Individual Differences Go To Work

The Fort Wayne Center for Learning is a place where I am applying for a job after I graduate. I just found this video on their website today. It's a little cheesy, but it shows one place (even in lowly Indiana!) where individual differences are catered to specifically.


Hopefully, I'll be doing something like what these instructors do someday, although ideally in a whole classroom.

Issues with Images

I found last week's class demos so neat, I had to peruse further. I especially enjoyed the Image Detective resource, which provides strategic scaffolding in looking at images. It reminded me of Thinking Reader for art. I guess that would make it "Thinking Viewer," or something like that. However, this site and others we looked at in class also brought up a question for me about balancing cognitive accessibility with guidance. With a strategic guide for looking, how do we know the strategy given isn't the creator's interpretation?

This is not so much of an issue with text or books. It's easier for words to "speak for themselves" (excuse the pun). But art--art is sensitive to interpretation. This is a difficult question. I know Tina Grotzer must have grappled with this a little as she made the Art Works for Schools curriculum with Project Zero. Perhaps that would give insight to how to approach art openly and give scaffolds.

Quick Dyslexia Tidbit

My brother sent me the link to this article. Fascinating that the neurobiology for dyslexia may be quite different depending on what language you are dyslexic in. This short snip is about a study that compares English speakers and Chinese speakers. Does this have an implication for how to universally design interventions in different cultures?

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/04/08/dyslexia-language-print.html

The Rats of NIMAS

Okay, so the play on words here is supposed to be the "rats of NIMH," a children's movie which came from a book, I believe; but I don't mean to compare the hard working people on NIMAS and NIMAC to unsanitary rodents. On the contrary, I was just exploring CAST's NIMAS website, and I am impressed by what they are doing.

I feel like I finally have at least a rudimentary handle on how NIMAS is played out. Some helpful definitions:

• NIMAS: National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard
• NIMAC: National Instructional Materials Access Center
  

And here's how it all works:

CAST has been appointed by the national government to run two NIMAS-related organizations: NIMAS Development Center and NIMAS Technical Assistance Center

The NIMAS Development Center sponsors these committees:

• NIMAS Standards Board
• NIMAS Advisory Council (which handles state-level implementation)
• AIM Consortium (group of 15 states devoted to improving instruction for K-12 students with disabilities)

Each of these met in Florida in January. In looking at the notes from the Standards Board meeting, I was struck by how new some of this is! The AIM Consortium was just created in the fall. I was also wondering why I hadn't heard of any of this before, since NIMAS started in 2004...

UDL Theory vs. UDL Practice

I figure it's about time for another post. I've been solidifying my goals in my CAST internship--deciding on my research questions before break, developing an observation protocol for data collection--and I've run into the challenge. The hardest part for me has been trying to connect theory to practice. Hardly surprising, but difficult nonetheless.

I found that this last week, I had put a lot of thought into the design of my observations, to focus it on what Universal Design supports the students use, how often they use them and if it affects the quality of their work. However, when I started observing, I went into a sort of "research mode." I'm pretty good at watching people objectively, but I was losing the heart of why I was observing.

Because my work is developing a case study, I should be focusing on the individuals' needs and characteristics. I had stopped thinking about Universal Design and had begun thinking "science." But my mentor reminded me that I can think about my subjects as people--it's okay to interact with them if need be!