Illustration by Andrew Greenstone

Many materials used for classroom and online instruction present barriers to learning for students with disabilities and English learners. This is typically inadvertent and can be corrected with basic awareness and skills. This webinar will introduce participants to strategies and resources for selecting and creating media that are accessible, resulting in improved learning opportunities for all students. Topics include accessible instructional materials (AIM), closed captioning and audio description of video, and accessible web sites.

Please join us this Thursday at 3:15 pm or 7:15 pm. For more information about accessing our MLTI webinars and to register, please click on the Webcasts tab at the top of this page.

CC BY 2.0 Vox Efx

UDL is an educational framework for developing curriculum, selecting instructional strategies, and designing assessments that work for all learners. Serving as a guide for reducing barriers to learning, UDL supports diverse students’ needs for understanding information, expressing knowledge, and activating engagement. Referenced throughout the National Education Technology Plan 2010, which guides the use of information and communication technologies in transforming American education, UDL is essential to successful technology use in the content areas. This webinar will introduce and provide demonstrations of UDL.

Please join us this Thursday at 3:15 pm or 7:15 pm. For more information about accessing our MLTI webinars or to register, please click on the Webcasts tab at the top of this page.

CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

This webinar offered an introduction to Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM), a complex but necessary component of any curriculum. It is the first in a series of Maine AIM webinars that will continue in the fall. The objectives were that participants will understand the:

• Barriers presented by standard print materials to some students
• Definition of AIM
• Relevant legislation
• Steps to successful AIM implementation
• Sources for more information

For the sake of simplicity, the focus of this first webinar was the common inaccessibility of standard print materials to some students. It’s important to recognize, however, that materials in electronic format can also present barriers (e.g., PDFs, podcasts, video, web sites, even word processed documents). Steps to making such media accessible for all learners will be the topic of future webinars in this series.

At the beginning of the webinar, we brainstormed and discussed the abilities needed to learn from standard print materials (this same conversation applies to electronic media). We then transitioned into the reality of copyright restrictions that interfere with our ability to convert many standard print books to other formats, such as digital text or audio. So we delved into the history of copyright exemption to come to the current-day Chafee Amendment, which is the foundation of the right to convert copyrighted material to specialized formats for students with print disabilities, such as specific learning disabilities, blindness or low vision, or physical disabilities. That’s AIM: “Specialized formats of curricular content that can be used by and with learners who are unable to read or use standard print materials.” Specialized formats are defined as:

• Braille
• Audio
• Large print
• Digital text

AIM is a legal mandate. A provision of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act (IDEA 2004), it requires schools to provide textbooks and related print materials in specialized formats to students with print disabilities — in a timely manner. In Maine, “timely manner” is defined as “at the same time as their peers.”

This is an ambitious and complex mandate. During the webinar, we outlined four suggested steps for meeting it:

1. Identify a student’s need for AIM by determining if a print disability exists
2. Select the appropriate specialized format or combination of formats
3. Acquire curricular materials in the appropriate formats
4. Support the student, parents, and teachers in the use of the materials through assistive technology (AT)

We had just enough time to introduce the purpose of each step and the associated resources to get started. In the Fall of 2011, we’ll delve into each step more deeply. Members of Maine’s AIM Community of Practice will be your guides. Here is a schedule of the first several webinars, which will be on Wednesdays at 3:15 PM.

• September 28: Identification of a Student’s Need for AIM
• October 5: Selection of Appropriate AIM Formats for Students with Print Disabilities
• October 12: Bookshare for Maine Schools
• October 19: Maine State Library Service Talking Books Program
• October 26: Acquiring Braille and Large Print Books through Catholic Charities Maine

We welcome hearing from you as we plan this series, which will be posted at both Maine AIM and at Maine 121.

In the meantime, here are some resources:

Your go-to resource on the Web: Maine AIM

Free simulations and tools from the National Center on AIM:

• AIM Explorer
• AIM Navigator

A framework for school teams: SETT

Sources for information on acquiring AIM:

• Maine AIM Acquisition Guide
• National Center on AIM Guide to AMPs

Learn about AT products for student use of AIM:

• AIM Product Tutorials at the National Center on AIM

Finally, here are your contacts for AIM technical assistance in Maine:

• MLTI Integration Mentors
• Maine AIM Technical Assistance Service Providers

View the archived recording of this webinar.

Please join us on June 8th at 3:15. To register for this webinar, select the Webcasts tab at the top of the http://maine121.org page and select the time to be directed to online registration.

Please join us on Wednesday, April 27th, at 3:15 PM. To register, click on the Webcasts tab at the top of this page and navigate to the calendar. This webinar will be recorded and archived.

• A full access landing page for Maine
• One level 3 membership for the state, which includes 100 books
• 25 licenses for RFB&D ReadHear for Mac by gh
• 5 training webinars
• 1 professional development webinar

Please be sure to watch the recording to learn the details of the program (should be available sometime on 3/31). Contacts for more information include Jenn Dougherty (jdougherty@rfbd.org) and Jayme Cagliuso (jcagliuso@rfbd.org). Jenn and Jayme welcome feedback on the program and how to support the unique needs of your school.

The content of the webinar was based on a 2008 white paper that was commissioned by Cisco and written by the Metiri Group, titled Multimodal Learning through Media: What the Research Says. I liked this report when it was published and decided to resurrect it as the subject of a webinar because, at just 24 pages (including appendices), it’s a bite size synthesis of the research behind multimodal learning and how it can inform the use of multimedia for instruction. The framework of the paper centers on three key aspects of multimodal learning:

• The physical functioning of the brain (neuroscience)
• The implications for learning (cognitive science)
• What the above means for the use of multimedia

So, we set out to define multimodal learning, to summarize the research behind it and, most enjoyably, demonstrate and provide examples of how it can be accomplished through multimedia applications on the MLTI MacBooks.

We described multimodal learning as learning through multiple senses that are associated with activating different brain responses, including auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory. The idea here, which is supported by research, is that the more modes and contexts through which we experience a fact, a concept, or an application, the more likely we are to retain it. So, this research is good news if this has seemed common sense to you: Conveying information in more than one way increases the likelihood that your students will understand it. And, of course, multimedia in the form of a combination of text, sound, and visuals can help us with this. If you read the white paper, you’ll find that the two sensory channels of our working memory that are associated with multimedia (i.e., verbal/text and visual/spatial) work together to augment understanding.

But simply attending to the dual sensory channels isn’t enough. To truly augment deep learning, the researchers remind us that we need to combine the use of multimedia with what we know about other effective teaching practices, such as those presented in the seminal National Research Council book, How People Learn. The principles that their work is based on are that we need to:

• Build on students’ background knowledge so that they can make sense of new learning by connecting it to what they already know;
• Help students develop deep content knowledge by helping them to organize facts, theories, and applications of the discipline into a framework;
• Teach kids how to think about their own thinking…to independently check-in with themselves to question their understanding and to use their own learning strategies to approach and solve problems. If I explained this well enough, you’ll recognize it as metacognition.

So, leveraging a combination of the sensory channels with best teaching practices is going to most effectively augment students’ capacity to learn.

Multimodal/Multimedia Principles

With that summary of the research presented in the white paper, we moved on to how we can apply it with the MLTI MacBooks. The paper lists a set of eight research-based principles that guide how to best apply modality and multimedia for learning. We selected just a few of those to demonstrate how you might effectively use your MLTI MacBook.

The first is the Multimedia Principle, which simply states:

Retention is improved through words and pictures rather than through words alone.

But don’t go overboard because the Coherence Principle cautions us that too many words, pictures, and sounds are counterproductive to learning.

Specific MLTI applications for which examples of the Multimedia Principle were given included Comic Life, Photo Booth, GarageBand, and iCal.

The strategy of using “sequential art” with Comic Life as a tool resonated with folks for whom comic books have served to support student literacy (and their own when they were emerging readers themselves!).

In addition to capturing photos, Photo Booth was recognized as an assessment tool by teachers who have their students record themselves conducting a performance, such as reading or speaking a second language, and then using the video for conferencing.

GarageBand was described as a diverse multimedia producer because of the ease with which voice and music can be added to the combination of text and visuals. And iCal was lauded for it’s integrated audio features that can be customized for student reminders and alerts.

We then moved on to the Modality Principle, which simply states:

Students learn better from animation and narration than from animation and onscreen text.

I pushed back on this principle in consideration of students who need on-screen text in order to access the content of a video. Students who are deaf or hard-of-hearing rely on closed captioning, which is text of what is being spoken by actors or narrators, as well as any other relevant sounds. English learners can also benefit from closed captions because they convey verbal speech in an additional mode, which can support their acquisition of English.

The good news is that today we have resources that give us choices about how we experience video. These choices are videos that offer closed captioning (which allow the user to turn captions on and off, as opposed to open captions that are always visible) and audio description, which is the addition of a narrator who describes what is happening in the video when there is no dialog or other sound that indicates the action occurring. As closed captioning was originally developed for people with deafness, audio description is designed for people who are blind. Arguably, however, both have implications for multimodal learning.

The Described and Captioned Media Program has a library of videos that are either closed captioned or audio described or both. During the webinar, I provided an example of a closed captioned and audio described video from their library and highlighted the features in the form of inputs that improve the accessibility of the content for all learners. A couple of webinar participants aptly identified this as universal design for learning (UDL).

Finally, we examined the Contiguity Principles:

• Spatially: Corresponding words and pictures should be presented near each other rather than far apart
• Temporally: They should be presented simultaneously rather than successively

Two MLTI applications were featured in this section. iPhoto allows you to create pages of images with corresponding text that is displayed immediately below pictures and simultaneously. An example of an advanced organizer for a field trip to Boston’s Freedom Trail is provided in the webinar recording.

The second application featured for contiguity was OmniGraffle, a concept mapping software program. Concept mapping is another research-based strategy and targets the ability of students to organize information (facts, concepts, applications of a content area) into a framework with which they can retain new learning and support recall over time. One webinar participant explained that she uses concept mapping for vocabulary instruction. OmniGraffle allows users to add images to symbols, which extends its usefulness as a concept mapping tool. The example featured in the webinar is of the distinction between coniferous and deciduous trees. Images of each species appear next to their names.

In summary, the good news for us technology integrationists is that research shows that multimedia can be a good teaching tool. We must, however, remember to inform our use by research-based principles. The other good news is that your MLTI MacBook is your partner in executing multimodal learning experiences for your students.

Image by vaXzine, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license

Multimodal strategies can be used by teachers and students alike to convey information, ideas, and concepts, as well as to express knowledge and understanding. Because each individual student effectively responds to unique inputs, such as text, audio, and visual (among others), combinations are essential to successful teaching and learning experiences.  In this webinar, we’ll review the research behind the need for multiple modes (multimodal) learning, as well as examine applications on the MLTI MacBooks that support related strategies. Comic Life, Freemind, GarageBand, iPhoto, OmniGraffle, and Photo Booth will be featured.

Please join Cynthia Curry and Ann Marie Quirion Hutton on Thursday, March 17, at 3:15 or 7:15 PM. To register, click on the Webcasts tab at the top of this page and navigate to the calendar of webinars.

This webinar will introduce participants to the intricacies of teaching students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds in general education classrooms. We will be joined in conversation by Maureen Fox and Tom Talarico, both teachers of English Language Learners in the Portland Public Schools. They will share their knowledge and expertise, drawing on personal experience, to provide a background and understanding of the issues facing English Language Learners in our classrooms. We will also look at how technology, specifically applications on the MLTI devices, can be used to support multilingual and multicultural learners.

The webinar presenters will be Jim Wells and Cynthia Curry.

Image from the Kentucky County Day School on Flickr, used with an Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic license.

*Who Else Has a Bright Idea?

I hope everyone who attended Thursday’s webinar came away with a few ideas for students’ journals. We began with a discussion of what journals are and some of the advantages that digital journals have over the traditional paper notebook journals students have kept in the past. We looked at some reasons for including journaling in any content area including how journal writing encourages reasoning, problem solving, and metacognition.

I demonstrated some of the features of NoteShare that make it such an effective journaling tool and shared a template for creating a math journal in Pages. You can download that file from the archived recording of either the afternoon or evening session. Blogging can also be a way for students to keep journals if each student is given a personal blog, and I shared three blogging resources that allow teachers to create individual blogs for students. The discussion then turned to ideas for journal entries and prompts and some suggestions for ways students can create entries that include audio and visual media as well as text. We ended with some suggestions for giving students feedback and assessing their journals.

Resources I shared:

• CAST’s UDL site
• Metacognition
  • An overview
  • Metacognition (NCREL)
  • Educational Psychology Interactive: Metacognition
  • YouTube: Metacognition
• Journal Writing
  • Effective Use of Student Journal Writing
  • Journal Writing: Does It Promote Long Term Retention of Course Concepts?
  • Writing in Mathematics: Common Objections and FAQs
  • Journals
• MLTI Minute – NoteShare Introduction
• Pages Templates
  • Pages Manual (PDF)
  • How to Create Impressive Documents and Templates on a Mac
  • Custom Templates in Pages
• Classroom Blogs
  • Class Blogmeister
  • 21 Classes
  • KidBlog.org
• Audio Prompts
  • Internet Archive
  • Open Culture
• Visual Prompts
  • Flickr
  • Washington Post Day in Photos
  • Cagle Index
  • Art Museums Worldwide
  • NASA Simulations
  • Math Videos
• Problem Solving
  • Open-ended Math Problems
  • Project Interactivate
  • PhET Interactive Simulations
  • Logic Puzzles

As usual, participants in both webinar sessions offered their ideas and resources for student journaling:

• Teaching teams can choose to do journaling as a joint process so journaling time and monitoring can be a shared responsibility.
• Question: Are there issues with students sharing too much personal information in their journals?
• Students can easily save a copy and paste a journal entry or save it as a PDF to include in a portfolio.
• Students can use iWeb for journaling or blogging and even add a NoteShare notebook to an existed iWeb page.
• Rick Wormeli’s Metaphors & Analogies: Power Tools for Teaching any Subject is a great resource for journaling.
• A good resource for metacognition -  How People Learn (Chapters 2 and 3)
• Video Journal Prompts from Ted Talks and Pop!Tech
• Having students just write reflections makes them complacent about the process, so mixing them with other prompts can help keep them engaged.

Thanks to everyone who attended these webinars. Don’t forget that you can review the recordings of the online sessions by following the links in the Archives section of this blog.

*Image: Some Rights Reserved by nhuisman