Chapter 8 of Teaching Every Student in the Digital Age, focuses on the Concord School District where Donna Palley has been incorporating UDL into the classroom since 1995. Donna has helped to lead the district from UDL on a small scale—"as small as one short curriculum unit in one classroom," to a globally successful action-oriented model.

Instead of focusing on making the curriculum fit into the student with a disability, they are anticipating challeneges and circumventing them before problems present themselves. This is a matter of respecting the student and being able to predict their needs based on prior knowledge. Just as each student has their own needs for assistive technology, so does each school. "Of course, we know it's not possible to import a model wholesale from one context to another. The specific approaches used in Concord will not be appropriate in every school system."

The seven key components that can help any school embrace UDL, Technology Infrastructure and Support, Administrative Support , Teacher Training and Support , Redefined Roles for Special and Regular Education Teachers, Collaborative Curriculum Planning, Parent an, Community Involvement and Creative Funding are the building blocks for UDL success. There is one thing however; that I think is missing from this equation and that is FLEXIBILITY.

The most important element to me, is the idea of being able to mold and change for any given situation. It is imperative that teachers and other school officials involved in the UDL changes are able to work together, change roles if necessary, consolidate, expand, as the situation may change because of timing, number of students needing UDL accomodations, etc.

A big shout out to the Concord school district for setting the trend in such a HOT topic.