Interesting blog housing educational issues

A colleague and friend is posting on educational issues on an interesting site. Not one where I'd normally expect to see relevant education-oriented issues. Take a look at the Democrats.org site.

Universal Design for Learning

UDL isn't new. I was pushing UDL concepts when I wrote a piece for the Hot Technologies paper as part of COSN's Emerging Technologies Committee. I did push on UDL in Concord's Seeing Math project, but it took us a while to really understand all the implications and then we didn't have the resources to make the adjustments to the interactives, but we developed an understanding and appreaciation of the UDL concepts. Concord Consortium subsequently got NSF funding for a UDL Science project. I'm on the project's National Advisory Board.

Its taken a while for the issue to move into greater awareness, but it appears to have made it this week to EdWeek.

If you're unfamiliar with the Universal Design for Learning principles now is a good time to do some research.

What Jena Six says about the racial divide.

The TCRecord has an interesting article: Small Town, Big Issues: What the Jena Six Case Says about the American Racial Divide. I think its worth a read.

Family wedding...

I was gone for a while. My son Evan got married on Kauai in September. It was a very nice family gathering. I also had a great time exploring the Garden Island of Hawaii.

Photo taken by my second oldest son, Adam

How Web 2.0 Savy are you?

Jeff Milne raised an interesting issue on the BSG Alliance web site.

He is thinking about how to determine someone's level of Web 2.0 awareness or maturity, and proposed a list of Web 2.0 applications/services with the idea that someone would check all that they used.

I think its the wrong concept. Do you have to use services even if they have no benefit? But his list is interesting and so is some of the discussion that followed. Take a look, you might find it worth a comment.

Virtual School Symposium

If you're interested in K-12 virtual schooling, you should consider attending NACOL's Virtual School Symposium November 4-6 in Louisville. There will be a number of good sessions, and its a great opportunity to network.