RUNNING HEADER: Diversity and Technology

Diversity and Technology

Helping our classrooms teach acceptance and
understanding of others

LeeAnna Pekel
University of New England
EDU 721 Technology in Inclusion Settings
8/9/2014





Diversity and Technology 2

Contents
Person-to-Person ............................................................................................................................. 3
Activities and Songs ....................................................................................................................... 4
Simulations ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Reflection ........................................................................................................................................ 6


Diversity and Technology 3
This is a list of resources to help teachers create a diverse classroom. Some teachers have
the ability to use their diverse student population to talk about diversity, but others do not always
have a lot of diversity in their classrooms. Thus, this list is meant to help all teachers work on
diversity acceptance in all types of classrooms.
Person-to-Person
The best way to help students learn to accept diverse people is to have the students know
people who are different from them. Knowing a person from a different background can help a
lot in increasing awareness and acceptance.
1. http://www.theteacherscorner.net/penpals/ This website is full of resources outside of
just pen pals. The pen pal pages design is clean and nice. It works a lot like Google
Maps. The teacher selects a grade, and then can move around the map to see the various
pinned locations of pen pals. Given information includes school name, number of
students, ages, availability, and location.
2. http://www.edutopia.org/blog/pen-pals-in-21st-century-lisa-mims Lisa Mims wrote t
nice blog article about using pen pals in her classroom. She talks about how she found
pen pals, special things your class can do with the pen pals, and how to start. A nice,
short read can help with some basic questions teachers have about pen pal system.
3. http://www.epals.com Epals is a website designed to bring pen pals into the 21
st
century.
Not only does this site help you find pen pals across the world with whom you email with,
but it also has a project section. This means that the two classes can work on projects
together from far distances. Various contests on the website help students learn about
their own community and share it with the world.
Diversity and Technology 4
4. Skype As mentioned in the two above resources, Skype can connect students with other
students, or classes with classes. It can also connect students with other individuals, like
guest speakers. Teachers can talk to authors, artists, or other intellectuals who are far
away. All subject areas can benefit from this feature of Skype.
Activities and Songs
These resources work in your classroom, no matter if it has diversity or not.
5. http://www.tolerance.org/classroom-resources This website has many great resources for
teaching acceptance and tolerance within classrooms of all levels. The list can be search
by topic, grade level, subject, resource type, keyword, or type of tolerance.
6. Diversity Council Here is a list of activities and resources for teachers to use in their
classroom to increase diversity. Some are very low tech, while others are high tech. There
are three pages divided by school level elementary, middle, and high. It is a collocation
of lesson plans from various other sources.
7. Using Online Videos for Disabilities Awareness In this article, the authors discuss how to
use videos to help increase diversity in the curriculum. It is a good read and has activity
ideas, and a list of good places to find videos.
8. Hello to all the Children of the World This song is very short, and sweet. The students
learn to say hello in various languages while seeing images from that country, like
famous buildings or animals, flags, and clipart children.
9. Countries of the World This is a playlist 2-3 minutes long videos naming all the countries
in the world. The videos are divided by regions, so they can be used as good
introductions to units about certain regions.
Diversity and Technology 5
10. Its Our Story On this channel, there are over 1,300 video interviews with leaders of
various disability communities about an assortment of topics. The goal of this channel is
to make disability history a public record.
Simulations
Sometimes the best way to understand how another person lives is to spend some time
experiencing the world in his or her way. These resources help students to spend a day in
anothers shoes.
11. Disability-related Simulations: If, When, and How to Use Them in Professional
Development. The goal of this paper is to help business leaders know when, and how to
use disability simulations. While it is not specifically for teachers, it is still a good read
for anyone interested in using simulations in their classroom.
12. WebAim Resources. This page has a lot of information on it about disabilities; including
tools to make sure technology, created resources are easier for people with visual
impairments to use. At the bottom of the page, four screen simulations allow students to
experience using the internet like a person with visual disabilities.
13. Experience Firsthand On this webpage there are nine different simulations that exhibit
difficulties in dealing with attention, reading, writing, and math disabilities. Some of the
activities require flash player, while others can be printed out, and done with or without
technology in the classroom.
14. VisionSim At a young age, students are often curious to try on their peers glasses in order
to see the world as their peers do, but this can be damaging to the students eyesight, and
it does not accomplish the goal. Using this free app created by the Braille Institute,
Diversity and Technology 6
students can see the world through the eyes of people with various visual disabilities.
Many of these are age-related, but it is still insightful.
15. Vischeck On this site, a few images show what those struggling with color-blindness see.
It includes the traditional image along with two varieties.
Reflection
For me personally, this was a very interesting study. Since I have never taught any
students with disabilities as a homeroom teacher, classes that focus on working with diverse
students always were difficult and distant concepts. As a result, I always struggle to find ways to
bring them into my classroom. After doing this research, I feel that some of these topics are
closer, and easily applied to my classroom. I have learned that even though I do not need to
apply techniques to help students with a disability, that does not mean I should not, and that my
students will not benefit from it.
While the main goal of this research was to find ways in which to teach tolerance and
acceptance since it seemed like such a difficult thing to bring into a mono-ethnic classroom, I
found this is not the case. There are thousands of ideas of how to bring diversity into a classroom.
Some of these need no technology, while others need a lot of technology. Additionally, the type
of diversity I can bring in is also diverse. Cultural diversity appears to be the easiest, but
disability diversity is also possible. Sadly, most of the simulations using technology are visual
based; this makes sense since using technology is very visually dependent. I do wish there were
ways I could bring other disabilities, like being deaf or extreme physical limitations into the
classroom.
Diversity and Technology 7
When I look at what I have found and think about applying it to my classroom, there is
some interesting ideas. Since my students are so young, many of these ideas would be difficult.
However, I have penpals in Thailand already lined up for them. Additionally, I think some of the
more simple simulations could work well, for example VisionSim, or doing some sort of color-
blind activity. Overall, I want to impress upon my students that no one-person views or
experiences the world in the same manner and that is completely fine. I hope to create a snowball
effect of reducing discrimination by helping the new generation accept and understand, not just
tolerate others.