TCH 401

Before you begin: Web accessibility is required by law. As such, every website and digital tool that you use in your classroom, should have an accessibility statement that list the laws and standards they are committed to following. Read The Importance of an Accessibility Statement to find out more about what the accessibility statement could, and should include. Next, spend some time researching tools for presentation. Find some new to you tools that you have not not used before but you are interested in trying out. Be sure to check the accessibility statements in your research. 

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In the moment: SELECT the tool that makes the most sense for you and the content you want to teach. Then, using this tool, CREATE a presentation that you could use in your instruction as you teach your class. As you are creating the presentation, make sure you are paying attention to the guidelines of accessibility described in POUR.  As part of this, please be sure your presentation is available in MULTIPLE MODALITIES. For example if it is written slides, consider embedding audio or video. If it is a video, be sure to include captions etc. 

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Complete the challenge: Create a Teacher as Designer post on your blog. Link your presentation. Then, compose a short reflection that explores at minimum:

1. Why you’ve chosen this tool to accomplish your purpose. What did you find out from reading the accessibility statement? Did the accessibility statement play a role in what tool you used? 

2. What two new to you tools did you explore for this challenge.   What was your experience with each tool? Would you use it again? Why/How? What helped you make a decision about what you ultimately chose? 

3. What intentional choices did you make around the POUR guidelines? What worked well? What do you think might still need some work in terms of accessibility? 

4. How will this presentation of content fit inside of the context of the larger lesson? What would you imagine comes before or after this? Will you use this to flip your classroom? Will it be something students access independently or something you play for the whole class? 

5. How the tool helps you move along the Technology Integration Matrix, and how you are using it in light of the SAMR model. 

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NEW To You tools: We are all entering this course with a different set of tech tools that we regularly use. The idea in this course is to move beyond those that are familiar, and try tools you are not familiar with. Not only will that help you widen your tool box, it will also give you time to play and the opportunity to get the "new user" experience that your students might have when using new tools. Each tool is bringing with it affordances and obstacles that impact teaching and learning. Being able to recognize those helps you to know what tool is best. For each challenge I will ask that you ALWAYS explore at least TWO new tools for each challenge. You will describe these in your "complete the challenge" blog post. Hopefully you will use one of those tools in the challenge, but if those tools will not work for what you are trying to accomplish, and you discuss that you are free to use the tool that would work best in your classroom. This should be more rare than not. Please do not plan to rely on only the Google Suite throughout the course.