• Educators must believe that they are responsible for teaching every child
• Educators must teach students how to access tools and then allow them the access
• Educators must give up that position of power to allow students the freedom to do what they need to be successful

I can’t do justice to Lisa’s blog, by describing it again here.  I urge you (parents, teachers, administrators, school board members…) to read her post. If you have already read it, forward it to your peers, and your school board.

Today,  I wanted to call attention to some resources for UDL content tools. First,  the amazing UDL Toolkit site. This site is a massive resource of content tools, fact sheets, guidelines, etc. that help to facilitate the universal design of learning content.  The creators of this site are teachers, Karen Janowski and Joyce Kasman Valenza, PhD.

I happened upon this site some time ago, but hadn’t really spent much time there until I began pondering summer learning activities for my son, who will soon complete  kindergarten. Upon revisiting this site a few days ago, I realized what an excellent repository this is. Many thanks to Karen, Joyce and all of the wiki’s contributors for making this site possible.

In addition to learning more about the tools in that wiki, I also discovered this blog entry by Ira Socal which describes 10 UDL tools that are freely available.

And of course, there are great tools available from CAST, the UDL mothership. At the CAST site you’ll find tools that will enable you to create digital books, provide scaffolding to your students’ learning, or to check your curriculum to promote flexibility in your learning materials.

Over the weekend I endeavored to write new blog post on the Universal Design for Learning (UDL), the framework developed by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) to reach all learners. My intended focus was how to persuade schools/districts to embrace more flexibility in the design of curricula and the delivery of learning materials, in accordance with UDL’s core principles of providing for:

• Multiple means of representation, to give learners various ways of acquiring information and knowledge,
• Multiple means of action and expression, to provide learners alternatives for demonstrating what they know,
• Multiple means of engagement, to tap into learners’ interests, offer appropriate challenges, and increase motivation.

Over the years, I have approached UDL from several different angles. I discovered UDL in my graduate studies in educational technology, and I have several years of experience in content management, thus there was an immediate professional appeal to me.

Second, I am also a tax payer.  While I recognize that budgets are tight, my feeling is that there is plenty of education money being egregiously spent by all levels of government. My personal opinion is that some funds could be reallocated toward resources that improve learning for all, while mitigating behavioral issues and other distractions.

My most important reason for having such a strong opinion on UDL, and educational reform in general: I am the parent of a highly-intelligent boy ( maybe a little “too smart” as the saying goes) who is already “checked out.” He is in kindergarten. Thus, student engagement is a deeply personal issue in my household.

I do find some comfort in the fact UDL’s tide is starting to rise in the education world. This is evidenced by the following:

• UDL framework language is included in technology plans of several states (Michigan among them).
• Inclusion of UDL courses and teaching certificates in the curriculum at major universities, (Grand Valley State in my neck of the woods)
• Legislation in states such as Maryland has mandated incorporation of UDL into the general curriculum plans
• David Rose, PhD, co-founder of the Center for Applied Special Technology (creator of UDL) was a lead author of the most recent US Educational Technology plan

Note: one thing that struck me about the Tech Plan was that there no mention of Microsoft or Apple (or IBM or specific educational publishers…) There were 65 mentions of student engagement.

So over the weekend (full of motivation and caffeine) I  bellied up to my laptop….and stared at the screen. As I thought about UDL in the classroom, I began to realize, that despite the research and the top-down activity by states/provinces and the national governments, change absolutely had to come from the bottom-up. That is, this had to be a teacher-led movement.

As a classroom “outsider” I struggled to find examples of teachers who had taken the initiative to implement UDL framework and could describe (better than I ) what a UDL classroom would look like. I was having some difficulty finding examples of such, my frustration was evident by my salty language.

As fate would have it, after a few minutes of uttering cuss words, Twitter seemed to sense my frustrations and made me aware of a brand-new blog posting by an elementary school teacher,  who so eloquently described what I couldn’t. Certainly this had to be an answer to my “swears.”

If you are a teacher, student, parent, administrator, taxpayer, I urge you to read this wonderful blog post on UDL in classroom. In addition to merely describing teaching practices and materials, it makes important points on change management (“Educators must give up that position of power…”).

I will be writing more about UDL from my view as an educational technologist (and a content manager, a parent…) in the near future.  In the meantime, I urge you (as parent, administrator, taxpayer, Secretary of Education)  to read Lisa’s blog on UDL from the classroom teacher’s perspective.

A Plea For Your Patience

Please bear with me. This blog is about content management, though due to references to education, architecture, etc.,  I must ask that content-management practitioners suspend disbelief for at least a few paragraphs. It should become evident on why the Universal Design of Content is important to you.

Mr. Smith Goes To Kalamazoo

Several years ago, I entered a graduate program in educational technology in which I chose special education as my minor. Due to my background in publishing and Web consulting, I became enchanted (obsessed) with server-side solutions for the delivery of learning materials in accessible formats. A key point was that the assistive devices should be place a minimal cost-burden on the end user. I later termed this criterion, “The Best Buy Test”.

Discovering Universal Design

Early on, I learned about the principles of universal design (rooted in architecture) for planning planning physical environments. The key premise of universal design is that products, environments, (‘stuff’ in general) should be designed in a manner that benefits all users. There are numerous occurrences of design that accommodates users with disabilities, but are commonly used by the general populations. An example is the curb cut in a sidewalk. This was conceived to provide access to wheelchair users, but is also beneficial to bicyclists and parents pushing stroller and many other users.

UDL

I had just  started pondering the universal design framework for delivery of content when I became acquainted with the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST), a Boston-area research organization that had developed an educational framework known as the Universal Design for Learning (UDL).

CAST’s neurological research has shown that learning occurs in three primary networks in the brain:

Recognition networks
This is where we gather facts. We identify and categorize what we see, hear, and read. Identifying letters, words, or an author’s style are recognition tasks. This the “what” of learning.

Strategic networks
How  we plan and perform tasks. How we organize and express our ideas. Writing an essay or solving a math problem are strategic tasks. This the “how” of learning.

Affective networks
How they are challenged, excited, or interested in learning… are dimension of affective learning. This is the “why” we learn.

Furthermore, CAST saw that traditional educational practices placed a heavy burden on the learners to adapt to the content.

Thus, in the spirit of the universal design,  CAST developed the Universal Design for Learning framework. CAST’s  findings were  that in order for content  to benefit the greatest number of learners,  then learning materials should adhere to  three primary principles :

Multiple means of representation to give diverse learners options for acquiring information and knowledge (“What” ).

Multiple means of action and expression to provide learners options for demonstrating what they know (“How”)

Multiple means of engagement to tap into learners’ interests, offer appropriate challenges, and increase motivation (“Why”).

That’s Nice But Why Are You Telling Me This?

If these learning  principles above don’t immediately seem relevant to your organization, then swap the word “learners” with a term  (employees, constituents, customers…) that is more appropriate  to your context.

Now you have the beginning of a universally-designed content strategy. Is your content universally designed?

Is your content available in multiple formats?

• Have you ever looked at your content?  No really, have you looked at in a browser besides Internet Exlorer? Or without your glasses?
• Have you ever viewed your content on a smart phone? What about a smartphone of different platform?
• Have you ever clicked on an interesting link and found yourself in an area that was not in your native language?
• With the release iPad a few days ago, there are over 1/4 million new copies of Safari out in the world. Wouldn’t it be nice if these users could access your content?

Are there multiple means by which your users can act on the content?

• If you’re selling widgets, is it clear to the users on how they can buy those widgets?
• The shopping cart is just a click away, but what if the consumers want to actually speak to a sales person? Will the users be able locate a phone number, or a chat window?
• What if the customer prefers “try before they buy” ? Are locations for physical stores and resellers going to be clear to them?

Are you engaging your customers?

• Every moment of the day there is an opportunity for a user to be enticed away from your content; are you doing enough to ensure that users gravitate toward your content?
• Is you content compelling enough that users will return to it?
• It is possible to learn without being engaged (penmanship class?), but who wants to learn that way?

Going Forward

If you can honestly say that your content strategy includes “the multiple means” (of representation, expression and engagement) then congratulations, go have a long lunch and enjoy the spring weather! When you return get to thee to a whiteboard and think about how you can reach more users and how you can do so more effectively.

If you’re content strategy does not include “the multiple means,” then you also need to post up in front of a white board, digital collaborative space, etc and start thinking about your goals for you organization’s content.