Project Director
Anne Meyer, Ed.D, CAST
Timeframe
2007-2008
Funders
Anonymous private funder
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Project Description
UDL Editions is a demonstration project to showcase how classic works of world literature can be made more engaging when they are universally designed to take advantage of digital technology’s flexibility. The design team at CAST incorporated best practices in research on reading comprehension instruction and the principles of Universal Design for Learning in the creation of the embedded text supports and challenges.
Texts include Jack London’s Call of the Wild, Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address;” Edgar Allen Poe’s “The tell-Tale Heart”; Shakespeare’s 18th Sonnet; a Native American folktale, How Coyote Stole Fire, and its nonfiction companion, About Coyotes; as well as a Spanish language classic, The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes .
Students using UDL Editions can
- Choose from three levels of support for reading comprehension strategies and author’s craft strategies
- Gain feedback and support for strategic thinking from three different animated agents
- Highlight text from the Texthelp® Toolbar for read-aloud capability, collect and save interesting passages, link to a dictionary and encyclopedia resources, access translations between English and Spanish
- Access a multimedia glossary, including vocabulary unique to each text
- Delve deeper into the story through links to multi-media background resources, author’s craft, and links to Google Maps
UDL Editions were developed with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and released in partnership with the Google Literacy Project as part of World Book Day in April 2008.
Visit UDL Editions: http://udleditions.cast.org/
Watch a video about UDL Editions: http://www.cast.org/movies/udleditions.html
