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NCAC: Research & Solutions: Consensus Building: Oh, the Places You'll Go

Oh, the Places You'll Go- with E-text!

A Brief Adventure Exploring E-Text and Universally Designed Instruction

About NCAC

Teachers, if you are not yet regularly using electronic text, and especially e-text combined with beneficial features that can stretch your students' learning horizons, the National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum (NCAC) offers exciting ideas to help you make reading come alive for learners who have difficulty working with traditional books in print.

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NCAC invites you to jump on board the fourth annual Read Across America, event on March 2, 2001. On this day, the National Education Association (NEA) is calling for children and teenagers in every school and community to join with adults to celebrate reading on what would be Dr. Seuss's 97th birthday. Author Theodor Geisels, known as Dr. Seuss, died in 1991 at age 95.

The NEA borrowed this year's theme, "Oh the Places You'll Go," from one of his 44 beloved book titles. More than 40 national partners are supporting "Read Across America" in their own way with read-a-thons, reading pajama parties, and more.

NCAC, CAST (the Massachusetts-based Center for Applied Special Technology), and the Council for Exceptional Children invite you to expand your teaching talents and join in our celebration by adopting strategies that increase access to the general curriculum. Take our road trip below and explore the new worlds of e-text, universal design in education, and other inclusive teaching techniques. We are not promising Fox in Socks (Seuss, 1965) nor Yertle the Turtle (Seuss, 1988) on this adventure, but our scenic routes are filled with ideas and e-text resources that can be used by trained teachers to enhance instruction, especially for students who learn in diverse ways.

Don't miss our first stop on the road to school improvement where we have posted a brief explanation of Universal Design for Learning (UDL). This is an evolving and flexible instructional approach based on new brain research, next stage technologies, and time-honored teaching practices. At its core is the use of e-text and universally designed features that help teachers create more than one avenue for students to learn and share what they know.

Travel on and check out selected sources for digital text and products with universally designed features that can increase accessibility to the curriculum. You can find a more comprehensive selection on CAST's Web site. Our last stops invite you to stay involved with NCAC and other activities at CAST. Learn how school districts can assure that their Web sites are accessible to the widest possible audience. Consider joining the National Consortium on Universal Design for Learning, CAST's growing national partnership of educators, schools and experts who are interested in sharing expertise about universal design in the classroom.

We also invite you to make March 2 and the days thereafter A Good Day for Up (Seuss, 1974) by logging on often to the NCAC and CAST Web sites. In the months ahead, we expect this site to grow and help teachers enrich instruction using practical ideas, resources, and innovations that improve schooling through universally designed instruction.

Oh, The Places You'll Go- With E-Text!
An Adventure Exploring E-Text And Universally Designed Instruction

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Scenic Stops Welcome: Learn How Universal Design Opens Doors To Learning Scenic Route 1: Teach With Books in E-Text Formats Scenic Route 2: Check Out E-Zines and Other Online Sources for Stories Scenic Route 3: Discover Products That Support Universally Designed Instruction Scenic Route 4: Meet Bobby and Help Your District Broaden Its Web Audience Scenic Route 5: Learn More About Using Universal Design In Classrooms

Travel Alert: Before you depart, please note that there is no totally universally designed curriculum and there are no perfect products. This trip is a brief introduction and springboard to selected aspects of universally designed instruction. More in-depth information about universal design in education is available on the CAST Website and from the ERIC Clearinghouse at the Council for Exceptional Children.

When you have completed this trip, consider following up in any or all of the following ways:

• Make comparisons and select universally designed software with built-in features and supports serving a wide range of learners. Look for products that include the capacity for turning text into speech, highlighting text, taking notes, providing dictionary definitions or links to other reference materials, revealing examples, providing summaries, and offering controls for font style, font size, foreground and background colors, and the speed of presentation of text and images. Investigate other options on the CAST Web site.
• Explore freestanding software programs, such as electronic readers, that can be purchased individually or downloaded at no cost. These run simultaneously with e-text that you provide. Readers can expand a teacher's instructional options.
• Seriously consider purchasing educational materials from publishers that are producing CD-Rom versions of print-on-paper textbooks and collateral materials.
• Equip students who have sensory, physical, and cognitive disabilities with needed assistive technologies that create access to the curriculum for their particular needs.
• Investigate e-text options available through your public library, such as netLibrary services.
• Do your part to see that the Web site for your school district is accessible to the widest possible audience. CAST offers "Bobby," a free web page evaluator. There is a briefing for you at end of this trip and a direct link that you can pass along to your district's web manager.
• Return to the NCAC Web site and consider joining the National Consortium on Universal Design for Learning.

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Was Dr. Seuss in favor of universal design in the classroom? The answer could be, "yes." After all, while he may not have written about text-to-speech, screen readers, or other assistive technologies or curriculum supports seen today, these innovations were surely his vision when he entitled a book, I Can Read With My Eyes Shut (1978).

Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss, from the National Center for Accessing the General Curriculum. A trip honoring your memory is straight ahead!

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Trip Welcome:
Learn How Universal Design Opens Doors To Learning

A fresh approach to teaching and learning called Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and other examples of universally designed instruction, are turning the promise of personally tailored education into reality for students with diverse backgrounds, skills, abilities, and interests.

Universal design has its origins in architecture and city planning, which sometimes imposes required measures from builders, such as building in curb cuts on sidewalks, in order to make housing and the surrounding environment accessible to people with disabilities. As a result, there are many other beneficiaries including senior citizens, mothers using strollers, joggers, and others. Now, that concept of accessibility for all has come alive in the form of universally designed instruction that opens the doors to the curriculum for a wide variety of learners. Based on new brain research, next-stage technologies, and careful teaching practices, universal design creates multiple avenues for learning and for expression so that students can show what they know. By providing alternatives to traditional instruction, this method appears to be successful and appropriate for a wide range of learners, even when they are part of large groups and when they learn differently from one another. Universal design's built-in flexibility enables educators to tailor, to personalize, to differentiate, and to individualize teaching and learning.

While no curriculum is as yet fully universally designed, much is known about reforming classroom instruction using this approach so that students can connect with the curriculum, benefit from it, and measurably improve their performance.

Gaining full access to the general curriculum is the goal for all children. For children and youths with diagnosed disabilities, a universally designed educational approach supports Congress's 1997 amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). For students who have diverse learning styles and special needs who are not labeled disabled, and for bright and gifted learners, this approach addresses the standards-based educational reform movement that seeks improved educational results and the chance to realize individual potential for everyone.

For more about Universal Design for Learning, the best known application of universal design in education, visit CAST and the National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum. You can visit the UDL section of the CAST Web site with the following links:

• UDL: Theory & Research
• UDL: Tools & Resources
• UDL: Examples & Illustration
• UDL: Activites & Collaboration

The Council for Exceptional Children also has a storehouse of information about universal design in classrooms. Go to

• A Curriculum Every Student Can Use: Design Principles For Student Access
• What is "Universal Design" for Curriculum Access?
• Curriculum Access and Universal Design for Learning

More information is available at CAST's Web site, www.cast.org. The CAST eReader¿ is a trademark of CAST.

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Scenic Route 1:
Teach With Books In E-text Formats

For students who are frustrated or fail to learn using traditional print on paper educational materials, electronic text and a flexible presentation mode provide exciting learning opportunities. Teachers can find a range of e-text offerings. Some are text only, while others have varying degrees of text plus graphic images, sound, animation, and other innovative enhancements. Some examples follow:

Check Out "Wired for Books" For A Read-Aloud Beatrix Potter Book!
Log on at Wired for Books, a project of the Ohio University Telecommunications Center. One of the most popular selections here is the audio-slide presentation of The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Many adult selections are audio-only and some are supported with video. Find modern and classic stories, plays, poems, essays, and author interviews.

Consider An Original Illustrated Chapter Book Based on A Family Tale
Read Adventures of Banph, a story set in a future world where insects rule the earth. Humans, and other mammals are extinct. In their places are insects with human characteristics living the lifestyle of humans during the Middle Ages

Bookmark A Source For E-Text Editions Serving All Ages
Surf over to The Young People's Zone for e-text editions of favorite books that have no copyright restrictions. Find e-text for Anne of Green Gables, Tom Sawyer, various fairy tales, and the Bobbsey Twins. This site also includes hymns.

Experience The Alex Catalogue's E-Text And Special Features
The Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts offers teachers a rich collection of digital documents representing English literature, American literature, and Western philosophy. Here, you can search for and display texts from the collection, and also search the content for keywords or parts of words.

• For example, in Mark Twain's The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn you can conduct a search for the words like fish and belly to get a description of Huck Finn's father.
• Or, search the content of multiple documents simultaneously. For example, you can first locate all the documents in the collection authored by Mark Twain. Next, you can search selected documents for something like slav* (which includes slave, slaves, slavery, etc.) to draw out themes across texts.
• Another unique feature is the on-the-fly creation of PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Using this option you can specify fonts and font sizes for your output. For example, you can create a PDF version of Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle. This feature allows you to create simply formatted but very readable documents for printing; the documents in the collection are not necessarily intended to be read online.
• Also find free goodies available for downloading. You can have complete sets of the collected documents and the tools necessary to search them without the use of your Web browser. While you will still need a direct Internet connection, the search tools provide the means for more complex content analysis and enhance access to texts in the collection."

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Scenic Route 2:
Check Out E-Zines and Other Sources for Stories

Get creative and go beyond books by encouraging students to read stories, poems, feature articles, and more found online.

Savor a Story
The Family Literacy Center site and the ERIC Clearinghouse for Reading, English and Communication are producing the magazine Parents and Children Together on the World Wide Web. This publication hopes to bring parents and children together through the magic of reading. Find original read-aloud stories and articles for parents about children's reading and writing, along with book reviews of recent children's literature.

Lilypads, Spiders, and Fishermen Lure Youngsters to the Internet Public Library
At Story Hour at the Internet Public Library you will find plenty of great stories selected by the Youth Division of the Internet Public Library. They are presented in a variety of formats, including plain text, text with graphics and audio, and self-running programs.

Use Book Chapters Online To Stimulate Reading
Free Chapters is the imprint site of Little Brown, a Time Warner company. Find sample chapters in e-text taken from popular young adult and adult books that hopefully inspire students to ask for more.

Find Mostly Classics at Project Gutenberg
A library of electronically stored books at Project Gutenberg is comprised mostly of classics that are in the public domain. Downloaded these digital texts for free and view them off-line. The project once was university supported but currently is financed using volunteers and donations.

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Scenic Route 3:
Discover Products That Support Universally Designed Instruction

Using the principles of universal design, CAST has developed eReader, a versatile, advanced literacy program that helps learners of various abilities gain access to electronic text, while supporting and enhancing their literacy development. Other types of readers are growing in popularity, as well.

One way to aid reading electronically is with electronic readers. Learn about the CAST eReader (formerly ULTimate Reader) an electronic reader that adds spoken voice, visual highlighting, document navigation, or page navigation to any electronic text. The software can take content from any source -- the Internet, word processing files, scanned-in text, or typed-in text -- and combine it with the most powerful features of talking and reading software.

Both the Macintosh and Windows versions of CAST eReader lets users:

• Select volume, speed, and pitch of the reading voices
• Choose speech and highlighting speeds and increments
• Change the default font, style, color, and size of the text
• Control movement through the text (automatic and manual stepping)
• Take notes and receive speech feedback while typing

These and other features give users a variety of ways to read and navigate through written material, and provide a supportive environment for readers with all types of learning differences.

• Review eReader's UDL features.
• Download a Windows demo version. You can download a full-featured Windows demo version of CAST eReader(10.2MB). The Macintosh demo will be available in the future. Download the demo when you have the time to evaluate the software as it runs for two weeks or 10 executions, whichever occurs first.
• Pricing and Ordering Information.

More Resources:

Bailey's Book House
An early language arts CD-ROM program that supports students as they learn to read and write.

Let's Go Read! An Island Adventure and Let's Go Read! An Ocean Adventure
Programs that combines whole-language reading instruction with phonics, offering self-guided and directed exercises to develop language skills.

WiggleWorks® Scholastic Beginning Literacy System
A CD-ROM and print-based, inclusive, early literacy curriculum developed jointly by CAST and Scholastic Inc. that provides 72 books and a variety of scaffolded reading and writing activities within each book. For more information, go to the WiggleWork's Customizing with UD Features page of the CAST Web site or visit the Scholastic's Web site

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Scenic Route 4:
Meet Bobby and Help Your District Broaden Its Web Audience

Many schools are posting their students' work on a district Web site or they intend to in the future. An NCAC goal is to be sure that your site and all of your students' work is accessible to the widest possible audience. Here is your chance to get acquainted with Bobby and to introduce him to your Webmaster.

Bobby is a free service provided by CAST to help Web page authors identify remedies and repair significant barriers that prevent individuals with disabilities or readers with low bandwidth from viewing its content. For example, a blind user or auditory learner could have access with the simple addition of a sound track to a movie. Similarly, a hard-of-hearing user would be helped if a written transcript were added as an option when a sound file is the sole source of information.

Bobby evaluates each site that is referred and reports back solutions or suggests a next course of action. Most suggestions amount to small additions that add clarity and help Web browsers to work more effectively. If students in your district are posting written works, odds are that Bobby will see to it that more people enjoy those pages. Celebrate "Read Across America" by checking for the Bobby icon. If you don't see it, send a link to your district's Webmaster with a request to make your site accessible to the widest possible audience.

See also:

• What is Bobby
• What is BobbyAvailable Packages
• What is BobbyIcon Guidelines
• What is BobbyProject Plans
• What is BobbyTerms of Use
• What is BobbyIn the News
• What is BobbyWhat's New

Your Webmaster may also want to learn what is behind the accessibility issues. Refer him or her to CAST's Resources page and follow the links.

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Scenic Route 5: Join the National Consortium On UDL

The National Center invites teachers and all other school professionals and personnel to join the National Consortium on Universal Design for Learning. It can be an important first step in learning about universal design in classrooms and a great place to find tips and suggestions from practitioners.

Join the National Consortium on Universal Design For Learning. This is a national partnership of educators, schools and experts who want better results for all students, no matter how diverse or different are their backgrounds, experiences, abilities, and learning styles. The consortium intends to capitalize on collective expertise of a wide range of educators and to promote the use of UDL in classroom practice alternative learning rather than one approach to learning for everyone. Instead, it reflects an awareness of the unique nature of each learner and the need to accommodate differences, creating learning experiences that suit the learner and maximize his or her ability to progress.

Launched in 1999, the National Consortium on Universal Design for Learning capitalizes on the collective expertise of regular and special educators and other professionals to foster shared responsibility and accountability for the educational needs of all children in the general education classroom, especially those with disabilities. It advances this goal through research, professional development, demonstration of best educational practices, and collaboration with experts.

Another Source: For another source to aid professional development, check out Reading Online, the International Reading Association's site for technology and literacy projects, discussion groups, listserve's, and more.

About the National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum (NCAC)

More about NCAC Partners.

	National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum (NCAC): In a collaborative agreement with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Special Programs (OSEP), CAST has established a National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum to provide a vision of how new curricula, teaching practices, and policies can be woven together to create practical approaches for improved access to the general curriculum by students with disabilities.
	Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP): Funding for the National Center on Accessing the General Curriculum is provided by the Office of Special Education Programs in the U.S. Department of Education.
	Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST): Founded in 1984, CAST is an educational, not-for-profit organization that uses technology to expand opportunities for all people, including those with disabilities.
	Council for Exceptional Children (CEC): CEC is the largest international professional organization dedicated to improving educational outcomes for individuals with exceptionalities, students with disabilities, and/or the gifted.

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