EDLD+5364+Course-Embedded+Reflection

This assignment provided me with an opportunity to engage with my colleagues in a fundamentally different way. Our group engaged in several extremely helpful chat sessions in order to put the assignment together. These sessions enabled us to collaborate in real time while being many miles apart and with one exception, not residing in the same city. Having never engaged in a chat session before, this was a new experience for me that will now reside in my digital toolbox for use in my own instruction and future personal learning. Another area of personal learning came from the UDL lesson planning videos at the CAST website. In particular, the UDL approach to assessment contained some ideas that challenged some of my preconceived notions. As I have mentioned in the weekly course reflections, I feel like a balance needs to be struck between what the traditionalists want and what the student-centered educators would like to see. I can readily acknowledge some of the drawbacks to a one-size-fits-all approach to assessment but still balk at the notion of straining the assessment process through student interests. The CAST site cites an example of the students with disparate interests who are asked to write a paragraph about Mozart. The student with an interest in music then has an advantage. Therefore, the students should be asked to write about what they are most interested in. My concern with this approach is that it doesn't reflect the real world conditions that students will find themselves in as they enter the workforce. They will not always have the option of only engaging with material they find personally fulfilling. As such, students still need to learn the value in pursuing excellence regardless of their individual level of interest. That said, I do believe that my own personal center of gravity has been moved closer to the student centered side of things as a result of going through the CAST materials. The scenario forced me to apply the more student centered approach as a result of thinking through the assignment from the vantage point of a student rather than that of a teacher. This process of anticipating how the assignment will sound to a 7th grader can help put out fires before they start. In addition, the student-centered approach helped me engage with the fictitious special needs children who were a part of our project. As a group, we worked well together in creating our solution to the scenario. I felt like a contributor and was able to complete the assignments on time and in some cases, ahead of time. This is not to say that the material wasn't challenging, but that the assignments were structured in such a way that we were able to get through the material in a balanced manner. The lifelong learning skill for me involved putting myself in the shoes of the student. Perceiving the lessons from that vantage point will help me focus on what I need to accomplish and how best to accomplish it. Using a variety of media for assessment purposes is another helpful tool that I intend to incorporate in my future teaching.

Rose, D, & Meyer, A. (2002). //Teaching every student in the digital age: universal design for learning// [Ch.7]. (CAST website version), Retrieved from http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/chapter7.cfm

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