EDLD5364+Reflections

EDLD5364 Reflections: Teaching with Technology

I learned so much good, useful information in this course. I had already learned some things about universal deisgn and universal design for learning, but this course showed more tools available in that area. The UDL Lesson Builder site was a tool that I am thankful I learned about. This is an example of how this course expanded my knowledge of universal design for learning. Having heard about UDL concepts before, it was good to learn about some specific technology tools that exist for teachers to use in this area. Last year I created my lesson on the Book Builder site and tried it out on my kids. I also shared it with a teacher who teaches younger students to see how they would be able to navigate it with the extra help and tools provided. All of my students did very well with it, and so did hers! She emailed me after she introduced this and said she was going to steal it. I was excited to be able to share that resource with her and others on my campus. I believe everyone should know about and use it! I appreciated that tool and others like it because of the access it gives to students of all ability levels and how it evens the playing field for students in the classroom. Students with AV or hearing impairments, students who have struggles with reading and writing, and others can all access the same curriculum as their grade level peers.

During this course, I enjoyed sharing ideas with colleagues from my cohort, even though we created our own final products. We invited each other to view and comment on our creations, sharing ideas for improvements and giving each other kudos for things that were well done. This made a very positive experience in this course in collaborating with others, both in my cohort and with those that I shared the tool with on my campus. I would like to continue to investiage that Book Builder site and use it more consistently in my classroom. I feel that the more I use it, the easier it will become and the less time-consuming the product creation process will be. This was pretty self-explanatory to me, so the only thing that actually puzzled me was why I had not learned about a tool like this sooner. It should be shared with educators across the board!

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