Today I spoke at the CASE (Council of Administrators of Special Education) conference. I was thrilled to have been asked to be a part of this conference and very much enjoyed sharing the exciting things that have been happening in Coquitlam. I based most of what I said on my previous blog posts “How UDL has changed my job” post and my “UDL Success” post. The most important messages I wanted to share during this presentation were:
- Our appreciation and thanks to the BC Ministry of Education and to SET BC for their role in bringing the UDL movement to BC. We are very excited to be a part of this shift in paradigm.
- That this project is perfectly timed with a change in the questions educators are asking about technology. In the past educators questioned “why” and “should we” use technology in education. Now educators are asking “what?” and “how?”. Universal Design for Learning provides a framework within which teachers can make informed decisions about the use of technological tools to help students succeed at school
- The amazing progress our students have made in gaining reading skills since we began the project, and what we believe to be the reason for their success.
I uploaded the presentation slides to SlideShare:
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The blogs / web resources I referred to in my presentation were:
- SET BC’s BCUDL site
- BC UDL Project Wiki
- BC UDL LOR (Learning Objects Repository) – a growing collections of Universally designed lessons
- BC UDL Weblinks – links to a variety of resources including Smartboards
- David Rose – LATA Presentation October 2008 – Marlborough Elem. Burnaby
- Ira Socol’s site: SpeEd Change – His Toolbelt Theory is a must read for all educators
- Paul Hamilton’s Wiki – udl4all – Great collection of freeware and web based tools for classrooms
- Paul Hamilton’s Blog – Free Resources from the Net for (Special) Education
- UDL4All Ning ~ Join the UDL Conversation!!
- Lisa’s Lingo: The Successful Inclusion Program
- “Kate Says” Blog ~ read her post and the replies: “Power of a Word”
- Our Smartboard Forum site
Hi Anita,
Enjoyed your blog post and your CASE Spring Conference slides. I am interested in learning more about your great reading results. To what do you attribute the large gains?
Janet
Hi Janet,
Glad you enjoyed the slides – I am trying to figure out how to add notes to them so they make more sense. I have seen it done before on slideshare but can’s seem to figure it out… They only really make sense within my presentation otherwise. I posted some thoughts about why we think the kids made so much progress in an earlier post – “UDL Success“. It is of course difficult to say exactly why but that post explains what we suspect at this point. We are early on in our exploration and implementation of UDL (this is only our second school year of the project). These results are very encouraging – hopefully these types of results will continue in the future.
Anita
Hi Anita,
Again, it’s great to hear that UDL is making such a big difference at your school! It’s really amazing to see what happens when a solid educational philosophy drives the use of technology instead of technology being used for it’s own sake. Can hardly wait to see what you and your team do next!