When I first began teaching over a dozen years ago, learning styles was the big thing. We had workshop after workshop about addressing the auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learning modalities. We made an effort to make sure each lesson addressed all these different learning styles by presenting the content orally, visually, and kinesthetically. The next big thing was the " True Colors". This was a personality profile that identified "blue" people as emotional, "green" people are very logical, "orange" people are very outgoing, and "gold" people are very responsible. Students (and teahers) took a quiz to determine their personality profiles so that we would understand what drives each of us, thereby allowing us to forge better relationships and create lessons to match student personality profiles. I feel like in this digital age, the UDL an extension of these ideas. This framework helps us to individual lesson to students as dictated by their needs, strengths, and weaknesses. Even though we give lip service to the idea that learners are not all the same, the state of Texas still expects all kids to perform the same way and to demonstrate their knowledge in the same manner (state tests). Kids are not all made from the same cookie cutter. We cannot expect them to all learn in the same way. I love that the UDL framework understands that people are individuals with individual thinking skills and individual strengths and weaknesses.
Rose, D., & Meyer, A.(2002). Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age: Universal Design for Learning. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Available online at the Center for Applied Special Technology Website. Chapter 6. Retriever on March 10, 2012 from http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/ideas/tes/chapter6_4.cfm
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