.png)
Digital Tools for Equity and Inclusion
Each month I plan to highlight different digital tools that I recommend for learning, creating, and assessing student progress. This month's focus is equity and inclusion. As we know, we need to meet the needs of all learners and utilizing digital tools with accessiblity options can optimize teaching and learning for all students. I take into consideration the Universal Design for Learning Framework when selecting tools to share to ensure engagement, representation, and expression. Here are a few favorites that I use in my practice.
Learning
Our school district subscribes to Gale Databases. We have access to the following:
Gale in Context: US History
Gale in Context: World History
Gale in Context: Science
Gale in Context: Global Issues
Gale in Context: Biography
Gale in Context: Opposing Viewpoints
These databases offer several benefits. In addition to providing students with credible, peer-reviewed resources, Gale has great accessibility features. These features include text translation, adjusting font style and size, customizing background color, and listening to text. Check out the tutorial below.
Creating
Book Creator is one of my favorite digital creation tools that features plenty of accessibility features. There is an interactive reader, speech to text to type, multiple languages, and more. Plus it is very intuitive for learners of all ages. I use it as a tool to promote books in the library, but students can use it for virtually any kind of creative assignment to demonstrate learning in a fun and engaging way. There are also templates and ready-made themes available. Book Creator will be translated automatically if your Chrome browser is set to any of 10 langauges including Spanish, French, German, and Japanese. Here is an excellent resource that provides ideas for supporting language learners. Check out the tutorial below to see how easy it is to create something really awesome!
Assessing
