Universal Design for Learning

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework for curriculum and instructional planning through which educators can maximize accessibility and minimize barriers that are often experienced by learners. Culturally responsive practices strengthen and complement UDL by framing accessibility as an equity goal and prompting educators to examine ableism, racism, and other structural inequities. Teacher educators are in a unique position to introduce UDL to future elementary teachers and support them in developing inclusive pedagogical methods early on in their careers. Education technology tools are used within UDL to make curriculum materials more accessible and engaging. In this chapter, the UDL framework will be described along with culturally responsive applications within elementary teacher education.

New Barriers to Technology Integration and Digital Education Equity

This chapter explores two critical areas essential to the implementation of next generation tools in formal learning settings: (1) persistent barriers to technology integration in schools and (2) supporting student agency through different forms of participation in technology and digital media activities. Concerns that the educational digital divide has evolved into an issue of equitable participation in producer-level technology-mediated activities have underscored the need to identify new barriers to integration and student engagement. While persistent barriers to integration continue to impact the frequency and purpose of technology use in the classroom, a re-centering of focus on agency and its relationship to students' identity development underscores the need to understand how the next generation of tools and technologies can be harnessed to overcome social and educational inequities.

Library Media Specialists' Roles in the Implementation of Digital Tools, Applications, and Standards

This chapter addresses the benefits and synergies that the classroom teacher and the school library media specialist (LMS) experience when collaborating in the planning, differentiation, and assessment of content-area standards such as the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), with an emphasis on the role of technology and information literacy via Digital Literacy and Computer Science Standards (DLCSS). General reasons for teacher/LMS collaboration, specific reasons for collaboration on the CCSS/DLCSS, technology integration, and physical space and instructional flexibility form the key concepts of discussion. Tables present specific CCSS, related to technology tools and digital literacy concepts, that the LMS is uniquely qualified to teach to students. The chapter concludes with practical recommendations for district personnel, school-based administrators, LMSs, classroom teachers, and preservice teachers.

Addressing Beginning STEM Teachers' Needs to Teach in High-Need School Districts

Highly qualified teachers with strong STEM backgrounds are needed to teach children, particularly in high-need school districts. One university's teacher preparation program used a constructivist approach to build candidates' technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge to enhance their preparation to teach in classrooms where they are expected to utilize instructional technology effectively. Teacher preparation programs prepare candidates to a certain degree, however, beginning teachers continue to need support. This chapter reports on how prepared these new STEM teachers were to teach and the challenges they faced in high-need school districts. This chapter also discusses the instructional technology provided to these teachers from a federal grant to address some of these challenges. The chapter concludes that beginning STEM teachers benefit from induction supports that 1) provide university-based mentoring, 2) allow them to continue to use strategies and technologies they had access to during their teacher preparation program, and 3) continue to develop themselves as professionals.

Using Geospatial Technology to Promote Middle School Students' Critical Thinking on Socioscientific Issues

This chapter is a demonstration of how to use geospatial technologies to promote middle school students' abilities to think critically and to argue persuasively on socioscientific issues. Forty-three sixth grade students from a summer enrichment program operated by a non-profit organization in the northeastern United States participated in this study. The duration of this curricular unit took place over five consecutive 1-hour period blocks. The researcher utilized qualitative procedures to analyze the students' abilities to think critically and to argue persuasively on socioscientific issues. The results indicate that the students' background knowledge on the impact of human activities on climate change was enhanced with the use of videos, graphics, audio-visuals, and other hands-on activities. Additionally, the knowledge the students gained from the events in this investigation enhanced their abilities to propose convincing arguments in opposition or support for the socioscientific issues investigated.

Mixed Reality Simulations

Implementing a curriculum that supports students' social-emotional development alongside academics is essential. Social-emotional learning (SEL) promotes positive outcomes across social and emotional skills, attitudes towards self and others, positive social behavior, conduct problems, emotional distress, and academic performance. In spite of what research tells us and what we as educators know intuitively through our practice, social and emotional development has long been known to many as a missing link in U.S. public schools. Teachers' concerns include whether they have the time, resources, and access to professional learning necessary to implement high quality SEL instruction, particularly in light of academic content instruction pressures. This chapter discusses the application of mixed reality simulations as a next generation digital tool that offers active learning opportunities in social-emotional learning in conjunction with dialogic reading sessions to foster social-emotional competencies and literacy.

Makerspaces and 3D Printing

This chapter presents a professional development model for introducing preservice and inservice teachers to makerspaces and 3D printing. The model is based on a 3D Printing 4 Teaching & Learning project, a school/university partnership focused on maker and 3D learning. In the project, 13 inservice teachers were paired with 10 preservice teacher candidates and charged with integrating hands-on physical makerspaces and 3D modeling and printing activities into existing elementary, middle, or high school curricula. Two day-long workshops introduced participants to makerspace experiences. Teachers then completed projects with students organized around history/social studies or science/mathematics topics. Three primary recommendations emerged for integrating maker-based and 3D technologies into preservice and inservice teacher learning: 1) a growth-in-practice model, 2) preservice/inservice teams, 3) multiple approaches to the adoption of new technologies.

A Typology for Professional Development

In an attempt to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the professional development activities offered to help teachers improve their use of technology, the leaders of a rural school district participated in a design process modeled after the Delphi technique. Leaders from the schools summarized past efforts and created plans for future professional learning. Those summaries and plans were critiqued by a panel of experts through multiple iterations. The documents created through that process along with transcripts of the discussions of the panel of experts were analyzed to identify the factors that affected the group's decisions. Three dimensions were identified, and variation in those were used to define three types of professional development activities.

Disability, Culture, and Technology

Ghana has many interventions or systems to eradicate poverty among vulnerable people, especially those with disabilities. Ghana's Parliament launched the Social Protection Program in conformity with the United Nations Convention on the Right of People with Disabilities (UNCRPD) as well as the Disability Law of Ghana. One of these programs is the Social Protection Program, under which rehabilitation and RLG ICT training of People with Disabilities (PWDs) have been implemented in the classroom. The main goal of this program is to educate PWDs, granting them employable skills and thereby enabling them to become independent citizens. This chapter, which is related to one of the recommended topics, “Issues and Challenges of Digital Tools and Applications in the Classroom,” draws on and employs a phenomenological approach to confirm the lack of culturally responsiveness of technology to the Ghanaian disability community. Participants indicated they were disconnected from the program because the technological devices were foreign and not connected to their indigenous culture.

Case Study of Urban 4th/5th Grade Teachers and Students Engaged With E-Texts

This qualitative action research project follows a case study format as a means of studying the effect of explicit student and teacher training in specific reading strategies designed for reading with e-texts. Teachers in the current study were trained in an instructional approach that took full advantage of e-text features, which complemented, and did not supplant, their existing literacy instructional methods. Results indicate that students exhibited an enhanced form of agency, consistently seeing new approaches in taking advantage of the e-text features, and regularly taking steps to independently enhance their literacy learning and share it with peers. Interviews with teachers and students indicated a discernable increase in access when using e-texts. There was an increased desire to use the e-texts in an engaged and sustained manner in the current study. The authors share strategic and tangible instructional approaches. Further, they address particular focus on participants' growing agency, access via critical literacy, and ways to sustain increased motivation and engagement.