FreeToolsforUniversalDesign

=**Welcome to the Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning Literacy Wiki**=


 * Category: Getting Started**
 * Presentation Title:** “Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literacy” (16:57) **__2 CATNIP HOURS__**
 * Webpage:** http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=270
 * Description:** This presentation will describe ways that you can support literacy using free tools found on the internet. Types of technology supports for literacy will be discussed as well as the some of the free tools that are available on the Internet today. The last part of the session will deal with what Universal Design for Learning calls for and how the types of tools discussed can assist educators in achieving Universal Design for Learning in your classroom.
 * Presenter: **** Jennifer Kraft, ** Frackville, PA, USA

//If you have questions regarding entering information into this Wiki please contact Kim Thomas (kthomas@msd38.org).//

If you are using a VoiceThread for your Summary please post the link in the Summary section. Make sure your VoiceThread is //not// private. If you are submitting an audio response you will need to email that directly to Kim Thomas (kthomas@msd38.org).
 * Essential Questions and Summary.** (Please follow this format.)

1. Your name: Teresa Belnap Session Title: Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literacy

Essential Question 1: What tools have you used successfully or unsuccessfully to help your students’ literacy needs? What worked, what did not work? Response: Out of all the tools mentioned I have only used e-books that I printed out. When I used e-books, there was a mixture of results – depending upon the reading ability of each student. Trying to find e-books at the appropriate level can be time consuming, I appreciate the additional sites mentioned as sources of e-books.

Essential Question 2: Which tools in this presentation do you feel you could use in your classroom/school? Response: I felt that this presentation provided me with many tools, all of which I feel could be used in the classroom depending upon the current needs of my students. In general many of these would be easy to use for the entire class without taking a large amount of time to prepare. Then for students with specific needs this presentation showed me other tools that would take some time to prepare for use but would be very helpful. I was amazed at the number of options that were presented and appreciate the clarity and organization of the presentation. The main problem would be in finding the monies to purchase the items if they were not available at the school. Another issue would be getting the tech people to download the different programs as the district limits access to downloading on school computers.

Essential Question 3: How do you see yourself using these tools to help the students in your classroom/school? Summary: I especially liked the idea of mash-ups to combine tools to provide what the student needs. I see myself using the e-book with the Adobe PDF Reader to have the e-books read aloud. I would also like to spend some time with some of the speech to text options and see how they work to help students who struggle with handwriting. I am also interested in the organizational tools mentioned specifically for my own son to use.

3. Your name: Alec Fick Session Title: Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literacy Essential Question 1: What tools have you used successfully or unsuccessfully to help your students’ literacy needs? What worked, what did not work? Response: I have not used any of these tools in my classroom, however I look forward to trying some of them. Essential Question 2: Which tools in this presentation do you feel you could use in your classroom/school? Response: I feel that all of the tools could be of benefit in teaching social studies but very few if any could be of any use in teaching math. Essential Question 3: How do you see yourself using these tools to help the students in your classroom/school? Response: These tools will help the students take notes in social studies class as well as gain a better understanding of the material. Summary: There are many tools available for students that will assist them in learning literacy. Some programs will take the text and make it available for listening at the students leisure and in a format that will augment the reading lesson. Other programs take the spoken word and put it into a written format so that doing written assignments becomes less burdensome. Furthermore, there are tools that assist in note taking and organization in general. Students have an array of free tools available to assist them in learning in this new age of technology.

4. Your name: Michael Brauer Session Title: Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literacy

Essential Question 1: What tools have you used successfully or unsuccessfully to help your students' literacy needs? What worked? What didn't? Response: I teach 8th grade language arts, and I have had many students who read well below grade level. I have used books on CD for years. I began using this tool only for students who were below grade level, but I soon discovered that almost all my students benefit from hearing the words as they read them on the page. I have used various supplementary materials that come with our literature texts. I'm not sure why, but I've found that the ELL support is more helpful than the material that is aimed at kids with reading difficulties.

Essential Question 2: Which tools in the presentation do you think you feel you could use in the classroom? Response: Just about all of them! The most intriguing ones for me are the research tools and time management tools. The language arts teachers at my school have had an ongoing dialogue/argument for several years now as to the best way to approach teaching research papers. Although technology has changed research methods significantly since the days of the notecard research paper, some teachers still feel that is still the best way to teach research. I love the idea of using these free sites to perk kids' interest in doing formal research, and the fact that word processing can be used to allow kids to edit documents as a group makes group projects that much more feasible. Finally, since 8th graders are notoriously unorganized, the time management tools are a godsend!

Essential Question 3: How do you see yourself using these tools to help the students in your classroom? Response: Other than what I have described in response 2 above, I will definitely encourage my students to use the text to MP3 software. I would say more than 50% of my kids have iPods or other MP3 players, and I think the example of listening while jogging would be embraced by many students who wish to improve their literacy and grades.

Summary: The presentation began with profiles of two students who were struggling in school; one was a primary student and the other was a high school student. Both students improved drastically with the help of some of the technology highlighted in the presentation. All of the technology is available online for free. The technology is designed to help students learn in ways that are more accessible to them while allowing them to demonstrate their learning through means best suited to them. Some examples include Microsoft Reader, text to speech, text to MP3, research tools, bookmarking for group projects, time management tools, word prediction, and word processing. The presentation concludes with the point that a custom-made cocktail of these services can be concocted to best serve an individual student's needs.

5. Your name: Ashley Guggisberg Session Title: Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literacy Essential Question 1: What tools have you used successfully or unsuccessfully to help your students’ literacy needs? What worked, what did not work?

Response: I have used the Reading A-Z series which I have had some mixed results with. Sometimes the stories are great for my reading groups, but then the activities to go along with the stories are just too basic. I have also used the 6 Minute Solution Reading Fluency Program. I have had amazing success with this program and I absolutely love it for teaching reading fluency! Essential Question 2: Which tools in this presentation do you feel you could use in your classroom/school?

Response: I would really love to try out using ebooks and books online that can be read out loud. I think this would help improve students’ reading skills. The different text to speech tools or speech to text tools would help emergent readers to strengthen their correlation between the written word and speech sounds. This is a key skill that many struggling emergent readers are lacking. These tools would be more engaging for students and might help motivate their learning. I can also see myself using Bubblus as a great tool to help design and teach students to use different kinds of graphic organizers. Essential Question 3: How do you see yourself using these tools to help the students in your classroom/school?

Response: I could see myself trying to integrate these tools into my small reading groups. I think they would help make reading more interactive and engaging and would help to excite students about learning to read. This would be great for my struggling emergent readers. I also think Bubblus would be great in small groups or whole class for reading comprehension practice. Summary: I could use these new ideas showed in the video primarily in my small reading groups. I could integrate them into the activities that I already use in small reading groups. I am always looking for new ideas and ways to keep students engaged and interested in learning to read. I think these new ideas would particularly benefit my struggling readers. There are many free opportunities online to help these students strengthen their reading skills.

6. Your name: Michelle Hebert Session Title: Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literacy Essential Question 1: What tools have you used successfully or unsuccessfully to help your students’ literacy needs? What worked, what did not work? Response: Since I work with emerging readers, I use various mediums in reading instruction. These include the software that goes with our language arts program and it features test to speech. I also use a lot of audio that corresponds with text and powerpoint slides for fluency. Essential Question 2: Which tools in this presentation do you feel you could use in your classroom/school? Response: I think the speech to text and text to speech would be the most applicable. Essential Question 3: How do you see yourself using these tools to help the students in your classroom/school? Response: These tools can help students build fluency and comprehension. I think the ebooks program is a great way for struggling readers to enjoy free reading time while gaining valuable skills. Summary: This presentation gives a brief overview of the many free tools available to students and teachers. These tools can be used to create a specialized solution for students who are struggling as well as a tool for enrichment. They allow for multiple ways of engagement and give student valuable technology experience. Through the use of these tools, students are able to demonstrate what they know in non-traditional ways. 7. Your name: Kelly Hernandez Session Title: Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literacy

Essential Question 1: What tools have you successfully or unsuccessfully used to help your students’ literacy needs? What worked what did not work? Response: One tool that I frequently use in my kindergarten classroom is books on CD. The students will listen to leveled readers at the listening station. This has helped the students become more fluent readers. They follow along in the book and are able to hear words that they might not be able to read on their own. It has also helped them become more confident readers because it gives them to more practice in addition to reading the book in small group and at home they are able to read the book at the listening center. Unfortunately I do not have headphones for the students so they struggle hearing the CD player during center time. Essential Question 2: Which tools in this presentation do you feel you could use in your classroom/school? Response: I think that the ebooks and text to speech would be useful tools in my classroom. Essential Question 3: How do you see yourself using these tools to help the students in your classroom/school? Summary: I can see my self using the text to speech and ebooks because these tools allow beginning readers identify unfamiliar words and would allow them to read books on their own and possibly build on there comprehension skills.

8. Your name: Erin Campbell Session Title: Free Tools for Universal Design for Learning in Literacy

Essential Question 1: What tools have you used successfully or unsuccessfully to help your students’ literacy needs? What worked, what did not work? Response: I haven't used any of the tools mentioned, but our school has Waterford, which is a literacy computer program. The students get a lot of practice with skills they already know and learn new skills that I haven't taught yet. Waterford does an amazing job of teaching and helping students learn to read.

Essential Question 2: Which tools in this presentation do you feel you could use in your classroom/school? Response: I think that beginning to use ebooks would be most beneficial for the students in my classroom. I have a couple non readers, so having them on the computer using ebooks would give them a meaningful activity during silent reading.

Essential Question 3: How do you see yourself using these tools to help the students in your classroom/school? Response: I see myself using ebooks for more reading practice during silent reading time. Having students flip pages in a book is not as useful as having a story read to them. This way they can build their comprehension and hopefully start identifying words that are read. Summary: This gave some great ideas of how to use technology to help students with literacy. I think a lot of the ideas were geared told older students, such as having their text books on an MP3 player or using a cell phone with a calendar to keep track of assignments. The ebooks are the most useable for smaller students. 

9. Your name: Session Title: Essential Question 1: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 2: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 3: (type the question) Summary:

10. Your name: Session Title: Essential Question 1: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 2: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 3: (type the question) Summary:

11. Your name: Session Title: Essential Question 1: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 2: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 3: (type the question) Summary:

12. Your name: Session Title: Essential Question 1: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 2: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 3: (type the question) Summary:

13. Your name: Session Title: Essential Question 1: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 2: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 3: (type the question) Summary:

14. Your name: Session Title: Essential Question 1: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 2: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 3: (type the question) Summary:

15. Your name: Session Title: Essential Question 1: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 2: (type the question) Response: Essential Question 3: (type the question) Summary: = =