I’ve been thinking. Whether we are intellectually gifted or just struggling along, we all learn. We just all do not learn the same way. Everyone single one of us approaches a learning situation with different knowledge, experiences and strategies. We do not learn and grow at the same rate, or acquire the same depth of understanding. But, we all learn.

So how does the classroom teacher prepare to facilitate the learning of the 100 plus unique individuals they meet each day? How do they take into account all the different educational needs of these students (not to mention the social and emotional needs as well, but that is a whole other issue)? As a classroom teacher I struggled with it each day. I could reach some, but others I just could not find the method or strategy that would foster success. I constantly needed to remind myself that learning takes place with in the learner. My role was to provide learning experiences and opportunities for my students to interact with the curriculum so they can build knowledge for themselves. They need to make the connections, to build the web of information that is their own knowledge base. What they needed were options.

Universal Design and its cousin, Differentiated Instruction, are all about providing options; see it, hear it, write it, make it, speak it, learn it. The more ways we interact with the content, the more options we have to create and express our understanding, the more likely it is that meaningful learning will take place. We want our students to create a web of information for themselves. There is no better place for this then the World Wide Web. The web tools of today give us so many options for accessing information and expressing our understanding of information. The learner has access to so many forms of presentation. We can do some good old fashion reading of websites, blogs, and Wikis. We can watch streaming video from commercial vendors such as United Streaming or teacher posted videos of lessons. We can view screencasts, photocasts and traditional PowerPoint presentations. We can listen to a wide variety of podcasts and audio postings. Students can create and publish such a large variety of material using these very same tools. Students and teachers can work collaboratively with so many others to create meaning and understanding. The web and the web tools of today provide the ultimate in Universal Design and Differentiated Instruction.

The following are just a quick list of some examples:

A screencast by Jean-Claude Bradley on Podcasting, sceencasting and Blogs.

A virtual lab,Net frog from the Curry school of education

Just a small section of the webcasts found at NASA