Universal dessign for learning (UDL)

               

                Nowadays, Universal Design of Learning is getting more and more important. Universal Design of Learning has the purpose of making learning available for everyone, which means that everybody has the own way of learning and every class has some barriers that keep some students off the process of learning, so UDL is about destroying this barriers and making possible that everybody can learn with the same possibilities.

                Universal design of learning explains that each student has their own strengths, needs and interest, so with UDL we try to give each child what they requisite. This kind of education means making a universal education so everyone can learn.

                The idea of UDL is really nice but, how do we implement it? Like everything in education the answer is simple, it is all about the curriculum. But this curriculum is not easy at all because if we are trying to please every student and we have said that every student is different, it gets quite complicated. The students need to be participles of de knowledge, of the abilities and strategies and be enthusiastic of the process of learning; to get this the curriculum needs these three things. With this kind of education it is essential a flexible curriculum and it’s also essential that the teacher has to know what the student needs, prefers… and also the teacher has to promote multiple intelligences. This curriculum has to motivate and help ALL the students, this curriculum will end up helping every student.

                This curriculum has four parts:

•       The goals: what do we want? What are our aims? Which barriers are we facing?  Who can I motivate my students? These goals have to be present in the next parts.
•      The methods.
•      The material.         à these three can't be static
•      The assessment.

                How can we destroy the barriers? Using the three principles of de UDL:

      1.       Multiple means of representation: We have to teach the content and the information using multiple media.  For example, use graphics, highlight the most important words, explain the complex vocabulary…

     2.       Provide multiple ways to act and express: help the students to demonstrate what they have learnt in different ways.

     3.       Multiple ways of engagement: provide different ways of participation, let the kids learn from their mistakes, let them share knowledge, promote autonomy …

                   With these three principles every student is able to progress and they will keep their interest, most important, they’ll start enjoying learning that should be our most important goal as teachers. If every day is different in school, kids are going to enjoy school and the concept school as boring would disappear. Every day should be a challenge for the students and finally if we get this, we may get the students to love learning.

                   You can watch this video to get more information:

Inclusive education and groups of level

                This week we have been talking about inclusive education which tries to attend all the diverse educative necessities of the different kids.  This means, educating every kid with their own necessities but not pulling apart those kids who have them.  In this kind of education teachers, policy makers, families and pupils should share their opinions to make the curriculum.

                
                When we were talking about it in class we were in groups and one question started a debate, the problem was dividing the class in groups of level or not. I was on the side of dividing the class; our partners were scandalized because they couldn’t understand what we were trying to say. We weren’t talking about dividing the class in the smart ones and the dumb ones and that’s what they understood. This is not easy to explain so I’ll try to explain it with an example; we are a normal class and we are teaching math, they are going to be some pupils who resolve a normal problem in 5 minutes, other who do it in 15, and other who are frustrated because they don’t understand it and they aren’t going to end it or maybe they spent 30 minutes on the problem. It is clear that the ones who spent 5 minutes in the exercise are going to get bored because their partners are slowly and probably they will just give them the solution and the other ones will copy it but if we gave the faster ones a more difficult problem and the ones who spend a little more time one easier, the whole class could be learning math, enjoying it and getting the necessities they need.
               
                Finally the ones who find more difficult math are going to be able to learn it because if we keep the rhythm of the ‘’normal’’ ones at some point they are going to be lost. So with this model everyone learns. Every subject which need to be divided would have not the same people at the same levels because maybe one student is good at math but not at spanish, so there aren’t going to be the ‘’smart’’ ones and the ‘’dumb’’ ones, furthermore we are not going to name the groups as the high level and the low level, we could name it as colors for example. They are not going to realize which level is lower or higher because every kid is going to find in the exercise the same complexity.

                But we are not saying that every class and every subject should be divided in homogeneous groups, diversity is also important. So maybe the school projects or some classes could be divided in heterogeneous groups, so the ones who find the subject easier could help the ones who find it more difficult. With this model we are giving every kid what they need but we are not saying that one is worse or better, everyone is important in the class but as teachers we have to accept that some kids are going to have more necessities than others and trying to deny it would harm them more than help them. 

Flaws and strengths

                The other day in class out teacher ask us to prepare a debate,  the topic of the debate was homeschooling, a group had to defend it and the other one had to defend the traditional school. The fist time I had to defend the traditional school and it was kinda easy beacause I was defending my beliefs in spite of this the other group was giving some good arguments and my beliefs was starting to shake.

                The next day my group was defending homeschooling, at first I thought It was gonna be impossible but then a few ideas start coming and finally it was non-stopping. What I mean by this is not that my mind finally changed, what this brought me is that in life there are many ways and you have to decide one, but each one has his flaws and his strengths and  what you have to do is decide which one is better for you.

                I believe that recognising the other ways advantages is essential and you may not find its strengths at first, you are going to have to do research and you are going to need to go deeper.Furthermore I believe that it's also really important to recgnise the disadvantages of your own ideas. In conclussion being open-minded is not bad otherwise as treating with people this is essential, so just try to listen and not judging as much as possible.

About who's deciding the aims of education

                 A few weeks ago an economist came to our class, he started talking about economy and education. In his point of view education was a good investment because the money that the country invests on education will provide great benefits. This class made me thinks about who’s deciding on education, they are economist, Isn’t weird that people who doesn’t know any of education is making its decisions? I think so, furthermore their porpoise of education will be making the best workers and I personally think this is a wrong way.

                Of course making good workers is important but I believe that education is not for, education is a right and a duty, education shouldn’t have porpoise, education is important by its own. I think that dealing with education is dealing with people and if we treat education like another investment it will probably not be the best it can be.

                So we have to start realizing that education should be decided by people who know what’s about it not people who only see it as future money,  because yes money is important but people it’s more important.

Ways of learning

The forbidden education

                Last Wednesday my teacher showed us this video, this video is full of incredible ideas, definitely every teacher should watch it, the main idea of the video is that nowadays the education is obsolete and we don’t change it. A lot of ideas have come to my mind during the video and I’m going to try to reflect about them in this post.

                First of all, nowadays the education is based in the figure of the teacher, the teacher in front of the class saying a lot of stuff and the children listening and ‘’learning’’ but Are they really learning? I don’t think so, with this methodology the children don’t get involved and that’s the best way of learning, that’s the one they’re going to remember as the video says ‘’If you don’t enjoy you’re not learning’’. Furthermore this traditional way of teaching is making children associate learning with boredom and what teachers should focus is on making them love learning. A child as the video said is first curious but we make them forget that quality by not allowing them to think by their own, to discover. The video also said that we teach a lot of prefabricated answers and what we should do is let them guess the answer first. We can’t forget that teaching is not about concepts, teaching is about people.

                ‘’We are teaching people’’, people is diversity so why do we teach every kid with the same methods? It doesn’t make any sense. So, as teachers, we should focus on the necessities of every kid first but what we do is trying to standardize kids and we don’t let them be themselves so in the future they are not going to be the best they could be. Traditional education makes schools look like fabrics or prisons because it tries to make workers not people. So this education is dehumanizing children, is that what we really want? We should change our minds and start looking to the kid and not to the goal.

                 As future teachers we should not worry about mistakes, we should know that mistakes will carry you to the answer, so why do we punish a kid if he commits a mistake? That only makes the child frustrate so he will not try it again. What we should do is encourage them if they failure, make them understand that a mistake is not a finish is just a part in the process and also necessary.

                What about love? Is love important in the process of learning? Definitely YES. We can’t forget that those children who are not receiving love are going to have problems at schools, that’s what as teachers we should have contact with the families because the family has a huge role in education. Being in touch with the families and try is going to help to understand the situation of the children and so the behavior.

                Finally, the education is nowadays traditional because we haven’t stop and think about how we would teach today if we had to start education from the beginning. We have to look to everything as we would have never seen them. This is the only way to start changing education.