9 Ways to Make Your Presentations More Accessible to Students

Presentations are an important part of the teaching and learning process. There are times when instruction must occur in small or large groups; however, are your presentations accessible to all of your students? 

Variability is the rule and not the exception in our classrooms. When you have so many learner differences in one learning environment, you are bound to have learning barriers emerge. How can we make presentations more accessible to students? 

Check out my video below for 9 ways to make your presentations more accessible to students. 

 

As a reminder! There are so many different ways to make your presentations more accessible to students! 

• Guided notes and a “live” note-taker on a document camera / Google Doc. Take a picture of physical notes and post it to Google Classroom. 

• Use the Closed Captioning feature in Slides

• Screencastify to record presentation

• Post materials to Google Classroom

• Periodic pauses for reflection

• Q&A feature in Slides for live questions

• Pear Deck or NearPod to make the presentation interactive

• Share a published copy of the presentation with interactive links and embedded audio from MOTE

• Add video from YouTube or Google Drive

Take Your Instruction to the Next Level with YoTeach!

 Have you ever considered using a chatroom in your classroom? I know it sounds intimidating because chatrooms and backchannel chats have had a reputation for misuse. However, YoTeach! is a teacher and student-friendly website that may change your mind.

Why YoTeach!? 

YoTeach! has so many great features like: 

• Password-protected administrative controls to filter for profanity and moderate conversations before they are posted

• Chat and voting mode

• Spaceboard - a collaborative whiteboard for students and teachers to use! 

• Drawboard - an individual board to draw, brainstorm, and add ideas

• Hand raising feature for students!

• Math doodle board which converts your handwritten content into digital equations! 

How might you use this in your classroom? 

Take your instruction to the next level and provide students with opportunities to connect, ask questions, and understand instruction in different ways. Here are just a few ideas!

• Provide students with a space to ask questions during instruction

• Collaborative space for group work

• Facilitate ongoing instruction

• Virtual instruction 

How does it work? 

Check out my video below:

   

Accommodations for ALL Learners is the Most Amazing Website!

Learners are highly variable in the way they learn and interact within learning environments. Unfortunately, not all learning environments and lessons work for our students because many are designed to provide a one-size-fits-all approach to learning. When we teach toward an "average student" (which doesn't exist), we can unintentionally create barriers in the learning environment and learning process. 

The Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework is a research-based method of designing accessible lessons and learning environments for all students. Although students are highly variable, all students need flexible options for: 

• Representing content
• Demonstrating understanding (Action & Expression)
• Engagement  

Creating access begins with effective design and accessible tools. I recently came across an AMAZING website called Accommodations for All Learners that is dedicated to sharing tools and resources to make learning accessible for all learners. 

The website is filled with amazing resources and ideas for designing accessible learning experiences through technology. Here are some of my favorites!

• The graphic organizer section is filled with ready-to-use graphic organizers for learning! 

• The manipulatives section has an entire Symbaloo dedicated to elementary math manipulatives! 

• Not familiar with Accessibility Tools? This section has awesome information on how to incorporate accessibility tools into the classroom.