Thoughts on Diversity

Working in K-8 classrooms I have always recognized the diversity of developmental levels in every group, and have become accustomed to making accommodations for students who have been “identified” by 504 or IEP plans. Although I was familiar with Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences, I was not as familiar with the principles of Universal Design. I have, however, discovered on my own that strategies I have developed for struggling learners can be effective for everyone. A prime example of this would be breaking down or “chunking” a multi-step process into a series of manageable tasks. In terms of making content information accessible to students with different learning styles, giving students multiple ways to acquire knowledge (text, images, video, etc.) is a logical way to keep students engaged and interested and keeps instruction “lively.” I believe I have applied these strategies to my instruction in order to increase engagement with the content, and it is interesting to find that there is a cognitive basis for this engagement: these different modes appeal to students with diverse learning styles. Likewise the creation of multimedia is also an effective method for students to gain better understanding of content.

For many years our schools have had access to the Inspiration and Kidspiration graphic organizers, but it is only recently that we have been able to include that in most research and planning processes in grades 3-6. As a “visual thinker” these tools have always appealed to me and I have not understood why more teachers do not take advantage of this approach. Perhaps, as one article states, there are not as many teachers who are visual learners, and thus these tools do not appeal to the adults who are guiding instruction. There does seem to be a body of evidence to suggest that these tools can and do support the development of higher-level thinking, and I am pleased to see that they are (at last) catching on in more classrooms. As we move “to the cloud” for collaborative applications, we are experimenting with the use of Google Draw to create organizers that can be built collaboratively. I have also just become aware of the new Webspiration Classroom tool, which may incorporate the Inspiration tools in a web interface. If collaborative function is part of that package, it would be well worth the investment!

Collaborative work has been a part of my instruction for many years, and fostering communication and leadership skills is very effective for many students. The arrival of technology tools like Google Docs, wikis and other web 2.0 applications brings even greater potential for collaboration beyond our own school community.

As for specific strategies for reaching students with disabilities through the use of technology, I have worked extensively with our Special Educators using text-to-speech (TextAloud, CoWriter), Speech-to-text (Dragon Naturally Speaking), and symbolic language (Boardmaker) software as well as the Dynavox graphical communication interface. While these tools are specifically designed for students with disabilities, there is no reason why symbolic language (for instance) could not be used to support ANY young learner in the development of language and vocabulary.