EDLD+5364+Course+reflection

The group project assignment for EDLD 5364 offered me the opportunity to look at how I think, how I teach and introduced me to tools I can use that will help me to improve my teaching skills and better reach the 21st-century learners sitting in my classes.

Being a special education teacher, it is important for me to understand how my individual students learn. I have long understood the ideas of verbal learners, tactile learners, and visual learners and have tried to incorporate activities into my lessons that address each of these. The three UDL networks discussed in the week 3 readings and assignment along the UDL lesson developed using these networks helped me to better understand not only how my students learn, but also how they approach learning. I also found the UDL lesson planning tool very beneficial. I teach in a high school that uses a curriculum outline in stead of textbooks for regular math classes. When I was assigned to special education math classes, I was told "just teach them some math". A few years ago, State and national legislation mandated that my students be taught on grade-level and I began modifying, accommodating, and developing high school level algebra and geometry lessons for my students. I was exciting to 'discover' the UDL lesson planning tool and plan to use it regularly in planning lesson for my students. The UDL tutorials available on the CAST website helped me to understand this tool and to understand how I can use it in writing curriculum for my classes.

I found the ebook tool introduced through the bookbuilder website to hold the potential of being a very useful tool. With budget cuts for Texas school districts, I can see where this tool will be very beneficial to teachers with large classes. If the students have access to the internet. I think tools like this will help teachers make the transition from the ancient teaching methods still in use today into the 21st century and beyond. With the introduction of this type of tool that encourages the students to take responsibility for their learning, I think we can help our students move away from 'the way its always been done" to the way of the future.

I am fortunate to be a person who enjoys learning new things and I look for things to learn unfortunately, most of my students don't share this love for learning with me. I have long looked for ways to develop this within them. I am very excited to learn that that goal of 21st-century education is to teach students to become life-long learners rather than just people with rote memory skills who simply repeat what they have been told to memorize. I have long been a supporter of teaching critical thinking skills beginning in the early grades and I think this is still an important part of teaching our students to become independent learners.

A few years ago I had a sight-impaired geometry student and was frustrated by the lack of tools available for her, especially the lack of technology tools. I currently have a hearing-impaired student and the only tool I currently have is a voice amplification system. Because of my frustrations in the lack of resources available to me in teaching these two students, i was very excited to research current technology tools for the group project scenario. The more tools I found, the more excited I got. I am already making plans to request and use some of the technology tools I found while doing this research.

I think the scenario-based group project has enlightened me on new ways of thinking about the future of education, not only in the United States, but also throughout the world. it also introduced me to new tools and resources for bringing technology into my classroom and the classrooms of teachers on my campus and in my district and also helped me to understand some of the obstacles i can expect to face as I try to bring my district into the 21st-century of education.

Resources

http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/tools/udlsolutiontutorial.cfm __ http://lessonbuilder.cast.org/ __. __ http://bookbuilder.cast.org __