Wikis

This week we are learning about Wikis and Wikipedia.  In our lab assignment we were to search for the school where we work.  Once found, we were to make a notable entry or edit an existing entry to update some information.   My school is a small private school and did not have their own Wikipedia entry.  I wanted to change that but it will require a bit of time and research to put together suffecient quantity of information to make the Wikipedia entry worth while and not immediately slated for deletion.  I did find a mention of our school under the general Castro Valley, CA page listed under the Education subsection.  In this section, it says that Redwood Christian Schools has two campuses in Castro Valley, Crossroads Elementary at Neighborhood Church and Redwood Elementary at the Redwood Chapel Community Church.  This was inaccurate as 4 years ago the two campuses combined at the RCCC site.  I updated the entry to reflect that Redwood Christian has one elementary (K-5) campus in Castro Valley, CA. 

 

In addition, I created a Wiki of my own to relegate my adventures while Scuba Diving.  You can find my wiki at CA-Diver.wikispaces.com



Universal Design

This week we have been learning about Universal Design for Learning.  This concept basically asks a teacher to go back through their curriculum and strip it down and examine it in the context of its ability to reach every student.  How can we identify and then eliminate barriers to learning within our curriculum?  What new information, technology or delivery method can we employ to allow all of our students to benefit from the knowledge we have to give them.  Maybe we need to present the same lesson three different ways over the course of a week to ensure that the concept is caught by all our students.

We examined the UDL checklist and saw how this tool can give us a framework for examining our lessons.  As a practical exercise, I took a lesson plan that I recently created and looked at it in light of the UDL checklist.  Take a look at the lesson plan and the comments that I made in response to the checklist.  The UDL checklist is reproduced at the bottom of the lesson plan to tie he comments together. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SAXEFq1P7ybE9NH0JIv_do_TEtLsyZrw6VcqOzArKbo/edit