Many of you may already be aware of the Free Tech Toolkit for UDL, but just in case you haven’t had a chance to visit it, you should do so now. It’s actually a wiki and the address is http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/. For some reason, during the time of this post, I was having trouble getting the …
Category Archive: UDL
Mar 03
Academic Earth makes going to college easy
I ran across one of the best sites I’ve seen recently after reading about it an article. The site is called Academic Earth and this is how they describe themselves: We are building a user-friendly educational ecosystem that will give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from …
Nov 13
Text to Speech just got easier
Most of us are probably familiar with products that turn digital text into speech. Programs like Read&Write Gold and Kurzweil are feature packed applications that will not only read almost any digital text to you, but also provide numerous other supports such as advanced spell check, word prediction and more. Other programs, like ReadPlease are …
Jul 29
Podcasting and Podcatcher Options
For those that aren’t aware, a podcatcher is a software application used to collect and play podcasts. By far, the most popular podcatcher is iTunes. However, not everyone wants to rely on only one software application. In addition, there are many schools or entire districts that do not allow the use of iTunes. So what …
Jun 24
UDL Guidelines Released by CAST
The Center for Applied Special Technologies (CAST), the number one resource on Universal Design for Learning, has released version 1.0 of UDL Guidelines. According to cast: As the UDL field has grown, so has the demand from stakeholders for Guidelines to help make applications of these principles and practices more concrete. These UDL Guidelines will …
May 22
What exactly is UDL anyway?
Oddly enough, I don’t get asked this question much. I find that most people believe they already know the answer and see no reason to ask or don’t care and assume if they ignore it long enough it will go away. Whatever the reason is, I figured I should go ahead and create a post …
May 07
CAST, Google Introduce UDL Editions
I was just forwarded a link from a friend of mine to the new UDL Editions by CAST website. According to the press release: Wakefield, MA, April 23, 2008—In partnership with Google, CAST today celebrated World Book Day by introducing two new online literacy tools that provide robust, embedded learning supports for readers at all …
Mar 02
Developing a System for Engaging your Students
Today’s post goes along with the third principle of Universal Design for Learning: Multiple Means of Engagement. It is critical to keep students engaged in your lessons if your goal is for them to retain the information you provide. To do this you must engage them. Engagement must be often and relevant. Relevant simply means …
Jan 25
Blogs in Education
I’m writing this post for a couple of reasons… First, I believe that blogging is a great new way for educators to embrace a universally designed classroom. Secondly, after asking my class to create a post regarding blogging in education I feel obligated to at least make a short post myself. So, why should classrooms …
Jan 25
Markup your PDF Documents
Most of you probably know what Adobe PDF documents are. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, they’re those aggravating documents you receive from time to time that you can read, but cannot edit. They require you to have special software (Adobe Reader – free and standard on most PCs) to open them. The good …