I love technology. It has opened new worlds to me as an educator and to my students. There are so many wonderful options for students to use in order to learn at their best. I felt a kinship with Lisa from the powerpoint presentation as her approach sounds similar to mine. She is weaving technology into her curriculum while still having other analog options for students. I like how she mentioned that she would introduce each different technology one at a time. Sometimes, I feel like I need to give choice right away so it is a good reminder that sometimes that can be overwhelming for kids and that it is also okay to ask all students to try different things that may be outside of their comfort zone. One of the challenges with using technology is that sometimes students don’t yet know how to harness its power. I have students who have already named themselves tech “dumb.” Technology is something that I find to be super engaging and am motivated to learn about. At times, I can find it difficult to consider which barriers students (or other teachers) may have in accessing tech. Just like with traditional print materials, using tech can be a barrier to some students and I need to plan for that in my lesson design. Some of the steps I take to remove barriers is to provide explicit instruction on the way tech works and to take screencasts of common problems students have, like uploading the published link for the Weebly post to the Google Classroom. Over the summer, Google Classroom made some changes to the platform. It is important to share this information with students. I will take a few minutes to show them, “See this icon, this stands for an assignment. This one means it is a material. Did you know that if you go to your CLASSWORK page, it shows all of your assignments in one place AND if the assignment is grayed out, it means you already completed it?” Oftentimes as educators, we assume students know how to use technology when in fact, many only know how to use Snapchat and Instagram. In my choice-based classroom, I spend a lot of time thinking about how I can give students freedom to make choices while still supporting them. I wholeheartedly agree that technology makes this easier, but it is still important to have no-tech options for kids sometimes. An example of how I do this in my classroom is my Idea Generation station. When I first transitioned to a choice approach, I found students really struggled with coming up with ideas. I realized that though my ultimate goal for them was to be able to make their own decisions about what they would make, some students weren’t ready for that yet. The next year, I built a series of resources, both analog and digital, based on nine different themes. In my Art Intro class, I started by introducing three broad themes to the class through a series of activities that included videos, whole class discussion, round robin, and more. In addition to the initial introduction of the themes, I created a resource library in my room with a binder for each theme that included a planning sheet and additional resources like practice worksheets. The planning sheet has questions for consideration, visual examples of the theme, and practice activities. On top of the analog resources in my classroom, I also have a page on my website with virtual resources for each theme. Here students can find the planning sheet in digital form, links to websites, and youtube tutorials. An important thing to note about the planning sheet and all resources, is that there is no requirement that students use the planning sheet or any of the resources available. If a student already has an idea, why would I require them to jump through my hoops before moving forward? I emphasize to the students that the resources are there to help them when they are stuck. I am constantly reflecting, fine-tuning, and sometimes completely overhauling what I do with students with UDL ever present in my mind.
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AuthorMrs. Taborda is the studio art teacher at Oxford High School in Oxford, MA. This blog will document her journey as an educator and share the happenings of the OHS art room. Archives
November 2018
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