Sunday, February 20, 2011

What is the scoop on UDL?

If you haven't heard about UDL yet, you will soon. It is fast becoming one of the hot new acronyms in the educational world. Universal Design for Learning (you can see why everyone just calls it UDL) is defined by CAST as a set of principles for curriculum development that give all individuals equal opportunities to learn.

Furthermore, CAST says that UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that work for everyone--not a single, one-size-fits-all solution but rather flexible approaches that can be customized and adjusted for individual needs.

Now I have to tell you the truth. I don't know much about UDL, but I soon will. My district is offering a training on it through our ISD and I signed up to find out more. It sounds like a novel idea to provide flexible instruction with a number of different approaches to reach the most amount of students. Good stuff right? What got me excited was the idea that one of the ways to provide "different approaches" and "flexible instruction" was the use of Web 2.0 tools. I like using many of the Web 2.0 tools (students do too) and am interested in finding out if many of the things I do in my classes already fit with UDL.

So, in the meantime, if you want to learn more, visit CAST. They seem to be a big player in the UDL arena and have a great Website that breaks everything down for those of us new to UDL. For those of you who learn better by hearing and seeing, here is a video. :)



 I will give an update on my training in the future.

Thanks.