Universal Design

If we could get a “miracle” in education, it would be what this video presented…..universal design. If one of my seventh grade students had access to a universal design textbook, it could put the information he/she reads in a format appropriate for them. It could present the information with more graphics, it could change the text language to the child’s reading level ability, or it could read the text out loud to the student. This could open up a whole new world of teaching to diverse students. We could use universal design to automatically translate something to the language of the student’s preference. One of the major challenges for teachers today is finding ways to accommodate students learning. With assistive technologies, making these accommodations could be quicker and easily accessible. Education could use universal design to create programs for individual students according to their individual needs. For education, this probably means more inclusion classes. Universal design could also mean bigger classes. Teachers will be able to more easily accommodate the special individual needs of students.