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Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

  While there are several legal requirements for online lessons to be accessible to students with visual, auditory, or mobility impairment, more is needed to make digital learning truly accessible to all students. Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for designing learning technologies that seeks to support struggling students and those with cognitive or behavioral disabilities as well. Following is a summary of the article Universal Design for Learning: Scanning for Alignment in K-12 Blended and Fully Online Learning Materials by Basham, Smith, and Satter. The evolution of K-12 education includes greater proportions of online learning content, whether through completely online schools, hybrid classes, or brick-and-mortar classrooms relying on laptops and software to deliver some of the content. Creators of digital curriculum already make certain accessibility modifications, such as providing closed captioning and transcripts for sound files, alt text descriptions f...
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Sustained Student Motivation

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As educators, we constantly seek the holy grail that seems like it will make our lives so much easier: sustained student motivation. After all, isn't it pure joy to teach those motivated students? Picture it: a classroom full of adolescents thirsting for knowledge, ready to do all the hard work necessary just to increase personal understanding. Imagine students excitedly working in teams or independently, utilizing all the time wisely, engaged in learning just for the sake of acquiring new information. What if some form of this utopia is actually possible? If that is the goal - and most will agree that it certainly is - let's see what the research has to say about how to help students motivate themselves for success in education.
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Authentic Intellectual Work

  Authentic Intellectual Work (AIW) refers to any learning activity that seeks to elevate students above the collection of various facts and processes in school, and provide them with opportunities to solve problems as professionals do. This is a departure from the traditional mile-wide and inch-deep curriculum, so that students may obtain a depth of knowledge through meaningful activities. Newman, et al. (2007) define Authentic Intellectual Work (AIW) as “construction of knowledge, through the use of disciplined inquiry, to produce discourse, products, or performances that have value beyond school” (p. 3). This means that a learning activity must be a novel problem to solve that requires the student to use a greater depth of knowledge than simple recall or understanding of facts. Once faced with the novel problem, the student must be required to use the acquired knowledge to gain deeper understanding and communicate that understanding in varied and flexible ways. In addition, the ...
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Week 1 EDUC 5313 Part 1: Introduction Greetings! My name is Carla Symonette, and I have been a math educator for almost 15 years. I have taught most high school math courses from Geometry to Calculus and AP Statistics. My newest challenge is an assignment in the math curriculum department at Florida Virtual School. After 3 years teaching AP Statistics students virtually full-time, I am learning to write virtual lessons and digital assessments for secondary math courses. I am excited to be learning more about how I can integrate the technology standards into my everyday practice, as I continue to learn to engage students asynchronously. Part 2: Learning Activity I am currently writing content for Algebra 1 students using the Florida B.E.S.T. Standards (2020) benchmark: MA.912.DP.2.4 Fit a linear function to bivariate numerical data that suggests a linear association and interpret the slope and y-intercept of the model. Use the model to solve real-world problems in terms of the c...
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