Teacher as Designer
“The question for us is how do we make our schools laboratories of democratic participation, rather than sites where inequality is reproduced, where not only is the potential of each individual child realized, but where we're experimenting with technologies of love, of reciprocity and of justice.”
Educators design authentic, learner-driven activities and environments that recognize and accommodate for learner variablity:
5a. Use technology to create, adapt and personalize learning experiences that foster independent learning and accommodate learner differences and needs.
5b. Design authentic learning activities that align with content area standards and use digital tools and resources to maximize active, deep learning.
5c. Explore and apply instructional design principles to create innovative digital learning environments that engage and support learning.
5A: Accommodating learner differences and needs
In her article Technology Accessibility: The "Best Kept Secret" of Inclusive 21st Century Classrooms, Dr. Shaheen explains that just like public spaces must be made accessible to people with disabilities, digital environments also are required to be accessible. Read Dr. Shaeen's article and reflect on how you have use accessibility features in your day to day life. What disability features have you integrated in your teaching? Watch this video to hear students explain digital accessibility and why it is important.
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So, what is digital accessibility? Watch this video for a short overview. Notice that accessibility is not limited to the classroom. Issues of accessibility are global. ​
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Next, read The Digital Divide and Inequities for Students with Disabilities: Needed....A Bridge Over Troubled Waters! to gain a deeper explanation of accessibility and the digital divide between students with disabilities and those without. Consider how this might have been even more pronounced in this year of hybrid and virtual schooling. Listen to the 2020 Marketplace Tech newscast embedded below. It covers a range of accessibility issues for across the spectrum Kindergarten-College.
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5B & C: Design Authentic Learning Activities using Design Principals that are accessible to all students.
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Lesson Design is at the very heart of teaching. In the past few years, I have really worked to shift my language and move away from "lesson plans" and "lesson planning" in favor of more accurate terms like lesson design, and learning experiences. Read more about lesson design in the article How Designing Accessible Curriculum for All Can Help Make Online Learning More Equitable. Be sure to watch the embedded videos to get a more robust understanding.
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Listen to the 5 minute talk embedded below by Rhianon Gutierrez. In this talk Rhianon talks about how UDL has impacted her as both a learner and a teacher. After you watch her talk go to a social media site (like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok) and search the hashtag #a11y. Find an article, video, news story, or post that resonates with you and teaches you something new, or raises questions for you. Consider retweeting or sharing on your pages with #TCH401 and #a11y and some thoughts about the text or piece of media.
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The National Center on Accessible Educational Materials have come up with four qualities of accessible experiences. These four principals are represented by the acronym POUR: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust. Spend some time of the site: Designing for Accessibility with POUR. Watch the video below for an overview. While on the site be sure to open up the sub-pages to get a full picture of what designing for accessibility means. I also found this book chapter Evaluating Accessibility to be really useful. This is not a required read, but something you might want to take a look at or bookmark for your upcoming challenge.
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Now that you know what designing for accessibility entails, how do you do it? Check out Create More Accessible Word Docs, Create More Accessible Slides, and Image Description Guidelines for a start on creating more accessible content.