Special Ed Resources from the SETSIG Executive Board
A Primer on Universal Design for Addressing the Learning Needs of All Students
The SETSIG Executive Board
Reality check: How many of the following statements do you agree with?
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The range of academic diversity in the classroom has increased in recent years.
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Teachers working with students in inclusion settings face a relentless demand to modify curricular, instructional, and assessment materials.
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Students who cannot read at grade level struggle throughout the school day.
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Instructional modifications made for students with disabilities often can help many other children in a classroom.
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The current emphasis on helping all children achieve high academic standards means much more effort must be devoted to helping struggling students.
Teachers and administrators across the country are facing enormous pressure to improve student learning. However, the conditions under which we work make this expectation exceedingly challenging.
While not a panacea, "universal design for learning" (UDL) offers a potential solution through the design of instruction that anticipates the full range of diversity found in American classrooms and provides supports before they are needed.
To learn more about UDL, explore the following resources:
Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age (online book)
http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/
Using Technology to Support Diverse Learners
http://www.wested.org/cs/tdl/print/docs/tdl/home.htm
Are Your Students Getting Stuck Because of Deficits in Language and Vocabulary Skills?
The SETSIG Executive Board
Many students, both with and without disabilities, often have difficulty in content area classes because of deficits in their language and/or vocabulary skills. Explore the following tools. Think about how they might help an individual student but consider introducing the tool to the entire class. Observe the different reactions of the students. Notice how many students you might not have anticipated needing such a tool find it cool and useful to useful in completing their work.
Visual Thesaurus
http://www.visualthesaurus.com
Use on the web, or purchase a CD for the classroom. Students use this product to visually illustrate a key word and explore its antonyms and synonyms. Very engaging!
Voycabulary
http://www.voycabulary.com
A free web site that scans any web page and makes every word clickable. This means that students can click on any word on the web page and instantly access a dictionary definition. Check it out!
WordSmyth
http://www.wordsmyth.net/
This web site is a collection of word tools that allow students to look up words (even when misspelled!) and create specialized glossaries by simply entering a set of vocabulary words. A real homework helper!
90 Days of Summer (or Winter, Spring, or Fall)
by Susan Cherup
Students in the “Computers and Technology in Special Education” class at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, have proclaimed that the article, “90 Days of Summer,” found in the journal of Special Education Technology Practice, should be read by all pre-service and in-service teachers! It was written by SETSIG founder, Dr. Dave Edyburn, and contains information on everything from data management to digital cameras; including special education technology journals, resources for parents, free assistive technology, NIMAS, Wiki textbooks, podcasting, professional organizations, and much, much more! Just click on the web sites, one per day, for an educational experience that will add to your knowledge and skills as a teacher.
Check it out at http://www.setp.net/summer/90days.html.
Change the title to “90 Days of Winter” and start reading and learning on a daily basis.
Our Top Ten Favorite Ed Tech Blogs of January 07
http://www.schwoebel.net/wpjoe/
http://elgg.net/csessums/weblog/
http://duckdiaries.edublogs.org/
http://heyjude.wordpress.com/
http://ideasandthoughts.org/
http://devel2.njit.edu/serendipity/
http://www.mtl-peters.net/blog/
http://beth.typepad.com/
http://www.edtechpost.ca/mt/
http://preilly.wordpress.com/
A Wikispace in Every Classroom: How You Can Get One For Free
Although wikis have been around for awhile, Wikispaces is a relative newcomer in the long list of free Web 2.0 services. For those of you who don’t know what a “wiki” is, it’s been described as an interactive community Web site, in which people accessing the site can add to and edit the information displayed. This allows for group collaboration and knowledge sharing within a single document, with each person contributing information based on his or her knowledge. A great example of how wikis are being used is Wikipedia.com. This well-known, if sometimes controversial, online encyclopedia is an amalgamation of information pieced together by thousands of users.
In the education arena, classroom teachers have begun using wikis to enhance participation in class and facilitate group projects. As you can imagine, when being used in a classroom, safety is a big issue. What's great about Wikispaces in particular is that it allows teachers to track who made changes to each wiki page with its Page History feature. Students must create a login before being able to add or edit information on a page, and those without registered logins won't be able to make changes. Each change is time-stamped and recorded in a single page history area, so the page owner can view who deleted, added, and edited page content. Additionally, pages can be locked by the teacher to create a stable source of information, such as a class syllabus or a project list. There's also a tab for discussion, where contributors, browsers, or editors of the page can comment about the work being created.
Because the tool is so helpful to educators, Wikispaces has launched a campaign to give away 100,000 free private Wikispaces to K-12 teachers. Although the basic service is free, Wikispaces has extended the ad-free product (usually $5 per month) at no cost to classroom teachers. Wikispaces has recently given away nearly 20,000 free Wikispaces, and won’t stop until the 100,000 mark is reached. You can get a free Wikispace for your classroom by visiting http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers100K. Simply fill in your information and certify that your Wikispace will be used for education purposes.
ISTE is exploring its own use of wikis through Wikispaces as well. In the coming months, we’ll be testing the functionality of Wikispaces as a place where SIG subscribers can collaborate, communicate, and find useful information pertaining to their SIGs. Stay tuned for more information about this project!
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