AIM Navigator Released

Just got the following email:

The National Center of Accessible Instructional Materials is pleased to announce that the AIM Navigator, the latest in a series of tools developed under the auspices of the AIM Consortium, is now available at the National AIM Center website!  Please share this information with others. The AIM Navigator is an interactive online tool that facilitates the process of decision-making about accessible instructional materials for an individual student. The AIM Navigator guides teams through a step-by-step process and provides just-in-time support with Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), resources, and links to other helpful tools at each of four major decision-points:

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  • Determining the need for accessible instructional materials;

  • Selecting format(s) that address student needs;

  • Acquiring needed formats; and,

  • Selecting supports for use (technology, training, instructional strategies, support services, and other accommodations and modifications)

We invite you to explore the AIM Navigator and try out the following features at http://aim.cast.org/experience/training/navigator

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  • Guiding Questions: A series of questions that guide teams through a four-step decision-making process about accessible instructional materials for an individual student

  • Help Me Decide: A brief set of questions and answers specifically linked to each screen that provide basic information needed for that screen

  • Tell Me More: A comprehensive set of questions, answers, and resources for all decision points within AIM Navigator.

  • Student Summary: A complete compilation of all decisions and supporting information teams enter into the Navigator that can be edited, printed and/or saved to a local computer.

  • To Do List: An optional place for the teams to keep track of actions that need and assign responsibilities that can be edited, printed and/or saved to a local computer.

 

While you are at the AIM Center site, have a look around at the vast array of information, supporting tools, learning opportunities, and communication options that are available from the AIM Center.

 

This tool promises to ease the confusion that exists in providing accessible instructional materials to students in K12 educational settings.  I look forward to trying it!

 

IL: One step forward...but one step back

I received this from a colleague recently:

TechAmerica Applauds Illinois Governor Pat Quinn for Digital Textbook Legislation

Governor signs legislative measure to encourage use of digital textbooks and materials in schools

Naperville, Ill. – TechAmerica applauds Governor Pat Quinn and the Illinois Legislature for signing into law Senate Bill 3547, which expands the definition of textbooks in all Illinois statutes to allow for the use of electronic textbooks and the technological equipment necessary to gain access to and use electronic textbooks. Senate Bill 3547 also expands the scope of textbook funding sources in Illinois to include electronic textbooks and related materials.

“We applaud Governor Quinn and Illinois legislators, including our Chief sponsors, Senate Majority Leader James F. Clayborne, Jr. and Representative LaShawn K. Ford, for supporting this important legislation,” said T. Kendall Hunt, Chairman, CEO, VASCO Data Security International, and Chair of TechAmerica Midwest. “TechAmerica is a strong advocate for educational initiatives that better prepare students, and our future leaders, for the 21st century.”

The educational, environmental, and financial benefits of using digital textbooks and materials in the classroom are numerous. Studies have shown increased attendance by students, improved writing scores, and greater depth of student research in schools using digital textbooks and related technologies. Digital literacy is the cornerstone of most professional and academic environments. These initiatives help familiarize students with the types of hardware, software and internet programs that they will be expected to use in the workplace. Senate Bill 3547 will also help put technology in the hands of the student groups least likely to have access to technology, including rural and minority students.

“We applaud Governor Quinn and Illinois legislators, including our Chief sponsors, Senate Majority Leader James F. Clayborne, Jr. and Representative LaShawn K. Ford, for supporting this important legislation,” said T. Kendall Hunt, Chairman, CEO, VASCO Data Security International, and Chair of TechAmerica Midwest. “TechAmerica is a strong advocate for educational initiatives that better prepare students, and our future leaders, for the 21st century.”

The educational, environmental, and financial benefits of using digital textbooks and materials in the classroom are numerous. Studies have shown increased attendance by students, improved writing scores, and greater depth of student research in schools using digital textbooks and related technologies. Digital literacy is the cornerstone of most professional and academic environments. These initiatives help familiarize students with the types of hardware, software and internet programs that they will be expected to use in the workplace. Senate Bill 3547 will also help put technology in the hands of the student groups least likely to have access to technology, including rural and minority students.

The educational, environmental, and financial benefits of using digital textbooks and materials in the classroom are numerous. Studies have shown increased attendance by students, improved writing scores, and greater depth of student research in schools using digital textbooks and related technologies. Digital literacy is the cornerstone of most professional and academic environments. These initiatives help familiarize students with the types of hardware, software and internet programs that they will be expected to use in the workplace. Senate Bill 3547 will also help put technology in the hands of the student groups least likely to have access to technology, including rural and minority students.

While I applaud the efforts of moving forward with digital textbooks, I am concerned with the lack of mention regarding the design of those digital textbooks (or the way the digital textbooks are accessed) be accessible to ALL students. It is amazing to me that in the age where the National Educational Technology Plan (http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010) is peppered with language regarding UDL and NIMAS that local state legislation does not incorporate those concepts from the beginning.

Any thoughts on this?

Thinking about Relationships...

Anyone who has been around education knows that there are always initiatives....always. Some make sense while others don't. I have the privilege of working with a number of different future and practicing education professionals in helping them understand the role that technology could - or should - play in the education of students with disabilities and other diverse learning needs.

About three years ago, I was invited by a colleague, Dr. Maureen Angel, to do a guest presentation in her class. The class was comprised of future special education administrators and schools psychologists and focused on technology applications in special education. I was asked to help paint the 'big picture' of technology use with relation to the education of students with disabilities. My viewpoint is (albeit, perhaps a biased one) that technology has the potential to be beneficial in almost every aspect of educating students with disabilities. However, as I was presenting, questions started to arise as to how technology - specifically assistive technology - fit into various initiatives and mandates - Response to Intervention (RtI), Universal Design for Learning (UDL), Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM) and the Assistive Technology (AT) mandate within IDEA. We had some lively discussion about these but I decided to put together a graphic to begin fueling the discussion and think about the relationships between these various initiatives and mandates. The graphic has been revised several times as my thinking has changed over time.

Let me see if I can break this down.

UDL is predominantly made up of, in my opinion, two components - differentiated instruction and universally designed materials. I am using the term differentiated instruction loosely to refer not only to Tomlinson's concept of Differentiated Instruction but also to the concept that there is a pedagogical side to UDL. A teacher needs to know how to design and implement the tenets of UDL - multiple means of expression, representation and engagement - across a variety of learners. These strategies and techniques should be grounded in research based practices that have been shown to be effective with students.

UDL cannot be accomplished without access to universally designed materials. Universally designed materials are based not only accessibility guidelines and standards - leading to accessible instructional materials - but are flexible to provide multiple means of representation and engagement.

Assistive technology, by its nature, is a compensatory intervention that allows a student to do something that he or she would not be able to do without the assistive technology, ultimately resulting in enhanced performance on a given task. Universally designed materials and accessible instructional materials, by their natures, are ready to be use by individuals with a variety of needs. However, while universally designed materials and accessible instructional materials will meet the needs of many individuals, some individuals will still need to use additional assistive technologies to access these materials. The design elements of these materials are such that assistive technologies are able to work well with these materials. It is the difference between using assistive technology to approximate access and using assistive technology actually achieve it. I maintain that there continues to be a need for AT and that UDL does not, in itself, replace AT but make it easier for a user to use AT to interface with instruction and instructional materials. It is the combination of fully realized UDL (grounded in good pedagogy using materials that are truly universally designed) and the use of AT that provides access to the curriculum.

So what about Response to Intervention? Well, if the thought process behind RtI is to provide levels of support that are grounded in scientifically valid interventions to specifically target areas in which students are having difficulty, doesn't it make sense that those interventions also take into consideration UDL? In some way, UDL has an influence on RtI....but I am not sure the full picture of this influence has yet been realized or understood.

Now...some disclaimers. There is - or should be - a relationship between RtI and AT. However, again, this relationship, I think, is still not yet well defined. There is also a relationship between RtI and the curriculum. I just didn't note it here. UDL, as pointed out by Edyburn (2010), is a construct - one that is still being conceptualized and brought into practice. There is a lot we still need to learn about UDL (and that holds true for AT as well) before we can realize its full implications or understand its effectiveness.

This representation of relationships is one that is in constant development. I welcome thoughts and ideas to allow this continue to grow.

Towards a Systemization of Accessible Instructional Materials

I have the privilege of working with a great group of AT Coordinators in the local region.  This group is made of people who are truly passionate about using technology to meet the needs of students both with and without disabilities.  It is a bit of a unique group since they are comprised of several different entities, some of which are unified school districts and some of which include a number of districts linked together though a special education cooperative.  The goal of this group has always been to provide some guidance in the establishment of similar practices with regard to AT service delivery within the region.  Not a small feat!

Over the past year, discussions have been gearing up related to effectively providing Accessible Instructional Materials (AIM) to students, both who do and do not receive special education services.  As awareness of AIM grew over the past year (and yes...we know that IL is behind the times on this), the need for a plan began to emerge.  Using the model of managing complex change in systems, a vision was set to work towards a system that would provide AIM to all students that needed it.  The group sat down and began developing a plan, realizing that development of knowledge and skills with regard to AIM would be critical to moving any change forward.  Several key groups were targeted for knowledge and skill development:

• Curriculum Purchaser/Decision Maker
• General Education Administrators
  
• Technology Directors
• Special Education Administrators
• AIMS Implementation Leaders
• Special Education Teachers
• General Education Teachers
• Families
  

Specific knowledge and skills indicators were then developed for each of these groups.  The only group that didn't currently exist was that of the AIMS Implementation Leaders.  This group was created to represent a group of individuals who would serve as a key contact for issues related to the provision of AIM.

While this is in the planning stage, I think the group may be onto something that may prove effective and, even, replicable in other systems. 

What are your thoughts?

Towards A Checklist Manifesto for Good Instruction

Every once in a while, in between coding and writing for my dissertation, I actually have time to work on cleaning off the DVR. Actually, the DVR many times threatens to explode and take my house out with it unless I clear some things off. Well, anyway, I was watching an episode of John Stewart and he had a guest - Dr. Atul Gawande - who authored the book, The Checklist Manifesto. This book, which I am in the process of reading, describes the process of developing the checklist to be used by surgeons and a study that evaluated the impact of using checklist within the operating room. The idea for the checklist was borrowed from the aviation industry referencing the checklist that pilots use to prepare the plane for takeoff. The idea was to develop a checklist that surgeons could use in the operating room to ensure that key steps were not omitted. After the checklist was developed and implemented, the study to examine the effectiveness of the checklists found significant drops in postsurgical complications and deaths. For more information on this book, I will refer you to the New York Times article entitled, A Hospital How-To Guide That Mother Would Love.

After watching the interview and beginning to read the book, I began thinking about the instructional planning process that teachers go through as they prepare their lessons. I believe that all teachers want their students to learn. I also believe that there is a pragmatic aspect to lesson planning and that, sometimes, even the best teachers may fall into a routine of using certain strategies or techniques repeatedly due to comfort, the pace of planning and implementing learning experiences, etc. I know, at least, that from time to time I have fallen into that trap. I have also experienced putting together and executing really good lessons where all students were engaged and 'got it' and other lessons that I felt 'if I only did these things differently' the precious time I had with the students would have been better spent. As I talk with other teachers, this phenomenon seems to be a shared experience.

In addition, teachers are bombarded with so many, well intentioned initiatives and models - Response to Intervention, Differentiated Instruction, Universal Design for Learning, Understanding by Design, Direct Instruction, 21st Century Learning, and so on. These initiatives and models have both similar attributes and some differences. Some have greater degrees of efficacy research supporting the initiative/model and others have less. Teachers also have different awareness and understanding of these initiatives and models and may or may not ascribe to one or more of these. Put in the words of one of my K-12 teaching colleagues as we were sitting in the start of the year meeting, "I wonder what the model for instruction will be this year?"

Suffice to say, the instructional planning process for teachers is complex.

So, that brings me to thinking about what a checklist might look like for good instruction. Would a checklist - say no more than 5-7 items - that teachers would consult every time they plan be a good thing? The checklist would contain the 'must haves' for each and every learning experience for which they are planning. The items on the checklist would result in learning experiences that allow every student to learn and be successful.

What would be the components of such a checklist?

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