TWO ROADS DIVERGED IN A YELLOW WOOD As an academic and a teacher, managing students with a lot of learning styles and abilities/intelligences, and new tools for learning, we are increasingly facing choices about how we manage the learning environment

AND SORRY I COULD NOT TRAVEL BOTH Tools we traditionally associate with learning - notes, books, images, blackboards and chalk have history, they fit comfortably with our teaching. New tools – technological gadgets can be difficult to keep apace with?

AND BE ONE TRAVELLER As learning becomes more accessible, the student profile is changing. 4.6% in Ireland, In nursing, teacher training, medicine, engineering courses

LONG I STOOD AND LOOKED DOWN ONE AS FAR I COULD Students with disabilities are taking courses we would never have thought possible. A Nurse with one hand, A Teacher who is deaf, Engineer with visual impairment

TO WHERE IT BENT IN THE UNDER GROWTH There is a quiet revolution we need to embrace! We must stop and think about teaching, learning and technology, How, Why, What for? Universal Design, what is it…. And most importantly, How much do I need to know????

THEN TOOK THE OTHER AS JUST AS FAIR When considering students with disabilities and the choices they are making, it may (will) challenge our biases and presumptions.

AND HAVING PERHAPS THE BETTER CLAIM I have a new amplified stethoscope ! We need to recognise students are choosing courses that they believe they have the ability to study and want a career in….just as their peers do. Students - today - can engage in learning in a different way and claim it in a way that suits them

THOUGH AS FOR THAT THE PASSING THERE HAD WORN THEM REALLY ABOUT THE SAME But is not student success and high quality of education still what it is all about?

AND BOTH THAT MORNING EQUALLY LAY Yet things cannot remain the same for any student …Control – quality of education, appropriate usage of technologies, …Standards –what’s fair to all students? …Equality – what will this look like??

IN LEAVES NO STEP HAD TRODDEN BLACK. This is all new ground

OH, I KEPT THE FIRST FOR ANOTHER DAY! So with all the changes – the primary objective is that all students with a diverse need can be the best that they can be – and that best will get better….

YET KNOWING HOW WAY LEADS ON TO WAY, And now more than ever we need to share our learning, our concerns, our experiences, our questions….

I DOUBTED IF I SHOULD EVER COME BACK Through this sharing and evolution we will all realize change…

I SHALL BE TELLING THIS WITH A SIGH And sometime in the future…we will all be able to say we were part of this great change

SOMEWHERE AGES

AND AGES HENCE:

TWO ROADS DIVERGED IN A WOOD, AND I--

..WE TOOK THE ONE LESS TRAVELED BY AND THAT HAS MADE ALL THE DIFFERENCE.

FROM – THE ROAD NOT TAKEN, ROBERT FROST, (1874–1963) Robert Frost four-time Pulitzer Prize winning American poet, teacher and lecturer. Although he never graduated from college, he received over 40 honorary degrees. He also suffered from depression and a fear of public speaking

Thank you – Mary Quirke