Learning on the Go: How to Personalize Education with the iPad

By Luis Perez

The iPad is a powerful educational device-versatile, mobile, flexible, and accessible to all learners, including those with disabilities.

Dr. Luis Pérez draws on years of classroom teaching and his own experience with a visual impairment to offer savvy tips and strategies for making the most of the iPad. Perez shows how students with

• Language: English
• Publisher: CAST, Inc.
• Release date: May 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781930583252

Luis Perez

Luis F. Pérez, PhD, shares his personal experience and expertise in the field of inclusive design as a consultant, speaker, and author. Dr. Pérez is a Technical Assistance Specialist at CAST, focusing on accessible materials and technologies along with workforce development and postsecondary education. He earned his doctorate in special education from the University of South Florida, and in 2009, he was named an Apple Distinguished Educator. Dr. Pérez received the Outstanding Inclusive Educator award from ISTE in 2016. His TED Talk at the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) can be found on YouTube.

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Copyright © 2018 by CAST, Inc.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018933982

Paperback ISBN 978-1-930583-24-5

Ebook ISBN 978-1-930583-25-2

Published by:

CAST Professional Publishing

an imprint of CAST, Inc.

Wakefield, Massachusetts, USA

Learning on the Go is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. iPad and iPod are registered trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

SKINNY BOOKS™ is a trademark of CAST, Inc.

Cover and interior design by Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Printed in the United States of America

About the Author

As someone with a visual impairment, Luis F. Pérez, PhD, knows firsthand how technology can improve the lives of people with disabilities in a meaningful way. He shares his personal experience and expertise in the field of inclusive design as a consultant, speaker, and author.

Dr. Pérez is a Technical Assistance Specialist at the National Center on Accessible Educational Materials (AEM Center) at CAST. He earned his doctorate in special education from the University of South Florida, and in 2009, he was named an Apple Distinguished Educator.

He is the author of Mobile Learning for All: Supporting Accessibility with the iPad from Corwin Press, and his work has appeared in numerous education and technology journals. Learning on the Go is his first book for CAST Professional Publishing.

Dr. Pérez is President-Elect of ISTE’s Inclusive Learning Network, which previously selected him as its Outstanding Inclusive Educator in 2016.

To learn more about his resources for educators, including eBooks and video tutorials, visit his website or follow him on Twitter @eyeonaxs.

Introduction

[A computer is] the most remarkable tool that we’ve ever come up with…it’s the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.

—Steve Jobs

The late Steve Jobs understood that the power of technology lies in its ability to amplify human ability, not in the tool itself. Thus, he believed that just as a bicycle makes it easier for a rider to get from point A to point B, a computer could do the same thing for cognitive tasks such as learning.

When Jobs compared the computer to a bicycle for the mind, the computer he was referring to typically sat on a desk and was fairly heavy and expensive. Today, the same computing power is available in one of the devices most of us carry in our pockets. In fact, even the most inexpensive smartphone or tablet is exponentially faster and more powerful than the computer that took us to the moon, one of our greatest technical achievements. A touchscreen device like the Apple iPad can be a word processor one minute and, with a few taps, stand in for a drum machine or a drawing canvas the next. And these devices are filled with accessibility features and customizable displays.

This flexibility makes the iPad an ideal tool for implementing Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an approach for designing a flexible curriculum that can accommodate the needs of an increasingly variable and diverse learner population. If you are new to UDL or just want to brush up on the principles and guidelines, check out Universal Design for Learning: Theory & Practice (Meyer, Rose, & Gordon, 2014), a free online book at udltheorypractice.cast.org (email registration required).

To be clear, UDL is not dependent on technology. Rather, it’s a way to balance learning supports and challenges to meet the needs of highly variable learners. Creative educators who adopt the UDL mindset of flexibility and choice over one-size-fits-all solutions can and do implement UDL successfully even when there is little or no technology available.

But the flexibility that technology offers can make it easier for educators to provide the options some learners need to be successful. Furthermore, for some learners, there is no UDL without technology. These learners would simply not be able to access any of the choices offered to them within a UDL environment. Finally, building proficiency with technology, though it should not become the be-all and end-all of education, is an important goal by itself. To be future ready, learners need to develop the digital literacies that will allow them to thrive in a culture that is increasingly built around technology and media.

To return to the bicycle metaphor, when we learn to ride a bike, we begin with supports—training wheels, an adult who is there to cheer us on and catch us when we are about to fall, and maybe an expert model of how to pedal and balance. Over time, we become more confident and develop the skill needed to ride on our own. Gradually, the supports are withdrawn. We continue to practice, perhaps in the safety of our driveways and then later in more challenging terrain. Eventually, we become expert riders. A bicycle often has an adjustable seat so that it can accommodate riders of different sizes. Each rider can find the optimal riding position for maximizing pedaling power, properly seeing the road ahead, and balance.

Learning in the UDL way is similar. We start with supports—sometimes lots of them—and gradually become expert learners. Similarly, flexible technologies provide educators with the tools to place each learner in the optimal position for learning, whether it is by customizing the display to suit the learner’s ability to see, or turning on supports such as text to speech that can reduce the effort involved in reading.

Luis’s Story

I discovered inclusive technology at a key point in my life, when I needed it most. In my early thirties, I was diagnosed with a condition called retinitis pigmentosa (RP for short) that results in the gradual loss of peripheral and low-light vision. For many people, RP eventually leads to complete blindness. The diagnosis of a visual impairment forced me to make several significant changes. The ability to drive was first