PD Plan: Using Apps to Increase Equity and Accessibility in the Classroom
Topic/Focus:
– Exploring how educational apps can enhance equity and accessibility in diverse classrooms.
– Focus on identifying, implementing, and assessing apps that support students with different learning needs, disabilities, and socio-economic backgrounds.
Goals/Objectives:
- Increase Awareness: Introduce teachers to apps that promote inclusivity and accessibility in the classroom.
- Hands-On Practice: Allow teachers to explore and integrate selected apps into their lesson plans to address student diversity.
- Student-Centered Focus: Ensure students from all backgrounds can access learning tools that meet their unique needs (e.g., translation tools, speech-to-text, and assistive tech apps).
- Evaluate Effectiveness: Equip teachers with strategies to assess the impact of these tools on student engagement, participation, and success.
General Overview:
– This training provides educators with the skills and knowledge to leverage technology to create more equitable and accessible learning environments. Participants will explore various apps designed to support students with different abilities, languages, and learning styles, and will learn to integrate these tools into everyday classroom activities.
ISTE Standards:
– Collaborator (2.4): Engage in strategies and practices for using technology to collaborate with families and communities to support students’ diverse needs.
– Designer (2.5): Use digital tools to design and implement differentiated learning experiences.
– Facilitator (2.6): Facilitate learning with technology to support student achievement and meet diverse learning needs.
-Equity and Citizenship Advocate (3.1): Leaders use technology to increase equity, inclusion, and digital citizenship practices.
-Visionary Planner (3.2): Leaders engage others in establishing a vision, strategic plan and ongoing evaluation cycle for transforming learning with technology.
-Connected Learner(3.5): Leaders model and promote continuous professional learning for themselves and others.
# of Hours:
– 12 hours (Part of a professional development workshop series)
Plan for Delivery:
6/1 Hour Workshops: Throughout the School Year. And 6 hours of asynchronous application exploration throughout the school year.
Session 1: Introduction: The challenges of equity in education and the role of apps.
Session 2: App Exploration: Teachers explore and familiarize themselves with apps like Google Classroom, Flipgrid, and Duolingo.
Session 3:Group Work: Educators collaborate on integrating these apps into lesson plans.
Session 4: Hands-On Practice: Creating lesson plans that include the use of these tools.
Session 5: Reflection & Sharing: A group discussion on the effectiveness of the apps and anticipated outcomes.
Plan for Evaluation:
- Surveys and Feedback Forms: Collect teacher feedback on the utility of the apps and their ability to meet the needs of diverse learners.
- App Integration Review: Teachers submit lesson plans that integrate the apps, which are reviewed for alignment with goals.
- Student Outcomes: Collect data on student engagement and performance after the apps are used in class to assess the impact on accessibility and equity.
- Follow-Up Discussion: Host a follow-up session to reflect on implementation challenges and successes, and offer further app support if needed.
3–5 Minute Multimedia Presentation Outline:
Slide 1: Title Slide
– Title: Using Apps to Increase Equity and Accessibility in the Classroom
– Subtitle: Leveraging Technology to Create Inclusive Learning Environments
– Presenter’s Name and Date
Slide 2: Introduction
– Key Question: How can technology help ensure all students, regardless of background or ability, have access to quality education?
– Technology offers innovative ways to break down barriers to learning.
– Today, we’ll explore how educational apps can address equity and accessibility in our classrooms.
Slide 3: Goals and Objectives
– Main Goals:
– Raise awareness about the use of apps to support diverse learners.
– Provide hands-on practice with specific tools that can be used to address equity.
– Ensure teachers can evaluate the effectiveness of these tools for their classrooms.
– Focus: How we can apply digital tools to meet the needs of students with disabilities, language barriers, and different learning styles.
Slide 4: Apps for Equity and Accessibility
– Examples of Apps:
– Khan Academy: offers free online teaching resources to boost student learning in areas like math, science, history, and more. Lessons are organized by grade level, allowing teachers to hand-pick topics in which students need extra support.
– Nearpod: Holds a standards-based library that houses more than 15,000 interactive lessons and videos across grade levels; teachers can also import their own PowerPoint presentations and PDFs to NearPod and take their lessons to the next level with the addition of quizzes, drawing tools, videos, and more.
– Equity Maps: tool for teachers looking to bring equity into their classroom by making sure all students are engaged and participating. Equity Maps allows teachers to input basic profile data for students and then track how often each student participates in class discussion each day or in a given conversation.
– Duolingo: Supports English Language Learners (ELL) with language practice.
– Speech-to-Text Apps: Helps students who struggle with writing due to physical or learning disabilities.
-Magic School: Supports teachers in a multitude of tasks that need to be completed often on a daily basis. This platform makes prompt engineering easy and can alleviate hours of work.
– AudioPen: an AI-powered tool that converts voice notes into text, aiding teachers in recording and summarizing thoughts efficiently. It offers transcription services with high accuracy and supports multiple languages.
– Education CoPilot: AI platform that simplifies lesson planning by generating customized lesson plans, handouts, and student reports. It uses machine learning algorithms to adapt to individual teaching styles.
– MindMeister: a collaborative mind mapping tool powered by AI that helps teachers and students visually organize thoughts, ideas, and concepts.
-Read&Write: AI tool that supports reading and writing skills by providing text-to-speech, word prediction, and vocabulary support features.
-Speechify: Speech synthesis technology that allows the user to convert text to voice read audio.
-Grammarly: an AI-powered writing assistant that helps improve the correctness, clarity, and engagement of your writing
-Canva: a tool that has millions of templates allowing the user to make information accessible to anyone.
-Readworks offers a variety of features to help teachers support students. Differentiation, Article-a-day, Filters, Stepreads, and other support features.
-Learning Management Systems (LMS): Canvas, Blackboard, and Schoology, are just a few of these platforms that allow educational content to be delivered to students in a multitude of ways.
Slide 5: ISTE Standards Alignment
– Collaborator (2.4): Engage in strategies and practices for using technology to collaborate with families and communities to support students’ diverse needs.
– Designer (2.5): Use digital tools to design and implement differentiated learning experiences.
– Facilitator (2.6): Facilitate learning with technology to support student achievement and meet diverse learning needs.
-Equity and Citizenship Advocate (3.1): Leaders use technology to increase equity, inclusion, and digital citizenship practices.
-Visionary Planner (3.2): Leaders engage others in establishing a vision, strategic plan and ongoing evaluation cycle for transforming learning with technology.
-Connected Learner (3.5): Leaders model and promote continuous professional learning for themselves and others.
Slide 6: Training Structure
– 6/1 Hour Workshops: Throughout the School Year. And 6 hours of asynchronous application exploration throughout the school year.
- Introduction: The challenges of equity in education and the role of apps.
- App Exploration: Teachers explore and familiarize themselves with apps like Google Classroom, Flipgrid, and Duolingo.
- Group Work: Educators collaborate on integrating these apps into lesson plans.
- Hands-On Practice: Creating lesson plans that include the use of these tools.
- Reflection & Sharing: A group discussion on the effectiveness of the apps and anticipated outcomes.
Slide 7: Measuring Success
– Evaluation Plan:
- Surveys and Feedback: Gather teacher perspectives on app usability and effectiveness.
- Lesson Plan Review: Assess how well teachers are integrating apps to promote equity and accessibility.
- Student Outcomes: Track student engagement and performance after using these apps.
- Follow-up: Continue support through reflection sessions to refine strategies.
Slide 8: Conclusion
– Key Takeaway: Technology, when thoughtfully applied, can help bridge gaps in education by making learning more accessible for all students.
– Encouraging the use of apps that meet the unique needs of each student will create more inclusive and equitable classrooms.
Call to Action: Let’s commit to integrating these tools in ways that empower every learner to succeed.
Slide 9: Thank You!
– Contact Information
– Open for any questions or further discussion.
References
Education leaders. (2024, July 15). ISTE. https://iste.org/standards/education-leaders
Editorial. (2024, July 24). Enhancing Access: Apps for Educational Equity Insights – Education Uplifted. The Insurance Universe. https://educationuplifted.com/apps-for-educational-equity/
MTI: Professional Development Courses & Graduate CE for Teachers. (2024, April 19). 24 Best AI Tools for Special Education Teachers in 2024 – MTI: Professional Development Courses & MTI: Professional Development Courses & Graduate CE for Teachers. https://www.midwestteachersinstitute.org/special-education-ai-tools/
The best apps for K-12 teachers. (n.d.). Career Charge | USF CTPE Blog. https://corporatetraining.usf.edu/blog/the-best-apps-for-k-12-teachers