Prof. Hacker shares a unique perspective on how Angry Birds can teach us about Universal Design for Instruction and Universal Design for Learning.
"I think that Angry Birds is so fun to play because it helps develop our meta-cognitive skills. Throughout playing Angry Birds, one must pay attention to the strategies being employed, adjust one’s play as needed to achieve certain goals and objectives, and transfer what you have learned about a bird’s capabilities several levels ago to the current level.
In short, Angry Birds is a powerful metaphor for learning. As I was recently playing the game, I could not help but think: what if my classroom was more like this? Would students have a better learning experience?"
Consider the following:
> Angry Birds involves practice without penalty.
> Angry Birds offers the opportunity for constant feedback.
> Angry Birds inherently teachers that different tools have different purposes.
> Angry Birds rewards perseverance.
> Angry Birds gives no time limit.
"No wonder we are all addicted to this game! Now if only we could ensure that our classrooms are always safe spaces to practice new strategies, offer students a range of possibilities for how to succeed in their learning, give our students constant feedback, and support knowledge transfer within and among our courses."
The National Center on the Use of Emerging Technologies to Improve Literacy Achievement for Students with Disabilities in Middle School is researching and developing a technology-rich learning environment called “Udio” that will make it possible for schools to provide all learners with Universally Designed for Learning (UDL) literacy experiences as they read independently across the curriculum. Consider joining the research in this important product.
To achieve their mission and vision, the Center is leveraging the capabilities of the Web itself to create a more distributed ecosystem for adolescent literacy, termed “Udio,” where the goals are to:
1. foster a passionate interest and investment in reading for learners who have traditionally been uninterested in, or disenfranchised by, traditional classroom literacy practices;
2. substantially improve the reading comprehension skills of middle school learners who have experienced recurrent failure in the domain of reading.