Class 1

After reflecting on our first class I am excited about the new learnings and knowledge that I can share with my staff and school. I look forward to making learning more accessible for my students while providing them engaging and interactive lessons within the UDL model.

As teachers we always want to ensure we are doing our best to meet the various needs in our classrooms. It can get overwhelming at times, however by using assistive technology we can make that job a bit less stressful and more engaging for our students. In our first class I was pleased to hear the focus on UDL as it is an area our school district has been concentrating on recently.
When examining the UDL placemat I was so excited to see the various apps that could be used for a variety of needs in our school and my own classroom. I quickly e-mailed the placemat to our resource teacher and principal. We had a chance to review some of the apps for our newly purchased IPads and have found several new ones that we want to try. I had the chance to try one out for a student in my own classroom that has communication difficulties and he loved it! Asking him to segment sounds when spelling was one of my biggest challenges, but now with this app he is doing exactly that but doesn't even think of it as the same task he didn't like to do previously.

I am pleased that the terms we researched and discussed in class are starting to become a part of our conversations in schools. There are so many opportunities for our students to show their learning with assistive technology and I am anxious to learn about them and try them myself. As technology continues to evolve I think we will be able to give our students the opportunity to express and show thier talents in ways they could never have before.