A Time to Reflect...

We're coming to the end of our blog... its a bittersweet ending!

Here are a few of our thoughts and reflections about our UDL learning experience.

What did you learn about Inclusive Education? UDL? Special Education? Working with others on the blog? Writing for an audience?

We learned that there are a variety of assistive technologies that can be used to create a more inclusive community and support for the diverse learners in the classroom. We learned that because we all come from various backgrounds, we all had different experiences (whether through practicum, or otherwise) that contributed to the information discussed on our blog. We knew that most of our readers would be preservice teachers, therefore, we geared our blog posts that would help support these readers in their future classrooms.

How did the blog evolve?

As a multi-author blog, we each took on a different avenue to explore with an “umbrella” focus on the notion of Inclusive Education. Melissa focused on a more professional development content, reporter style analysis by incorporating different strategies or methods of UDL to make your classroom more inclusive for the students in our classroom. Alanna focused on an approach to classroom technologies, strategies, as well as had a guest blogger, Matthew Bergman to contribute his findings around the UDL model and suggested some strategies that can help support the students in your classroom. Garrett focused on topics that he had little to no experience with and build a knowledge base from questions that he was having during the blogging process. Matthew, with a physical education background, focused his blog posts around the more current topics of inclusive in physical education/gymnasium programs.

How engaging was writing the blog?

It was an engaging process as it was based around questions and ideas that we were already aware of and evolved into the blog as we continued to research and write.

Where did you get your stories? How did you think of your stories? Did you develop a publication plan?

Our stories came about from our own interests and background knowledge. We discussed that as a group, each of us would contribute at least four blog posts, which would amount to approximately two posts per week.

How much research did you do?

As a group, we each took a different approach to our research. Majority of our research came from ideas, strategies or methods presented in professional development sessions or resources obtained from the internet, such as articles, books, or videos.

How did you promote your blog?

We promoted our blog on our Faculty of Education cohort Facebook page, which is accessibility to most of our peers in the class. Our blog was also promoted in communication with our guest blogger, Matt Bergman, as well as in a professional interview, where one of the interviewer’s stated that he was interested in taking a look at our work.

What do your blog stats tell you? How did you use the stats, if at all?

Unfortunately, the blog website that we had decided to use, did not allow for a stat counter. We believe that although this might be a beneficial tool to include on our blog, it may be skewed of number of visits, due to our own viewing during the posting or revision process.

How do you feel about the blog? What role did you play in the blog?

The blog was great format to share our learning and explore new topics that are relevant to our interests. Also, we feel that we were able to learn a great deal from each other due to the open and accessible format of the blog.

Each blogger was responsible for completing their own research and writing in a format that they were comfortable with. We collaborated to discuss and revise our blog posts, as well as making sure that we were covering a diverse range of topics.

What stresses are involved in with a multi-author blog?

There are few issues that can cause stress in a multi-author blog. One, each author has to be responsible and punctual when completing their posts. Another stressors we navigated was how to manage which topics we were going to be covering.

What other stories might you write about on the blog?

We feel that we did a good job at including a variety of stories, experiences and perspectives. However, we also think that we could have included first-hand accounts from students and staff that had experiences in a UDL classroom. Also, we would research the UDL classroom further in order to expand our body of knowledge in terms of UDL teaching practices.

How will you "wind down" the blog or will you continue it?

We will begin to wind down our blog by posting the highlights or most important/valuable findings that we discovered in order to summarize our learning. For instance, reviewing our posts to create a “top 10” big ideas or learning moments.

How did the creation of the multi-author blog prepare you to take on inclusive and special education as an EY teacher?

The creation of a multi-author blog helped us to explore and be exposed to a variety of view regarding UDL, whether for or against. Offer us practical resources and strategies to support us in the future. The blog also taught us that the benefits of collaboration when developing a UDL style of classroom. For example, similar to working with EA’s and support staff in schools in order to support the needs of particular students.

Would you recommend a multi-author blog for other students? What are the advantages and disadvantages of a multi-author blog from a B.Ed. student's perspective? How do you feel about the blog? What role did you play in the blog team?

Yes, we would recommend a multi-author blog for future students. First, because it allows student to explore multiple points of view and expand knowledge to a variety of topics. Blogs also allow for wider interaction with other professionals, authors, educators, etc., in order to acquire practical and relevant knowledge about UDL and other related topics.

One disadvantage of the multi-author blog is the lack of structure in terms of how each blog post looks, or what content is covered.

Overall, we feel that the blog is a valuable form of learning that allows students to learn from other students. We can share our learning with each other and our classmates in order to help everyone grow.