Universal Design Challenge (Before)

Dr. Keller's Interview

First of all, I think the availability of the interview in such a wide variety of mediums was very appropriate considering the content of the interview, and personally much appreciated as it meant I could combine listening to it with training (I'm training for the Avon Breast Cancer Walk-a marathon and a half, so training is unfortunately rather time-consuming, so thank you for making it available as a podcast.
I thought that Dr. Keller had some really interesting perspectives both on technology and on special education. I found his connection between the different paradigms relating to special education and the terminology used for technology particularly interesting. As I have had little experience with technology I assumed that there was a difference between assistive technology and adaptive technology and didn't realize they were interchangeable terms. However, after Dr. Keller acknowledged this fact and explained his preference I found myself really relating to what he said and able to see how these different terms are indicative of the paradigm that he connected them to. As he said assistive implies the person requires assistance from others, that the person is broken and needs to be fixed, this definitely follows the medical model assuming that there is some inherent problem to be fixed or corrected in the way a person's body works. Whereas adaptive technology makes me think of technology that simply changes the environment so that this person's unique needs and strengths can be used more advantageously in a new surrounding that suits them. This focus on changing the environment feels to me like the way that special education reform should be moving, it is truly representative of the type of equality that is supposed to be our country's foundation.
Along the lines of adapting the environment rather than assisting the person was Dr. Keller's comment about the creative use of materials. The compensatory use of materials is something teachers often don't consider, myself included, and can be of enormous benefit to everyone. Rather than waiting for the money for the perfect piece of equipment, which as we know can take a long time if government funds are required, or for the perfect equipment to be created we can look around ourselves and find something that will work just as well, as Dr. Keller did with his in-flight audio recorder. However, I do acknowledge that this isn't always the easiest thing to do. In fact often I think the easiest solution is sometimes the most difficult to see, even when it is right in front of your nose, as I'm sure was the case with the pencil for the astronauts scenario.
From there, Dr. Keller went into his story about Washington Square Park. I think that story would be a wonderful story for not only teachers, but students with disabilities to hear. As I have never been a student with a disability I know that I can't even begin to imagine the struggles that my students will have not only in learning, working, and everyday tasks, but in coming to terms with who they are including their strengths and weaknesses, as we all do, but with the addition of their disability and how that affects their life and how others perceive them. I think for students to be able to hear from someone who really has accomplished so much in his life about how hard it was for him, they will be able to understand that those types of feelings are normal and expected.
Dr. Keller's next story involving the color identifier brought a question to my mind that I don't know if there really is an exact answer to. Dr. Keller talked about the independence and control he felt at being able to choose to learn that information, the colors of his surroundings. However, Dr. Keller did used to have sight and therefore has an association with what he perceives brown or gray or blue as, but what about a person who has never had sight or has always been colorblind, would this person really benefit from a color identifier? Would there be any association for them of what brown or gray or blue means?
Finally, the last thing I wanted to discuss was when Dr. Keller brought up the curb cuts for people in wheelchairs and the negative impact these have for some others with disabilities. I hadn't ever thought before about how one person's access to an environment is actually a potential block of access for another. It made me sad when he said there's no perfect solution because I suppose I had never thought about that truth before, that there isn't any way to really meet everyone's needs regardless of how long we work at it or how thorough we try to be.

As for the Points to Remember document, to be perfectly honest I didn't find either one particularly clear. I definitely found the word version easier, but the print was still small and close together. The PDF format was very difficult for me to read as there was little sense of directionality and presented itself more as an image then text. As was discussed in Chapter 3, everyone has different issues or strengths in perception and I suppose that my strength coincides with our society's norm, print. I find things easier to follow that are in a sequential order and I am lucky enough to be a good reader, a definite advantage in our print-focused society. On the other hand, the PDF format appeared to me to be more of an image with less of a sequence, allowing students to read it in the order they choose. This could definitely be beneficial for students that have issues in sequencing.

What is Problem Solving?

I think both the introduction and the article give great insight into the expectations of this class, and I think as presumably all of us are or will be teachers it's definitely an appropriate goal. I agree with Martinez's assertions about the importance of problem solving and I feel as educators in order to find the best way to teach our students problem solving we just may need to go through the process of learning to problem solve ourselves. That's not to say we don't all already problem solve as Martinez stated, but there is definitely a difference between our natural problem solving skills and this explicit teaching of problem solving.
While I agree with Martinez that problem solving does need to be a greater focus in schools, I know from my own experience that not all schools focus simply on "the cognitive resource of knowledge" and many do also teach problem solving. This past year I worked with a group of third grade teachers, most of whom had been teaching for quite a while, who introduced me to a diagram of problem solving steps. At the bottom of the stairs was step one-reading the question and finding out what information is known, then on step two-reading the question again and distinguishing what information you are trying to figure out, next on step three-choose a strategy to solve the problem, and finally on step four-use your strategy to find the solution and check your answer. While this was an effective tool to teach students the process of problem solving and I felt it was completely adequate during the year, after reading this article I can clearly see some of it's limitations (that's not to say however that I don't think it's at least a 'step' in the right direction). First of all these problem-solving steps were limited to use in the mathematics area, which didn't help students to understand the process of problem-solving as a generalized idea that could be applied in all areas where uncertainty was encountered. Additionally, while students were encouraged to use different strategies to solve problems the types of strategies used and discussed were far more often specific heuristics and not general heuristics, which could be applied to a far greater array of situations. On the positive side, when problem solving, students were required to show all work and at the end present not just their response, but to talk the class through their problem-solving process so others could learn from their strategies and see that sometimes mistakes eventually led to the right answers and sometimes even though incorrect solutions were made due to computational errors, correct strategies were used. In both of these situations students received partial credit, hopefully learning that not only correct answers are valued.
What struck me most about Martinez's article however was that in all of my years of being educated and educating others I've never before heard or seen the term heuristics or had the process of problem-solving explicitly explained to me in that way. I think students could benefit immensely by seeing problem solving represented in this way using age-appropriate terms. I think if using more simplistic terms I had explicitly taught my third graders means-ends analysis or successive approximations they would have understood their own processes in problem-solving much better and therefore been able to engage in metacognitive skills and had more success in problem-solving.
I seem to be developing a pattern of pessimism at the end however and have to question one small comment in the article. Martinez discusses the detrimental effect of anxiety on problem-solving. I agree with his assertion that "Anxiety is a spoiler in the problem-solving process." However, I don't necessarily agree with his comment that "Those who cannot bear situations in which it is impossible to see the way clearly to the end are emotionally ill-prepared to solve problems." I think children can be taught to work through their anxiety and problem-solve despite this. However if we do choose to believe that Martinez's comments are true then what happens to the children who do have anxiety disorders or other disabilities and are therefore incapable of seeing the way clearly to the end without uncertainty clouding the way? Is he implying that these students are inherently incapable of developing problem-solving skills?

Chapter 2

I found Chapter 2 really interesting, although it makes me feel as though I am not actually an expert in any area.
In the discussion of experts differential configuration of memory through "chunking" I found myself thinking of an example from my own experiences, actually playing cards. In the past few years I have learned to and played quite a bit of cribbage. In the textbook, when the author discusses chess masters ability to avoid thinking through every possible strategy and instead only thinking through superior strategies it reminded me of playing cribbage with friends of mine who have been playing for years. While I think about every possible combination when discarding cards to the crib (hopefully someone plays cribbage and therefore this makes sense to them), my friends who are "expert" cribbage players can quickly discard because they look at the chunks or sets of cards and are able to just think quickly through the best strategies. I think it's fascinating to see the process of the quicker retrieval of recalling chunks of information in place.
As I read through the chapter, despite the comments of the Third International Math and Science Survey, I found myself recognizing a lot of these desired aspects of expertise in the Everyday Mathematics program which I have used in the last two years teaching in Brooklyn. Everyday Math, for those who are not familiar, is a different kind of math program because rather than do one unit on time and then a separate unit on money, Everyday math uses a variety of different mediums to work through an overall chapter concept. In this way, Everyday math focuses not on just the surface idea or means to solve a problem, but on the "big idea", the overall concept. Additionally, Everyday math applies to the idea of conditionalized knowledge as students are expected to know key words to help them problem solve, and not just memorize how to solve certain types of questions that appear in one unit of the book. Throughout the book similar types of questions are presented for students to apply to different big ideas so as to avoid surface memorization and encourage making connections between a variety of bigger concepts.
The textbook's explanation of why experts aren't always the best teachers was a bit of a comfort, and in my experiences in some of my undergraduate courses I have definitely seen this explanation played out by some professors (no offense to our present professors). I also think an essential idea for teachers to take away from this is the importance of metacognitive skills, both for ourselves and our students. I feel the only true way to teach metacognitive skills is by example, students need to know their teacher doesn't know everything either and that we as teachers, just as they as students, are always working towards learning more information and better ways to accomplish tasks.
Along these lines, I would love to take the information from this chapter and apply it in a classroom by having my students become "virtuosos" constantly adapting and looking at the bigger ideas. However, there is a pessimistic part of me that thinks that truly making our students experts in any area is an impossibility in today's schools. While as a teacher I could certainly choose a topic that I felt merited the amount of time that my students would need to develop expertise, inherently this will mean that other areas would have to be neglected. While this may be fine with me because I know in the long run the students' understanding of the greater concept will allow them to more easily pick up this other information, I know that the administration (at least at the school I worked at) would not allow me that freedom. There are standards and curriculum content that must be met, so when in the reality of our educational system do we have time to make our students experts?

Introduction to Me

Welcome to my blog! This is the first time I've ever created a blog so hopefully this is the right idea. I'm originally from Long Island although I have lived in a variety of places, such as Australia, Brooklyn, and England and I'm now living in Manhattan. I completed my undergraduate studies at Bucknell University where I majored in Elementary Education. I'm a certified Elementary and Early Childhood teacher. Since graduating I substitute taught for a year in Australia then spent a year working at an early intervention autism program and doing home hours with some of the children with autism who attended the school. The past two years I have taught in a public school in Brooklyn. My first year I taught a first grade class and my second year I taught a third grade arts gifted class. Teaching a gifted class was a great experience, but my personal preference is still for the younger years. I am presently working towards my masters in Intellectual Disabilities and Autism and my personal focus is autism in early elementary years, as well as early intervention. As for what experience I bring to this class in terms of technology, my knowledge is limited. I have worked with computers and a little with smart boards in the regular education setting, and in the special education setting I have worked with students using electronic token boards and some mobility technology. I look forward to learning more about technology uses in the classroom.