Universal Design for Learning

At the TIS Training, Bridgeport Conference Center we received training with a multitude of tools and resources including Universal Design for Learning. Presenter John Ross offered a book study for the EETT TIS group to participate in. At the finish of the online course, TIS participants were challenged to write and implement a lesson plan in UDL format.

Numonics White Boards

One of the very first objectives that I established this year was to assist the teachers as they developed skills that would help them to bring their classrooms alive for their students. For nearly two years, Spring Hill Elementary had been slowly adopting the use of interactive white boards. Because these had been set in place with a laptop computer, projector, and ELMO visual presenter the boards were more often than not being used as an expensive screen. Very few teachers had been developing lessons that would utilize these Numonics boards and the Intelliboard software. In the summer, Cabell County Board of Education developed two-day training sessions to help expand the teachers' understanding of what these boards could offer. They also gave the teachers the support and time that they needed in order to create lessons that they could take back to their classrooms in the fall. By taking this experience one step further, I was able to offer the teachers at SHE a unique training day to familiarize themselves with the white boards and to present them with the idea of using interactive technology as a means of differentiated instruction. Check out some examples of VWB lessons below.

• Multiplication
• The link above is a complete WhiteBoard lesson file. You must have Intelliboard software, such as the Virtual Whiteboard Viewer to access this file. The links below are html files that are for showcase only. They do not have interactive features available.
  
• Multiplying Larger Numbers
  
• Bar Graphs
  
• Exploring Ecosystems
• Discovering the Americas

• Handout: Designing VWB Lessons
  

Technology Times

I met Gilda Haddox, TIS for Wood County during the Bridgeport Conference in July, 2008. She presented the EETT TIS members with a disc that contained files which would become most helpful as we dove headfirst into the 2007- 08 school year. With these files, Gilda planted the seed for a Technology Times newsletter. At this time, I had not even considered the smallest of responsibilities that would be on my shoulders as the year progressed.

• September, 2007
• October, 2007
• November, 2007
• December, 2007
• January, 2008
• February, 2008
• March/ April, 2008