The Hechinger Report Highlights CAST, Udio
Date:
Friday, March 6, 2015
CAST Co-Founder David Rose and Co-President Gabrielle Rappolt-Schlichtmann and their work on the Udio project are featured in The Hechinger Report, an online national web magazine.
The article titled "Is the Biggest Learning Disability an Emotional One?" reviews the Udio online reading environment for middle-schoolers, which emphasizes engagement as key to improving reading.
Udio is part of the National Center on the Use of Emerging Technologies to Improve Literacy Achievement for Students with Disabilities in Middle School, a partnership with Vanderbilt University and directed by Rappolt-Schlichtmann.
Author Chris Berdik writes: "Rose and his team have concluded that the most pervasive learning disability in schools, and the number one challenge for UDL, isn’t physical or cognitive, it’s emotional—turning around kids who are turned off by school."
Berdik highlights many of Udio's engagement features, including its use of highly relevant content from contemporary sources like Sports Illustrated for Kids and Yahoo! News.
“We’re not saying that intensive interventions for reading skills, like phonics, decoding and fluency, aren’t needed,” he quotes Rappolt-Schlichtmann as saying. “But, you can’t get traction with those skills unless you practice. And you have to practice with ardent intent. You have to want to do it.”
The Hechinger Report, published at Columbia University's Teacher's College, focuses on "innovation and inequality" in education. The content is syndicated nationally, and this article about CAST was republished by Slate magazine, among others.