Livescribe Pen is a pen that records your notes as you write. It has a built-in microphone, speaker, and on-board storage. This pen is able to play back what you write and even export your notes to a computer for sharing. You can share the audio as PDF files. This tool can be really useful for students. This tool is small, easily transportable and engaging. This pen can provide students an easier and more exciting way to study their notes. Students also have the option of transferring their notes quickly to a computer instead of typing everything, so they can focus more on studying.    

The following UDL guidelines and checkpoints supported: 

1.    Multiple Means of Engagement– self regulation - develop self-assessment and reflection

2.    Multiple Means of Engagement– recruiting interest – optimize individual choice and autonomy 

3.    Multiple Means of Representation – perception – offer ways of customizing the display of information. This tool gives students the chance to have their notes set up differently. Instead of typing up your notes having the option of transferring them to a computer and then customizing it as an audio is a great help. Some students do not like to proofread their writing, so this can help. 

4.    Multiple Means of Representation – language and symbols – illustrate through multiple media. This is a very different type of tool compared to others. It helps students who do not like to read over their own notes or want to share their notes with others through different media. Some students do better reading on computers versus paper so this allows the student to share their notes through multiple media. 

5.    Multiple Means of Representation – comprehension – maximize transfer and generalization 

6.    Multiple Means of Action and Expression – physical action – optimize access to tools and assistive technologies 

7.    Multiple Means of Action and Expression– expression and communication – use multiple media for communication

8.    Multiple Means of Action and Expression – build fluencies with graduated levels of support for practice and performance 

9.    Multiple Means of Action and Expression – executive functions – facilitate managing information and resources 

This tool can be useful for older students. Students in middle-high school will find this useful. Teachers that set their classes up as lectures talk a lot and students rush to get the information down, this pen can be helpful to write information down and later listen to it. This can also help students with communication struggles. They can use this tool to write and it can play the audio instead of the student struggling to speak.  

Newsela is an online reading tool. This website includes many interesting topics for students categorized by grade level. This website is designated for students who are not interested in reading. This site is clearly structured and very colorful. It is attention grabbing for students who do not like the simple black and white text format of books. This site is easily accessible and can help students at home or in school. Students will be more engaged and motivated reading if the topic is written in an exciting manner. Many students go for technology these days so having the text online is also motivating for many students. 

The following UDL guidelines and checkpoints supported: 

1.    Multiple Means of Engagement – recruiting interest – optimize individual choice and autonomy. Students can decide what topic they want to read about. All the topics on the site are educational and the variety is endless. Students can find out what topic interests them the most by reading multiple articles. 

2.    Multiple Means of Engagement –recruiting interest – optimize relevance, value, and authenticity 

3.    Multiple Means of Representation –perception – offer alternatives for auditory information 

4.    Multiple Means of Representation –comprehension – activate or supply background knowledge. By having so many topics in this site, it provides background knowledge for many topics. This site has easy to hard levels of text about many educational areas. Students can get background information on an area of topic taught in class if it is hard to understand the in-class explanations. 

This website is good for many grade level students. It is very helpful for those that get bored or struggle with reading. This website will allow students to pick what they want to read about and see what grade level they are comfortable reading on. This site can be used anywhere and for a variety of students. 

Stormboard is a self-customized whiteboard. This board allows students to put down sticky notes, pictures, and videos. This tool allows students to customize their boards. You get to organize your ideas into structured diagrams. This tool is great for creating and studying. It is easily accessible and can be shared. Students can use this tool for when studying, learning concepts, or simply organizing information. 

The following UDL guidelines and checkpoints supported: 

1.    Multiple Means of Representation – recruiting interest –optimize individual choice and autonomy. Students can decide how they want to structure their notes through this tool. Students can create diagrams, input videos or pictures that will help them learn better. By creating their own boards, they have independence with their learning. 

2.    Multiple Means of Representation– recruiting interest – optimize relevance, value, and authenticity 

3.    Multiple Means of Representation – recruiting interest – minimize threats and distractions. This tool gives students the option of customizing their own boards, so students can remove all information that is not needed for them. Some text provides too much information, so students get distracted from the main point. This whiteboard lets students see the main idea, so they won’t be distracted from information not important. 

4.    Multiple Means of Representation – sustaining effort and persistence -heighten salience of goals and objectives. 

5.    Multiple Means of Engagement –perception – offer ways of customizing the display of information 

6.    Multiple Means of Engagement –language and symbols – illustrate through multiple media 

7.    Multiple Means of Engagement –comprehension – highlight patterns, critical features, big ideas, and relationships 

8.    Multiple Means of Action and Expression –expression and communication – use multiple media for communication 

9.    Multiple Means of Action and Expression – expression and communication – use multiple tools for construction and composition

10.  Multiple Means of Action and Expression – executive functions – facilitate managing information and resources 

This tool is great for many students in high school. When classes become harder, having an organization tool is really helpful. Students will get to include the information they believe is most important. This also gives students a different look on the information. Having videos and pictures as a guide as well will help students see their work displayed differently. 

 

 

Wordq5 is an application that supports writers. This easily accessible app for your computer offers many students benefits. This application helps with word prediction, speech feedback, proofreading, and enhanced web searches. This is helpful for students who need writing support. By being able to find your grammar mistakes and to hear back what you write. It also helps students research and write about unfamiliar topics, which can be difficult for many students. 

The following UDL guidelines and checkpoints supported: 

1.    Multiple Means of Engagement – recruiting interest – optimize individual choice and autonomy 

2.    Multiple Means of Engagement –sustaining effort and persistence – vary demands and resources to optimize challenge 

3.    Multiple Means of Representation –perception – offer ways of customizing the display of information. This gives students the opportunity to write their work through an application. Instead of using pen and paper or Microsoft word, this new tool helps students see their written work differently. This also helps customize the papers by providing grammar help and research support. 

4.    Multiple Means of Representation –language and symbols – illustrate through multiple media 

5.    Multiple Means of Representation –language and symbols – clarify vocabulary and symbols 

6.    Multiple Means of Action and Expression –expression and communication – use multiple tools for construction and composition. This tool helps students construct their papers. Helping them search up topics or helping fix up the paper, it provides support to help compose ideas and projects. 

This tool supports elementary and secondary students. It provides them with strategies for writing and creating a project. By helping search and fix their work. This helps teachers focus on helping students work and learn more independently. This also helps students become better writers in the long run.  

 

Kidspiration is an app that allows students to create visual diagrams to represent concepts, ideas, and projects. This tool is easily accessible and allows students to be creative. You can create maps, outlines, projects, or simply organize information. This is great for teachers as well when introducing a complex topic. Students can collaborate and create visual guides or maps to study information. 

The following UDL guidelines and checkpoints supported: 

1.    Multiple Means of Engagement– recruiting interest – optimize individual choice and autonomy 

2.    Multiple Means of Engagement– recruiting interest – optimize relevance, value, and authenticity. Students can choose what they want to add to their maps or diagrams. By choosing what they want to display they will be choosing what is valued to them. Students and teachers can choose what is relevant for them to study or organize.  

3.    Multiple Means of Engagement – sustaining effort and persistence – foster collaboration and community 

4.    Multiple Means of Representation – perception – offer ways of customizing the display of information. This tool allows students and teachers to display their information in many ways. Having different charts, pictures, and diagrams you can process the information differently. Students can choose how they want to display or organize their information. Students will have more responsibility organizing their ideas in their own ways. 

5.    Multiple Means of Representation – perception – offer alternatives for auditory information 

6.    Multiple Means of Representation – language and symbols – illustrate through multiple media  

7.    Multiple Means of Representation – comprehension – highlight patterns, critical features, big ideas, and relationships 

8.    Multiple Means of Action and Expression – expression and communication – use multiple media for communication

9.    Multiple Means of Action and Expression – expression and communication – use multiple tools for construction and composition 

This tool can be used by many grade levels. This helps students brainstorm ideas or organize difficult topics. Teachers can use this to give information visually for those who need a different way to study. This will really help students become engaged in their work. 

 

 

Cowriter is a writing assistant tool. This app is a part of Google Chrome. Its special features include, grammar and vocabulary smart word prediction, translation help, and speech recognition to help create ideas. Cowriter helps students become long-term better writers. This tool helps create words to help make better flow in papers. It also allows you to speak into the microphone and translates your voice into text.  

The following UDL guidelines and checkpoints supported: 

1.    Multiple Means of Engagement – recruiting interest – optimize relevance, value, and authenticity

2.    Multiple Means of Engagement – sustaining effort and persistence – increase mastery-oriented feedback 

3.    Multiple Means of Representation – language and symbols - clarify vocabulary and symbols. This tool helps students choose words for their papers. By predicting smart choice vocabulary words, students can write more grammatical papers. This also helps with translating words. This tool provides grammar and vocabulary support to improve word choice. 

4.    Multiple Means of Representation – language and symbols – promote understanding across languages. This app has a translation tool. By translating other languages into your preferred language is really helpful. 

5.    Multiple Means of Action and Expression – use multiple tools for construction and composition

6.    Multiple Means of Action and Expression – expression and communication – build fluencies with graduated levels of support for practice and performance 

This app is helpful for many elementary, secondary, and older students. It helps students become better writers. By helping with word choice creation and grammar students can learn to write better papers. Speech recognition can help those with writing limitations. By just speaking into the microphone your word is put into text. 

 

 

Natural Reader is a tool that can transfer text or documents into mp3 files. Any text can be transferred into speech.The audio can be accessed anywhere on the go. This app supports those who cannot see or need their documents easily accessed on the go. The sounding voices are clear and natural sounding. 

The following UDL guidelines and checkpoints supported: 

1.    Multiple Means of Engagement – recruiting interest – minimize threats and distractions. This tool helps students listen back to their work or documents without distraction. When proofreading it is easy to get distracted when reading back your paper. With this tool students have the option to listen to their documents anytime anywhere. 

2.    Multiple Means of Representation – perception – offer ways of customizing the display of information. This tool helps students read their work in a different way. Instead of proofreading on paper students can listen back on their work. This tool allows the option of uploading documents onto the computer and making it into an audio which may help some type of learners hear their information instead. 

This can help students who are dyslexic or foreign language learners. This can also help working professionals. Listening to important documents at your own time and pace is really convenient. This can also help students proofread their work. After writing a paper going back and listening to it is very helpful.         

 

Ginger Software is a writing support tool. This tool helps with grammar and sentence rephrasing. It translates fifty different languages and has a great dictionary option to get real definitions of words. It also lets you listen to your text and provides you with a personal trainer to improve your English. Many students can benefit from this tool when writing and creating papers. This tool is also helpful for social media writing. 

The following UDL guidelines and checkpoints supported: 

1.    Multiple Means of Engagement – recruiting interest – optimize individual choice and autonomy 

2.    Multiple Means of Representation – sustaining effort and persistence – increase mastery-oriented feedback. This tool offers feedback to students on how to write better. Having a personal trainer in English, students can learn which words are more accurate to use in their sentences. Being a grammar/spelling checker, students get feedback on their writing skills straight away.

3.    Multiple Means of Representation - language and symbols – clarify vocabulary and symbols 

4.    Multiple Means of Representation – language and symbols – promote understanding across languages. This tool gives translation help of many languages. This will help students that are foreign or want to learn different languages. Having a dictionary will also help students understand languages better.

5.    Multiple Means of Action and Expression – expression and communication – use multiple tools for construction and composition 

This tool can be used for many secondary and older students. This allows students to make less mistakes when writing. It also helps to create sentences by helping rephrase them. Having a dictionary and translation feature allows students to learn more about the English language and other languages. Students will be more engaged in writing when given feedback right away with their word choices. 

 

 

Visuwords is a dictionary tool that shows words visually. For those that need help to see words visually this is great help. This helps students make better connections of definition meanings. Using dictionaries and thesauruses are not as engaging as new technology systems. This can be accessed on many devices anywhere you go. This tool creates connections for students to identify parts of speech, synonyms, and antonyms.

The following UDL guidelines and checkpoints supported: 

1.    Multiple Means of Engagement– sustaining effort and persistence – vary demands and resources to optimize challenge 

2.    Multiple Means of Representation – language and symbols – clarify vocabulary and symbols. Being a dictionary tool, this website defines vocabulary to students by using symbols. Some learners are visual, and some need more engagement during learning. This site provides vocabulary help by presenting the information differently. 

3.    Multiple Means of Representation – language and symbols – promote understanding across languages. As a dictionary tool using symbols to define words can help those who need help with English. Instead of using words to define words, using illustrations can help students who struggle with the language. 

5.     Multiple Means of Representation - Comprehension - Highlight patterns, critical features, big ideas, and relationships

This tool gives students in many grade levels the chance to see the word differently. Visually seeing a word helps make connections better for some type of learners. This can help younger students learn vocabulary and the English language better. 

 

Padlet is an app which allows students and teachers create educational boards. This app can be accessed on any device and taken on the go. Students can post text, videos, pictures, and documents. The boards can be shared with others and help others contribute to the task. Others can comment, like, and add content to the boards. This app helps all start up new ideas or simply focus on a specific project or task. 

The following UDL guidelines and checkpoints supported: 

1.    Multiple Means of Engagement– recruiting interest – optimize individual choice and autonomy. 

2.    Multiple Means of Engagement– recruiting interest - optimize relevance, value, and authenticity. This app allows students to choose their boards and make it relevant for them. Students can make their boards valuable to them by having the option to create it to their liking. Students can post whatever information they find meaningful and get feedback back from others. 

3.    Multiple Means of Engagement – sustaining effort and persistence – foster collaboration and community. By having other individuals comment, like, and add content, they are collaborating with other students. This allows others to connect with peer’s work. Students can create a board together as well or provide feedback to others by sharing comments. 

4.    Multiple Means of Representation – perception – offer ways of customizing the display of information

5.    Multiple Means of Representation – perception – offer alternatives for auditory information 

6.    Multiple Means of Representation – language and symbols –promote understanding across languages 

7.    Multiple Means of Representation – language and symbols – illustrate through multiple media 

8.    Multiple Means of Representation – comprehension – highlight patterns, critical features, big ideas, and relationships 

9.    Multiple Means of Representation – comprehension – guide information processing and visualization 

10.  Multiple means of Action and Expression –expression and communication – use multiple media for communication 

11.  Multiple means of Action and Expression – expression and communication – use multiple tools for construction and composition 

12.  Multiple means of Action and Expression – executive functions – support planning and strategy development 

13.  Multiple means of Action and Expression – executive functions – facilitate managing information and resources 

This tool is great for elementary, secondary, and older students create ideas and projects. All types of students can write and create a board full of important information. Students posts can be shared with others to provide collaboration. Instead of simply writing or making charts, this tool makes it interesting and stimulates creativity to all types of students.