Overview
Technology is everywhere and our learners have access to many forms of devices. Technology possibilities exist in our Google and Microsoft accounts and in other online apps and websites. These have inclusive features that help our students with key academic tasks they meet day to day. These help with approaches to reading as technology can read out text. Dictation tools allow us to type with our voice instead of our hands. Organisation can be done in several ways to support the student’s success. These are just a few but there are many more.
The challenge in education is how do we draw attention to these positive technologies that support our diverse learners? Awareness is the first step to take to explore these technologies and how they aid the success of our student’s cohort. From exploring these technologies, we can see how they help large volumes of reading, proofreading and options to listen to content instead of reading it. Our students need these tools to support their success and the skills acquired in inclusive technology help their transition to the workplace too.
In this course, participants will develop awareness of the diverse array of Inclusive Technologies and how it helps our diverse students. Through presentation, discussions, activities, and readings participants will pinpoint key inclusive technologies to match their contexts and develop a small recourse that can be shared with students and staff to advocate inclusive technology in their practice.
Over the online sessions, participants will:
• Develop an awareness of inclusive technology and its origins.
• How inclusive technology supports inclusion in education for all.
• Technology and the Universal Design Framework (UDL) and how inclusive technology connects with this inclusive framework.
• Practical demonstrations and exploration of inclusive technology and how it helps learning preferences, digital skills, and its transferability in other contexts.
• Activities to find how inclusive technology fits into their own context.
• Develop a simple resource for their students and work colleagues to promote the possibilities of inclusive technology.
• Peer groups to support the knowledge and creative potential of the participants as they navigate their inclusive technology journey.
You’ll Learn to
- Apply Universal Design for Learning
- Use Inclusive technologies to support: reading difficulties, writing difficulties, planning/organising difficulties, students who are blind/vision impaired, students who are Deaf/hard of hearing, students who have a physical disability
- Understand the importance of sharing accessible teaching/learning materials and the importance of basic IT skills for learners/teachers to make good use of inclusive technologies.
- Role model and incorporate use of inclusive technologies to benefit all learners and to actively include those students who learn differently because of a disability/learning difficulty.
On earning your open badge award for this course, you will have achieved further recognition in the following domains of the National Professional Development Framework for Staff who Teach:
- Domain 1 The Self At the core of the domains is the centrality of ‘the Self’, recognising that the professional and personal values that the individual brings to their teaching are pivotal in their development as a teacher.
- Domain 2 Professional Identity, Values and Development in Teaching and Learning focuses on the consideration of professional and/or disciplinary identity in given contexts. The domain supports critical reflection, recognising that an individual’s professional identity can change at different stages of their career.
- Domain 5 Personal and Professional Digital Capacity recognises explicitly that we live and work in a digital world, and that teachers must develop digital skills that allow them to harness the potential of technology for learning impact.
Course Developers
This open course has been developed by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education in partnership with:
Trevor Boland
Dublin City University
Deirdre Madden
University College Cork
Enroll in this Course
Learn as part of a group in an upcoming facilitator led programme
Enrollment
Facilitator-led courses run at different times throughout the year and result in a digital badge. Some are entirely online, some are blended, and others face-to-face. Additional facilitator training may be provided so that you can later facilitate your own open course.
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