Podcasts

In this episode of Texthelp Talks, we are joined by Baasit Siddiqui, TV star and Director of Siddiqui Education. Baasit shares with us his experiences as a former head of department and his drive to close the achievement gap. He talks to us about his work in helping to educate, motivate and develop the skills of disadvantaged school children across the nation. He also explores how the wider community can help schools to support young people and give them greater opportunities for success.

The Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) recommends that access arrangements for exams are part of a student's "normal way of working". But what does this mean and what does this look like in a busy classroom environment?

In this episode, we're putting these questions and more to Simon Tanner from Bohunt Education Trust. Simon shares his experience as Director of SEND in supporting students to produce their best work and have the right opportunities come exam time.

In this episode we are joined by 2 experts in maths education in Australia. The host for the podcast is Allan Dougan, Allan is CEO of the Australian Association of Maths Teachers (AAMT). The AAMT are partnering with Texthelp to further maths education in Australia, so Allan is in a great position to host this session. 

Allan started his career as a Secondary Mathematics teacher in Scotland. As a celebrated teacher, he held various leadership positions in schools and was Scottish Teacher of the Year Runner Up. After moving to Australia, Allan quickly proved himself as a teacher of merit holding senior leadership positions in NSW schools.

Before joining AAMT in December 2020, Allan was Global Head of Education for a large EdTech company - a role that saw Allan present professional learning across the globe and develop a strong knowledge of current and emerging educational practices and pedagogies worldwide. Allan is passionate about relational and relevant education which helps young people become lifelong learners.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework designed by CAST - guiding the design of learning experiences to actively meet the needs of all learners and where there are barriers to learning, it is due to the design of the environment, not the learner.

UDL was first introduced into learning environments in the 1980's and has since been adopted slowly across the world. Learning environments have seen such a shift over the past few years that it begs the question, "what's next for UDL and how do we see it evolving from here?"

We invited Steve Nordmark, Director of Business Development at CAST and James Basham, Professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Kansas and Senior Director for Learning & Innovation at CAST, to find out.

In the episode you'll hear discussions on the future directions of UDL, the UDL-IRN summit and listen to Steve, Joni and James unpack what an ‘expert learner’ really is…

At Texthelp it’s our mission to help unlock everyone's full potential through technology. We love hearing from other like minded people who are passionate about education, accessibility and technology. That's why we invited Sky Caves, a Senior Learning Technologist at Basingstoke College of Technology onto the podcast.

Sky shares why she's so passionate about integrating technology into the classroom and how her and the digital team at BCoT drive digital adoption across the college.

At Texthelp, we believe that everyone has the right to understand and be understood. We love hearing from other like minded people who are passionate about education, accessibility and technology.

That's why we have invited Luis Perez, Technical Assistance Specialist at CAST, and Mindy Johnson, Director of Digital Communications & Outreach at CAST, to join us for this episode.

We’ll be discussing the importance of accessibility, both as a foundation for UDL, and in online teaching in general. This includes the steps that educators can take to ensure accessibility on their materials, as well as the importance of making sure that PDFs are accessible.