Universal Design for Learning.

Every term I look forward to the Manaiakalani Lead Teachers meetings and today's meeting was another goody.  I always walk away with professional learning to feed my brain, mull over and think about how it could fit into our school environment.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL), is an educational framework that addresses multiple ways of learning through creating instructional goals, methods, materials and assessments that work for everyone.  In delving into this framework I was reminded of the work of Karen Boyes around learning styles and reflected on how this is changed up in a digital world.  Giving options for students
to address their learning needs through music, visual text, lecture styles and rap (to name a few) opens the door to students self directed learning, self management and self advocacy in the classroom environment.  Doing this in a digital capacity offers endless opportunity for engagement.  I know that many teachers are already using similar principles in their planning and practice, so in looking through the information provided on this, it was a timely reflection to look at how our teachers are differentiating their 'teaching' and keeping students engaged through a myriad of activities aimed at a variety of learning styles and interests. During our session, we were given provided with a variety of different digital learning objects giving the same information but on different platforms.  Below is a 'music' based learning tool explaining UDL, this is the DLO I most connected with - other DLOs included 'lecture style presentation', 'animation' and 'visual/text'.  Check it out to give you a better idea of what UDL is about and maybe encourage you to think about how you can enhance your classroom programme with some new ideas.