#OnlyLearning

As a social studies teacher, you know how challenging it can be to engage your students in meaningful and rigorous learning experiences. You have to cover a lot of content, meet various standards, and prepare your students for high-stakes assessments. But you also want to spark their curiosity, foster their critical thinking skills, and help them develop a deeper understanding of the world. How can you achieve all these goals without sacrificing your sanity? The answer may lie in Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an educational framework that offers flexibility and choice for all learners. What is UDL? UDL is based on research in the learning sciences, including cognitive neuroscience, that shows that learners have different strengths, preferences, and needs.  UDL guides the creation of learning outcomes, resources, and assessments that work for everyone by providing multiple means of engagement, representation, and action and expression . In other words, UDL is not about findin...

I recently read Stepping into a Virtual Reality Classroom for Teacher Training (columbia.edu)  and I was intrigued to see the situation in Myanmar pre-pandemic described in very similar terms to how I have previously described the situation here in Scotland today:  ...teachers often lack not only digital skills themselves, but also the pedagogical breadth to meaningfully engage students in inquiry-based activities that make the most of access to technology The  Myanmar: Connect to Learn  project site details the issues faced by their schools when it came to developing digital pedagogies: It was clear that knowledge, skills and infrastructure were all lacking. The same concerns raised in Scotland. Having just supported an authority with upskilling teaching staff and deploying thousands of devices into the hands of staff and students alike, I feel I have a good understanding of how these three factors impact on education here. The ongoing work being undertaken by ...