Evening # 7

Climbing the Wall

Collaboration

 Teamwork 

Encouragement

Success

A sense of accomplishment!
Pure Joy

These are the thoughts that ran through my head as I watched the video Climbing the Wall. There is no doubt that prior reaching this point, there has been much work done by all involved in assessing the physical needs of this individual in order to create a suitable plan with adequate supports to ensure success. Building rapport among participants is also an essential part of this process and not something that happens over night.  This requires work on the part of all who are involved.  It is very obvious in this video that great time has been put into both components of this process.  The relationship is strong between participants as you can tell by the encouragement throughout and the pure joy for all involved at the end.  

Other words used to describe thoughts on this video

This activity demonstrates UDL principles. Having a definite end goal and offering multiple ways of attaining this goal, while considering potential barriers to learning, educators, support staff and family members can all be part of the planning process.  In doing so, clear instructions and teaching can be delivered and re-evaluated based on progress.  In the end, as long as students are able to demonstrate that they have attained their goal, using strategies, supports and methods that suit their needs and learning style, they have achieved success.

Collaborating with...

 The collaborative aspect of Google Apps for Education has added a whole new dimension to group work in that the stress of having to find time to meet face to face to collaborate in no longer a necessity.  Group work that was once tedious and stressful in it's logistics, has now become  that much more convenient.  Creating a group folder allowed us to each dump in information we felt useful to our topic as we found it and other group members could peruse on their own time.  Google Docs allowed us to all work on the same document as we built it and the chat aspect in google docs allowed us to chat about our product as we worked on it together during class time.  Collaboration, team work, problem-solving and the reassurance knowing that aspects can always be retrieved describe the group work in this assignment.