Universal Design for Learning
- CAST and FETC Partner to Champion Inclusive Technology in Education - Newswire December 9, 2024
- Seesaw Awarded CAST UDL Product Certification Recognizing Commitment to Equity & Accessibility - The Eastern Progress Online December 7, 2024
- Assistive Technology (AT): Many Possibilities to Consider - Good Morning Wilton December 4, 2024
- November 27, 2024 - www.alfred.edu November 27, 2024
- (PDF) Investigating the Impact of Universal Design for Learning: Empowering Students with Disabilities in Higher Education - ResearchGate November 23, 2024
- ASU Accessibility Awareness Day advocates for a more inclusive digital future - Arizona State University (ASU) November 15, 2024
- Why Accessibility Will Be the Next Big Demand From K-12 Districts - Education Week November 7, 2024
- 10 Tips toward Accessibility - American Libraries November 1, 2024
Education and AI
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education Market to grow by USD 2.32 Billion (2024-2028), driven by demand for AI-based customized learning, report highlights AI trends - Technavio - Yahoo Finance December 9, 2024
- AI in Education: Helpful Tool or Sinister Danger? - Comstock's Magazine December 9, 2024
- Artificial Intelligence and Education: Benefits, Challenges - Hellenic News of America December 9, 2024
- Greece Takes Initial Steps To Integrate AI In Education Through AI4edu Program - GreekCityTimes.com December 8, 2024
- Greece to Introduce Artificial Intelligence into Its Education System - tovima.com December 8, 2024
- How A.I. Can Revive a Love of Learning - The New York Times December 7, 2024
- Missoula-area teachers explore the use of artificial intelligence in schools - MTPR December 7, 2024
- Could AI Transform Career-Technical Education? - Education Week December 5, 2024
Social Media Policy
- Luigi Mangione's social media flooded with flirty texts and followers after his arrest in Brian Thompson's murder - Hindustan Times December 10, 2024
- California AG Rob Bonta calls for social media warning labels - MSN December 10, 2024
- Suspect in United Healthcare CEO Killing Showed Interest in Pop Psychology on Social Media - The New York Times December 10, 2024
- California AG Rob Bonta calls for social media warning labels - CBS News December 10, 2024
- Odessa Police Department addresses serial killer social media claims - NewsWest9.com December 10, 2024
- California leaders propose bill to warn users of social media's mental health risks - Bakersfield Now December 10, 2024
- Luigi Mangione’s Social Media Followers Increase After Arrest - Hits 96 December 10, 2024
- School cancels 'Know Your Rights' session amid social media backlash - FOX 13 Seattle December 10, 2024
Kwantlen
- Kwantlen Polytechnic University - KPU alum's book on Taylor Swift's fashion becomes New York Times bestseller - Education News Canada December 3, 2024
- Announcements – June 2023 - University Affairs December 2, 2024
- Artist Mayuresh Ambekar hopes his new mural will motivate students to explore their potential at Kwantlen Polytechnic University - Pancouver November 27, 2024
- Kwantlen Polytechnic University - Artist hopes KPU campus mural will drive students to explore their potential - Education News Canada November 27, 2024
- Kwantlen Polytechnic University - Anthropology student researches human-bear conflicts in northern B.C. - Education News Canada November 19, 2024
- KPU graduate showcases collection at Vancouver Fashion Week - Richmond News November 17, 2024
- KWANTLEN POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY Researchers explore memory failure across the lifespan - Education News Canada November 13, 2024
- B.C. Election: What the results across Metro Vancouver tell us about the 2024 vote - Vancouver Sun October 21, 2024
Feedback
When interviewing candidates for teaching positions at my university, I often ask them how they provide and receive feedback in the workplace, to get a quick, vivid picture of their character and initiative. When you give clear and useful feedback to your colleagues, you make them better. When you receive feedback gratefully and attentively, you make *you* better.
One applicant told my Search Committee that when she got criticism at work she would run down to a nearby park and throw rocks at the geese. We wished her well.
Prime marketing space!
“The Inukshuk is my friend.”
The Invictus Games are coming to Vancouver and Whistler in February. It will be the first time winter sports events will be featured “in addition to the core Invictus Games sports of indoor rowing, sitting volleyball, swimming, wheelchair rugby and wheelchair basketball. Vancouver and Whistler were selected as the host cities by the Invictus Games Foundation following a competitive bid process.”
Prince Harry, Founder and Patron of the Invictus Games Foundation, writes:
The Invictus Games Vancouver Whistler 2025 will offer a global platform to expand the range and profile of winter adaptive sports. With deep respect, I’m also pleased to share that the Games in Canada will be held in partnership with the First Nations, in the spirit of truth and reconciliation with Indigenous communities.
Election Day in B.C.
And it’s an “atmospheric river” event in Vancouver. Timing!
Is Kwantlen Student Association trying to kill student newspaper?
Seems bad. I trust these machinations, no matter who is behind them, will not be successful. My life is already too full of dismay (thank you very much). The editor of The Runner, the student newspaper, is interviewed here.
Many years ago I endowed an award given annually at my university to a journalism student “recognized for active involvement with production of student publications as a writer and/or editor.” I would cry many tears if these student publications ceased to exist at my university.
Raw Milk
The marvellous Talia Lavin discusses “the collapse of consensus reality.” I love how Lavin lets loose her scorn.
Increased raw milk consumption has already led to a rise in foodborne illness—including stillbirths, miscarriages and deaths, albeit in very small numbers. The point is, do you want your morning latte to become a game of Russian roulette? I would hope not! I hope we can want better things for ourselves and our country! I’ve seen the misinformation about raw milk floating around like sour curd—recently, racist far-right asshole and self-proclaimed “theocratic fascist” Matt Walsh felt the need to dress down his three million Twitter followers about it (“Pasteurization is not some evil sorcery. It just kills the dangerous bacteria you morons”), leading to nuclear levels of indignation and betrayal among his dirty-dairy-demanding disciples. It’s “better for you!” Getting diphtheria will trigger the libs! It’s got super special vitamins! Pasteurization is a Communist plot!
It’s not. It was invented by a guy who wanted to make French booze more awesome, and was then transposed to the dairy-sphere by Germans who wanted fewer children to die, and who succeeded in ways that bring tears to my eyes when I consider how many babies were saved because of their relentless efforts. It’s unambiguously a good thing. The fact that this “debate,” such as it is, even exists speaks to the kind of yawning gulf between realities that puts us at this grim precipice of an election. If we can’t even agree that boiling milk for ten seconds or so to kill germs and save kids is a good thing—what the fuck is consensus reality even about anymore?
Back in the 1800s, Louis Pasteur was busy bending light around crystals no one else had bothered to examine; he made good beer, cured chicken cholera and cattle anthrax, and is a national hero buried in a magnificent crypt in a Paris institute that bears his name. I’d go with Louis on this one. Don’t listen to reflexive contrarians and people who are more than willing to see you die for a dollar. Drink clear wine and healthy milk, keep your kids safe, and remember there is better food than anger. The best revenge beer is living well.
“Storying Universal Design for Learning”
My Kwantlen Polytechnic University colleague Seanna Takacs, PhD, has coauthored “Storying Universal Design for Learning” (with coauathors Lilach Marom, Alex Vanderveen, and the late Arley Cruthers Mcneney). It is a terrific book that “compiles post-secondary student voices on accessible teaching practices and universal design for learning (UDL) components that have been integrated into their classes. Students reflect on meaningfulness and engagement, accommodation plans, course design, and instructor supportiveness. This guide offers suggestions for teaching to support instructors in building more accessible classrooms.”
No Contest has been following the UDL movement for a long time, establishing a real-time newsfeed on the topic a year or so ago.
From the book’s introduction:
The traditional core of education is that the curriculum is at the centre of learning. UDL turns this assumption around and puts the learner at the centre. Instead of labelling the learner as disabled, underachieving, or in need of special services, we define the curriculum in terms of how adequately it can accommodate and support the diversity of learners.
This is from Arley’s marvellous Preface:
This resource aggressively centres the experiences and voices of disabled, neurodivergent, and chronically ill students. It takes the stance that even if UDL did not offer a single benefit to typical and abled students, it would still be worth doing. Disabled, chronically ill, and neurodivergent students deserve access to education. The world needs their knowledge. Our universities are better for their presence.
And yet, often instructors see accommodation as a special privilege rather than a right. Many universities require a formal diagnosis (and a lot of hoop jumping) to even access accommodations. Accommodations are for disabled people, many believe.
However, there is no clear line between “disabled” and “abled.” People can slide in and out of that category throughout their life. Having a diagnosis is also a privilege. Some diagnoses cost thousands of dollars to be assessed. Others are considered rare, and doctors are reluctant to look for them. Many neurodivergent people go through their whole lives not knowing that their struggles are because of neurodivergence.
In our study we found that many of the students who we interviewed received an ADHD diagnosis early into their university career when the workarounds and “hacks” that allowed them to thrive in high school no longer work. What if they didn’t have to fail before getting a diagnosis?
Preparing ourselves for November
Dr. Kate Starbird and her colleagues at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public (CIP) have launched a Substack newsletter devoted to tracking rumours and misinformation concerning the upcoming United States Presidential election. This newsletter is part of the group’s “rapid research” initiative.
We will write our rapid research analyses in “posts” here, while also cross posting to our website, where you can see the rest of the 2024 U.S. Election Rumor Research. The “notes” function of Substack will allow us to quickly share and send observations about election rumors that may not merit a full article. …
This first post covers the background of the CIP, our approach to election rumor research, and some of the anticipated outputs for this cycle. It is an updated version of an earlier article and reflects some changes due to evolving data access, methods of analysis and communication, and personnel.
I first got to know about Kate Starbird when she was a basketball star for Stanford University in the mid-nineties. After a stint in the WNBA, she returned to university (University of Colorado) to earn a PhD in Technology, Media, and Society. Now she’s teaching and doing research at the University of Washington. Earlier posts her described her work on Crisis Informatics and Election Delegitimization.
“If you have any tips and tricks for evading censors, please contact us.”
This sentiment, published in The Economist by Gabriel Crossley, has made my Sunday. Crossley notes that in China VPNs (“software which makes it appear as if a computer or mobile phone is located in another country”) have been “getting slower” and “less reliable” this summer.
Foreigners who live here are complaining. So are many Chinese. On Weibo, a social-media site, netizens said their “ladders” over the great firewall (as VPNs are known) seemed to have broken. … It is probably the Chinese government disrupting the networks.
Technically it is illegal to use a VPN in China without official permission. But things are usually less strict in practice because the government finds VPNs useful too. Without them foreigners would be less likely to visit and local businesses would struggle to find overseas customers. So in the past officials struck a balance. They only throttled VPNs during important events, such as the meeting of China’s legislature every spring.
Language Log writer Victor Mair points out:
This is a significant phenomenon. It reminds me of the years after the Tiananmen Massacre before the internet was widely used and people relied on fax machines to spread urgent news, all the fax machines were required to be turned off in the weeks before and after 6/4 [the anniversary of the massacre in Tiananmen Square].
Counter
I have had truly unpleasant interactions with people I’ve known for years – including with those in academia – during these Olympics. Their loathsome disdain for transgenderism made them attack a non-transgendered woman, a boxer from Algeria, in giddy displays of ignorance and hatred. I will be interested in how this complaint against X (formerly Twitter) develops. From Aljazeera:
Imane Khelif … Algeria’s flag bearer in the closing ceremony, won gold Friday in the women’s welterweight division, becoming a new hero in her native Algeria and bringing global attention to women’s boxing. …
Khalif was unwittingly thrust into a worldwide clash over gender identity and regulation in sports after her first fight, when Italian opponent Angela Carini pulled out just seconds into the match, citing pain from opening punches. False claims that Khelif was transgender or a man erupted online, and the International Olympic Committee defended her and denounced those peddling misinformation. Khelif said that the spread of misconceptions about her “harms human dignity.” …
—
The complaint was filed Friday with a special unit in the Paris prosecutor’s office for combating online hate speech, alleging “aggravated cyber-harassment” targeting Khelif, lawyer Nabil Boudi said. In a statement, he described it as a “misogynist, racist and sexist campaign” against the boxer.
It is now up to prosecutors to decide whether to open an investigation. As is common in French law, the complaint doesn’t name an alleged perpetrator but leaves it to investigators to determine who could be at fault.
Additional context here. And more of Khelif’s own, honestly powerful words here.
One cannot even point to misinformation as the cause for the attacks I witnessed first-hand. People were chomping at the bit. I was dismayed.