The 4Cs of Digital Literacy

                              Web 2.0 tools and the 4 Cs of Digital Literacy 
By now I must have bored you to death about how bringing in websites into our teaching-learning-testing activities can help build digital literacy (DL) skills in our students. So, after using websites, then what? This post discusses how teaching DL can be taken to the next step. 

Do not use technology just because it's there. Nor because it motivates or creates a flutter of interest in the class. Bring a puppy or a parrot instead 😂

Or a 🐪 or 🐘 or 🐳 or...okay I'm getting sidetracked here, I got these in because I can't find emojis for puppies and parrots.   

We must not use technology for the sake of using technology in the class (as a former colleague said with her nose in the air, "using tech to s** up a class"). Use digital tools to meet DL standards/ performance descriptors / benchmarks, so that teaching DL becomes meaningful and productive.   

The International Society forTechnology in Education (ISTE) sets benchmarks for teaching digital literacy around six standards: creativity and innovation; communication and collaboration; research and information fluency; critical thinking, problem solving and decision making; digital citizenship; and technology operations and concepts. 

To make it easy for us, the National Education Association identified 4 Cs out of these as most important – communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity. 

                                     The 4 Cs of Digital Literacy Image credits  

If we’re to build advanced digital literacy skills in our students, we should design tasks that require them to communicate, collaborate, think critically and create using digital tools. 
You might argue "But I've been doing these always", or "We don't need technology tools to teach these." True.

But technology tools make it easier.  Take a look at some sample classroom tasks. (This source explains how some teachers delivered the 4 Cs of DL using technology tools in their classrooms.) 

There are three very good reasons to teach the 4 Cs through digital tools in the ESL classroom: 

the 4 Cs is easier to teach when you use tech tools to deliver them 

developing the 4 Cs build language proficiency in our students, and 

it builds their workplace readiness   

Let me explain these with a couple of examples. 

Take a look at developing critical thinking. To facilitate this skill, we need to help our students analyse a problem and look at it in new ways; teach them how to connect information from several disciplines while attempting to solve the problem; explore alternate solutions available, etc. The picture below is a real-life example for solving a problem by looking at it in new ways. Read to know how people wore masks to escape being killed by the Bengal tigers in the Ganges Delta.   

                                An example for critical thinking and creativity. Source.  

In a face-to-face classroom, we teach critical thinking by bringing in a lot of information in the form of books, newspaper articles, videos, images, etc. Developing critical thinking also requires a lot of constructive discussion and reflective thinking. All of these are time-consuming and resources-consuming activities. 
Now, think about the benefits if we convert the resources to an online sharing site, hold the discussions on an online platform, and permit reflection outside classroom hours. The amount and type of information available is huge, students have access to them any time, discussion becomes productive because students can respond any time convenient and whenever they're ready, reflection becomes meaningful because there's no one breathing down their necks...    

This is what I meant when I said using technology tools makes teaching the 4 Cs easier. With the added advantage of making our students technology literate. 

Let's look at another example for developing communication skills in our students. For facilitating communication with peers - within classroom, within school, outside school, and global; with adults; with experts; with community elders; and others, where do we stand as a teacher in a face-to-face classroom as opposed to a WhatsApp group or a Facebook page? When connected through the internet, our students have access to more people, more knowledge and more skills. 

 Communicating via tech tools gives us access to a larger audience Image credits

What about the C of creativity? I'm sure you don't need me to tell you about the immense possibilities to create that digital tools gives us. (But will that stop me from talking?😁) 

Starting from Instagram or Facebook posts, tweets, to tiktok videos, the internet is a treasure trove for intelligence to have fun. 

                                                                             Image source

As opposed to the pencil, crayons, paint, pencil, paper, stencils, etc. available in a non-tech class, a tech-enabled class allows easier ways to express oneself artistically.  

The task of the ESL teacher then is simple: What we need to do is design digital tasks that encourage our students to communicate, think critically, create and collaborate. This way we exploit the information and communication potential of technology. 
How do we design such digital tasks? Enter Web 2.0 tools. 

I'll give you a simple definition of web 2.0 in this post and discuss it in detail in a later entry. Or, maybe by the time I write up a post, the world would have already reached web 7.0. The last I checked we were at web 6.0. Read a blog post here. Or a paper here.  
Or better still, take a look at the image below. Does anything in the image sound familiar?

                       A list of web 2.0 tools commonly used by teachers Image credits  

Right now, it is enough to say that web 2.0 is the second stage of web development. And all it means is that the web is not static, but dynamic; and this makes it easier for users to collaborate, create and share web content.

For example, search for Starling on the Encyclopaedia Britannica website www.britannica.com 
Now search for the same word on Wikipedia. 
Which page can you edit and change? Wikipedia. This is an example for a page that is dynamic because it accepts user-generated content. 

Here's another example. Look at your Facebook page. You write something on 'create post' or upload a picture of the dosa you had for breakfast, and the changes are there for everyone to see. 
On the other hand, open a website like my university's, www.efluniversity.ac.in 
Now type and type and type all you want, the page won’t change. That’s the difference. The EFL-U website does not take user-generated content. It is static, not dynamic. 
The EFL University website, like the Encyclopaedia Britannica website, is an example for web 1.0. Whereas, Facebook, like Wikipedia is an example for web 2.0.

In the next post, I’ll introduce you to three web 2.0 tools that are my favourites – Voicethread, Spiderscribe and Padlet. 

Teaching digital literacy. part 2

                                               Exploiting the I and the C of ICT

Why do we call it Information and communication technologies (ICT)? 
ICT provides us access to a lot of information and gives us opportunities for unlimited communication. These are what we need to tap into when we use ICT tools or digital tools in the classroom – their potential for providing information and facilitating communication.

The web has a lot of information. Think about the innumerable websites. Information overload, actually. 
The web also gives us countless ways to communicate with others. Think about email, chat, twitter, Facebook, discussion boards, YouTube, etc. 
Sadly, the only thing lacking on the web are learning tasks that make use of the potential of both. This is what we'll discuss in this post. How do we create tasks that make use of the information and communication potential of technology tools? 

To make it easier, we're going to break this up and narrow it down - we'll first look at creating tasks that make use of the information potential of websites. (Needless to say, we'll look at tasks that utilise the communication potential of technology tools in a later post.)  

                        Bring information and communication into classrooms through tech tools 

                                                                                                                     Image credits 

Think about the textbooks we use in our classrooms. They aren't written exclusively for our class, are they? Websites are like textbooks, they're written for a general audience. 
What do we do when we teach a lesson from the textbook in our classrooms? We match the textbook content with our students' levels and interests. Sometimes we simplify a lesson, bring in a picture, share an experience, introduce a related concept, mention examples, brainstorm to connect a concept with students' prior knowledge, give additional activities as homework, etc. - all to make the lesson 'right' for our class of students.     
Same is the case with using websites. Instead of using websites as they are, we should scaffold students to learn better from websites. There are many ways to do this. One such is creating navigating support documents discussed in an earlier post. 

I've said this before and would like to say it again, using websites is the best way to build foundational level digital literacy skills in our students. Don't be misled into thinking "my students can do wonderful things with the computer, so what is there for me to teach them?"

          Digital natives do not mean digital literacy savvy (a WhatsApp forward)  

Our students, to the digital born and called digital natives, still need to be taught digital literacy (DL) skills. The best way to start facilitating DL skills is through tasks that make use of websites. 
Ten years ago I stumbled on Tom March who tells us about five types of tasks that can be created using resources on the internet. In 2020, he is still relevant. 

                                                       March's task types source 

March discusses five tasks to build digital literacy skills: topic hotlist, multimedia scrapbook, treasure hunt, subject sampler and webquests. They are graded easy to difficult from left to right – topic hotlist being the easiest and webquests being the most difficult. The number of web pages to read for each task reduces from left to right while the complexity of tasks increases. (Do visit his page for samples for each task type.)

For those of you who are so engrossed here and refuse to visit Tom March, here’s an explanation: (I've linked each task type to March's examples.)

Let's start with the topic hotlist. It’s just a list of web page or website links (visit for a brief explanation of websites vs web pages) you have collected to save students’ search time. A hotlist is like a library - unless you give your students a topic to study, list the books they should refer to, or give them a writing task, what will they do in a library? Nothing. They'll browse aimlessly and waste their time. 
Same is the case with hotlists. Not much learning can happen using a collection of web pages unless you create a task using them. The navigation support document (NSD) can help you create a learning task for use along with a hotlist. 

A multimedia scrapbook is almost like a hotlist, except that it has not just reading (verbal) resources, but also multimedia resources. If you create a list of web page links that is a collection of reading, audio and video materials, your students get to see and learn a lot more about the topic. After visiting the links, you can ask your students to create a multimedia scrapbook.

Let me give you an example. For the lesson "Nelson Mandela", (English, Class 10, NCERT) you can share links to an encyclopedia entry, an interview , a museum, related newspaper clips, a video of a TED talk, a song on Mandela, websites on South Africa, an interactive map, a timeline of Mandela's life, photographs, speeches, letters, charity foundations...the resources are endless. Also, remember to share dissident voices – people who spoke against or do not approve of Mandela.     

Imagine the wealth of information the students get from such a rich collection of resources. 

After reading these links, give your students a topic (or topics) and ask them to create a scrapbook of related images using Microsoft Word. 

To make the multimedia scrapbook task cognitively challenging, the "Nelson Mandela" task can be linked with the lesson on "power sharing and types of governments" (Civics, Class 10, NCERT). Or it can be linked with the lessons on "climates", "water resources", "agriculture", "energy resources", "manufacturing industry" (Geography, Class 10, NCERT). Or history... 
Your imagination is the limit. 

I'm not saying you must do this for every lesson. Do this for just one lesson this year. 

Alternately, if you think your students have good search skills, you can ask them to locate web resources themselves and share them on the class Facebook page or WhatsApp group so that everybody can access them. Your multimedia scrapbook is ready!   

The third task discussed by Tom March is a treasure hunt. It works just like a treasure hunt. You choose around 10 web pages that you’d like your students to read. Create one question from each resource that they have to answer after reading each link.  Once they complete reading all the resources and answering individual questions, students have to answer one BIG culminating question that requires them to combine information from all the web pages they read.    

A subject sampler, the fourth task, offers fewer web links to read when compared to the other three.  However, the questions are cognitively challenging because they ask for students' personal opinion.  After reading each set of sites/ pages, the student is asked to respond to questions like 'what do you believe?' / 'what do you think?' / 'what is your opinion?' / 'comment on the writer's view', etc. 
You see why it is challenging? The questions are not factual. Students have to read, understand, think, analyse, connect the new information with what already know or with their experience, and then form an opinion. Such questions help avoid rote learning, copying of answers and plagiarism. These questions usually appear in open book exams.   
March's fifth task is the webquest. Ah! Now that is a task and a half! 
There’s nothing to beat a webquest when it comes to optimal use of websites in the classroom. Webquests are collaborative and integrated skills development tasks that develop higher order thinking skills in students. Now, that’s for another day!  
Here are two webquests I have always liked to share with teachers: 
http://questgarden.com/126/41/7/110512074451/index.htm
http://questgarden.com/52/41/5/070613164641/index.htm  

Do take a look. I’d like to do a video class on webquests. Let's see. 

Meanwhile, start slaying with the other four. 

Teaching digital literacy. part 1

                                             Navigation support documents 
There are many ways to teach digital literacy in the ESL classroom. One is using navigation support documents.   

Effective pedagogies for promoting digital literacy (now on called DL, I'm tired typing) start with using websites in the classroom. That’s it! It’s as simple as that. 
Bring websites into your teaching practices. Whether your students are young or old, experts or novices with the internet, start teaching DL by bringing in websites. Why? Because they're the most ubiquitous, accessible, available and easiest of all stuff digital,  and working with them efficiently is the most basic yet essential aspect of Digital Literacy.  

Bringing websites into your teaching is the first step to digital literacy Image credits

You’d have noticed that every time a discussion comes to using technology in the classroom, the first things the naysayers point out are electricity and the internet. 

Using websites in the classroom helps us win this argument; websites can help us beat the vagaries of electricity and the internet. Websites can be saved; several websites can be opened at a time and kept ready for later use; websites can be used for offline work; they can be downloaded or copied into a document; they're accessible for students with disabilities... the reasons are many.

The following are some things we can do as teachers to use websites to start building DL skills in our students:  

1.     1. Bring in website content to support textbook information. For example, using images or videos to illustrate or explain a teaching point.   

2.     2. Use websites to provide additional information   

3.     3. Produce worksheets with a limited number, but a variety of websites to practice what was taught  

4.     4. Allow students independent search for websites

5.     This post talks about how you can use websites in the classroom by creating Navigation Support Documents. (Other tasks that you can create using websites are discussed in later posts.) 

So here goes. 

External Documents or Navigation support documents (NSDs)

I got this idea from Craig, an ESL teacher who called them external documents. And oh boy! My students took it to another level! 

                   My first batch of students who indulged me and my experiments  

For the ESL teacher and learner, the internet is an abundance of resources. There are millions of websites already created for learning and teaching English. But these remain useless if students do not know where to locate them, when to use them or how to use them. Many students spend long hours searching for websites and once they find them, realise they have no idea how to use them. 

The job of the teacher here is simple: teachers need to be able to identify websites for students to access in order to achieve a learning objective. Once the teacher identifies websites that align with the learning objective and match the levels of students, he/she should be able to explain to students how to use those sites. This is what a navigation support document (NSD) does. 
If you would like to see an example before reading the description, please click here.  

So, how do we design a NSD? 

First step: Keep the objective specific and focused. (For example, I want to teach the use of reported speech. That's my learning objective.)

Second step: Identify websites or web pages** that help learners learn, practice and test this specific item. (To start with, choose around 3 sites for each activity of learning, practicing and testing reported speech.) 

** Note: Let me explain the difference between a website and a web page. Let's use the example of teaching reported speech. One website we can ask our learners to visit is 
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/  This is a website. 

But how do the students locate 'reported speech' on this site? How do they know which lesson is right for them? 
So instead, you give them the exact location where reported speech appears on the website.  
https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/intermediate-to-upper-intermediate/reported-speech-1-statements This takes you to a web page. 
The web page is located inside a website. Web page links are easier for young or novice learners since it takes them directly to the lesson they're supposed to do. 
You can share links to websites if you want your students to acquire additional skills of searching and retrieving information from websites. End of note**  

Third step: Once you identify websites or web pages, copy and paste these links on a Microsoft Word document. (Remember, the links need to be clickable.)

Fourth step: Write clear instructions to guide students to move through these links – what should they do first, second, third, etc.  

Fifth step: Share the document with your students via email or WhatsApp or class FB page.  

The NSD is a Word document that lists links and also gives instructions on how to use these links. Here is an example for an NSD for teaching simple past tense.  

Here's another NSD for reading and use of linking words. 

Note: All the NSDs I shared above are open educational resources (OERs) uploaded on www.oercommons.org You're free to use them as and how you want. Though I've modified and updated all of them, many of them were originally created by my student teachers who I've acknowledged on the resource.  

                                          We'll talk about OERs in another post.  

Take a close look at the NSDs I shared above. You'd notice that they use multiple web pages as

1.        Warm up activity
2.         Presentation
3.        Practice
4.         Application/ Evaluation/ Wrap-up

I usually ask student teachers to choose web pages following roughly the present-practice-produce (or test) model. 

For teaching the skills of reading, speaking or writing you can follow the pre- while- post model. Take a look at an NSD to teach reading. This follows the pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading model. 

Here’s a summing up: 

• A navigation support document (NSD) can be created using MS Word. It is an electronic document that is a collection of web page/website links. 
• NSD helps you to collect and send to your students web resources that can help them acquire a specific learning objective.
• NSD makes web content relevant for students by delivering clear instructions on how to use each link.
• NSD helps learners navigate through multiple sites in order to achieve a learning goal/ objective.
• Using a navigation support document (NSD) can promote digital literacy in our students. 

Read on if you'd like to know how we can also go beyond an NSD. You can enhance the value of NSDs by adding your own activities to it. 

So, at the end of an NSD, you can add  

• a "Handout" you put together of points to remember, 
• a "Worksheet" created by you for students to practice, or 
• a "Test" designed by you that you want them to complete and return. 

This way, the NSD becomes a complete learning package. Or a learning object.**

** Note: A learning object is a collection of digital content that includes teaching items, practice items and assessment items, combined to deliver a single learning objective.

1. A learning object is an entire module that has a clear objective and can be used for self-learning. 
2. It is self-contained since it is a complete package that includes instruction, practice and assessment. 
3. A learning object is made of authentic materials. 
4. It is reusable. Many learning objects can be put together or aggregated to form a complete course. 
5. It can be cross linked with other modules, courses or even subjects. 

Learning objects are of relevance to the online teacher because they are made best possible through technology. End of note**  

An example for a learning object would be an audio or video of live/ recorded lecture + a navigation support document + a task using a web 2.0 tool.

Take a look at the following reported speech activities on oercommons. 

https://www.oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/65816 - NSD
https://www.oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/65819 - Handout
https://www.oercommons.org/courseware/lesson/65822 - worksheet  

Together they create a fantastic learning object to learn reported speech.   
    

Go on, slay it! 

Cheers. 

What is digital literacy?

                                          Understanding digital literacy 
My pet topic. Stop me when it gets boring ;)  
There are more than a million definitions of digital literacy. Seriously! 
Google and see.

Yet what I like best to say is that the 3 Rs of literacy - reading, writing and arithmetic, aren't enough anymore. Once upon a time, to be literate meant to be able to read and write and do a bit of Math. That’s no longer the story.

To be literate now means to be digitally literate; to be able to read and write and think using digital tools. 

UNESCO calls digital literacy a gate skill because employers seek the digitally literate. Our students need to be digitally literate if they're to succeed in the 21^st century workplace. To be productive professionally and personally. And to be successful as lifelong learners.  

                                             (This is one of my favourites.) Image credits. 
                              We have to work towards building lifelong learning habits in our students. 

There is a lot written about why digital literacy is the job of the English teacher. The gist is this – what language do our students use to read and write online? English. 

What language would they be required to use in their workplaces to read and write online? English. 

So there! That’s why digital literacy needs to be taught by the English teacher.  

Now you ask, so what is there to teach them? They know more about computers and the internet than we do.

You must be familiar with the discussion around terms like digital natives, digital immigrants, digital dinosaurs and digital luddites. Our students are digital natives - born to technology, fearless about trying tech devices, comfortable using technology and confident that they are in control. 

While, we, the digital immigrants, are most of the time scared we'll make a mistake and worried the computer will go up in flames!

                                            My nightmare the last twenty years. Image credits 

To get back to the question, so, what can we teach our students about using computers and the internet? 

The American Library Association defines digital literacy as the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, analyse, evaluate, use, create, and share information. (Clue: Pick up all the verbs.) 

Now note that digital literacy requires both cognitive and technical skills. This is where the teacher comes in.   

So, knowing how to operate a computer, send an email, read Facebook posts, send WhatsApp messages, make a YouTube video, download an app, or play PUBG, or even do them all at the same time won't make one digitally literate. 

            Being able to handle this does not make one digitally literate. Image credits 

Being digitally literate means, one is able to search for information online, evaluate its truthfulness, retrieve it, use it ethically to create new content, and then share that digital content with others in productive and meaningful ways. 

Ask yourself, how many of your students can do the following? 

1. Use technology tools to find and access content to meet specific goals

2. Evaluate and analyse information on the web 

3. Combine information on multiple websites to form personally meaningful learning

4. Present learning in new and innovative ways using technology tools 

5. Share their learning using technology tools that are audience-appropriate 

These are what make our students truly digitally literate.
In the classroom, this is what we have to make our students capable of doing. Because, this is what will help them succeed in the world outside classrooms.  

Many of us might be already doing this.  
Do you bring web content into your class to support your lectures? Do you talk to your students about websites to visit for additional information about a topic you taught in class? Or about practicing use of a grammar item on a website? 
Do you tell them about fake news forwards? Do you warn them about copying from websites? Do you make them aware that not all websites can be trusted? 
Do you inform them why images on the internet cannot be used without checking their licences? Do you educate them about diligent sharing of personal details on the internet? 
These are small steps we take to make our students digitally literate. 
But we need to do more. 

The next few posts on teaching digital literacy discuss basic or foundation-level activities to facilitate digital literacy skills in ESL students. Watching your students work, you can proudly say, 'my students are working as if I did not exist.' 

Go on, swag and slay, I say. 
Cheers to lifelong learning!  

Trauma-informed online teaching practices

                                        Online teaching vs trauma-informed online teaching

Covid turned us vidvans overnight - online learning vidvans.
Turned is too gentle a word to capture the shock of it all. Online teaching was thrust upon us - most of us got a night at best to turn experts.

Almost every education agency and educational consultant organised (and are still organising) teacher training workshops for helping us teach online. The workshops I attended discussed in detail great ideas like collaboration, rubrics for online assessment, lifelong learning, student engagement, etc. They also told us about technology tools one can use for facilitating each of these.
Yet through the workshops and at the end of them, basic questions remained - how do I teach my lessons online?

                                                                     Where are my students? 
                                                                                                   Photo by Pim Chu on Unsplash

Right after a lockdown was announced in India, I received a barrage of questions from ESL teachers who had attended my workshops. And I was frankly flummoxed.
Take a look:
My next lesson is indirect speaking? How can I teach indirect speech using computer?
What is the best website to teach reading online?
How do I teach online when my students do not have an online textbook?
How do I assess writing?
What tool do I use to teach speaking?
Can I test speaking using a computer?
What do I do with students who are not free to attend my zoom classes?
How do I make sure my students are listening to me?
I have a hearing impaired student, how do I help him follow my classes?
What do I use to teach when my students have only their father's mobile phone?
How do I give them worksheets?
How do I send PowerPoints of my lectures for the blind students in my class?
How do I teach students who have no internet connection?
Can I have a group discussion online?
When students do not have a library how do I expect them to write a paper?
Can assessment also be considered my teaching?
How do I correct assignments and give feedback?
The list is endless.

And it gave me topics for this blog. So, a big thank you to all of you. We're in this together. 

You'd have noticed the range of queries. Accessibility is a wider issue now - it's not just access to the internet, it is also access to internet-connected devices. We can't expect all our learners to have dedicated mobile phones or laptops for learning purposes. Remember they didn't sign up for online learning.
Online teaching in times like these need to be trauma-informed. 

                                          We need to develop trauma-informed online learning practices
                                                                                                 Photo by Obi Onyeador on Unsplash

Our students face many problems:
1. lack of internet connection
2. no access to internet connected devices for exclusive learning purposes (they might have a parent's phone/ computer/laptop)
3. unable to dedicate specific time for learning (remember they've to help with household chores too)
4. unable to find a quiet corner in the house for class lectures
5. no laptops or computers (have only a phone)
6. not skilled in typing on computers

These are just technology-related accessibility issues. There's another aspect to accessibility.

In a face-to-face classroom, remember, accessibility is about making our classes accessible to students with disabilities. So we have scribes, we use large print, we read out what's written on the blackboard, we use speech-to-text converters for students, we have remedial classes, etc.
   

                       Ever wondered how students with visual disabilities read your PowerPoint?  Credits                                   
However, accessibility goes beyond this.

I'd like us to remember that all students who are disadvantaged by barriers of any sort - physical disabilities, learning disabilities, language levels, socio-cultural background, personal interests - should be given equal opportunities to quality education, to learn and to succeed.  Without compromising on the quality of learning. This is important.
Our classes must be adapted to allow participation of all students. Our lectures, materials, tasks and activities should be accessible to all students. The classroom should be a level playing field for all.

                                             Our classrooms should not be reduced to this.  

It's very difficult for a non-disabled teacher to design or create inclusive teaching practices.
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) helps us understand how to make learning accessible to and possible for every learner.

I'll quickly summarise the principles of UDL:

UDL points out that as teachers we have to (1) present our teaching materials in multiple ways, (2) give multiple paths for our students to engage and interact with our instruction materials, and (3) provide multiple options for students to demonstrate their learning.

For those of you who are familiar with the present - practice - produce model, UDL says give multiple options for teaching, practicing and producing. 

So, think:
(1) What are the different ways in which I can deliver my teaching objective? As lecture, as reading text, using images, writing on the blackboard, using a video or audio, etc.
(2) What are different ways my students can practice the objective using my instructional materials? Using a worksheet, through discussions, by creating a mind map, searching for resources on their own, clicking photographs, interviewing another person or viewing videos, etc. 
and
(3) What are the different ways in which my students can show how much they have learnt?
Creating a scrap book, making a video, writing a paper, summarising many papers, drawing a timeline, etc. 

Think back to your class now. I'm sure you can name some students who will learn best by writing a research paper, some who will learn well if allowed to create a picture book, a few who would like to create a video of an interview, and yet others who achieve optimal learning by being a part of a group presentation project. Providing students multiple opportunities like these is what UDL is all about.

                                                              Universal Design for Learning - letting everyone grow 
                                                                                          Photo by Daan Wijngaard from Pexels


We do not need technology to implement the principles of UDL. But it helps. Use of technology tools helps us design inclusive learning practices and makes our teaching accessible.

Creating accessible learning environments should be the goal of all online teaching - learning environments that provide a level playing field for all, environments that overcome barriers related to internet connectivity, availability of devices, physical disabilities, learning disorders and personal factors. 

This is why trauma-informed online learning practices are different from online practices under normal conditions. Always remember we are now teaching students who had opted for face-to-face teaching.
Technology allows us wonderful opportunities to realise the principles of UDL and make our instruction accessible to every learner. Digital tools help us build variety into our teaching and bring flexibility to our materials so that all students gain and achieve.
And then we become vidvans, truly.