difficulty using two free browser add-ons from this toolkit (Readability: http://www.readability.com and Pacecar: http://pacecar.missingmethod.com ).

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Their Teaching Every Student web page was created to provide teachers support as they learn to use UDL principles. http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent

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Here you can find tools to help you analyze your curriculum, discover barriers, observe students as unique learners, plan lessons that support all learners, review researched best practices, as well as access multimedia templates.

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CAST even provides tools for professional development. You can use their toolkit to design in-service for teachers and even access two on line training modules.

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There are tools and guidelines for media programmers. Here is an example of detailed instructions for how to program digital images so that they are assessable by text readers. http://ncam.wgbh.or g/invent_build/web_ multimedia/accessibl e-digital-mediaguide/guideline-aimages
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There is a web page showing the versatility of CSS based design. (Cascading Style Sheets) http://www.csszengarden.com

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CAST continues to be on the cutting edge in educational research

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and development. One of their projects is RoboBooks. This project is to create interactive digital media curriculum for high school students.

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Universal design for Learning supports our districts three tiered instructional plan by providing a fully developed, research based format to deliver differentiated curriculum.

Better Books!

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