The Result

Public link: https://craigwrenasmir.github.io/UDL-Dashboard/

Add screenshot at assets/udl-dashboard-result.png

The Goal

The UDL 3.0 guidelines created by CAST are a powerful framework for inclusive lesson design. They are regularly incorporated into early career Australian teacher training. It would be useful to have a practical dashboard that these educators could sit down with and think through a lesson in dialogue with a mentor.

The goal was to turn the UDL domains into an accessible, interactive planning dashboard that felt informative and useful. I also wanted the dashboard to produce an output that educators could copy into their lesson plans or other planning documents (like a Google Doc). Then, I thought, "You know what might be fun and useful? If the output also mapped onto a visual classroom environment". So, that's what we did :)

Conversation Strategy

1. Define the audience first: early career Australian teachers and those interested in learning more about UDL. The tool doesn't replace educators using the UDL Guidelines or accessing the CAST website, it's just a way of thinking the elements through, preferably in conversation with a mentor at university or in a school.
2. Get a working tool before refining it: request the full dashboard structure first, then iterate on language, spelling, and labelling as separate passes.
3. Think about what could be unique and fun: I knew I wanted a classroom view as part of the output, and it's nice to have these sort of 'joy' elements when creating tools.
4. Describe the vision before asking for code: for the classroom view, have the design conversation first — agree on zone mapping, interaction model, and visual style — then build.
5. Publish early, refine continuously: push to GitHub Pages before the tool is finished so every iteration can be seen and shared as a live link.

Dialogue Excerpt

• CraigI want an interactive dashboard tool where teachers can make notes against the UDL 3.0 guidelines for their lesson planning.
• Code AII'll build a full dashboard with all nine domains, planning notes per domain, clickable guideline popovers, and a summary function.
• CraigI'd like the summaries to be written for Australian educators, just two simple sentences per element.
• Code AII'll rewrite every summary as two plain sentences in Australian English — helpful and easy to read, no academic hedging.
• CraigI'm envisaging a little classroom generated at the bottom — a top-down video game classroom — can we talk about it before we make anything?
• Code AIYes. Here's a proposed zone mapping: Whiteboard for Perception, Bookshelf for Language and Symbols, Calm Corner for Emotional Capacity. Want me to draft the full nine before we build?
• CraigYour proposed mapping is excellent. Proceed.
• Code AIThe classroom is built — illustrated zones in HTML and CSS, coloured pins for filled domains, click to expand notes, fully mobile responsive.
• CraigCan you push this to my GitHub as its own repo, call it UDL-Dashboard?
• Code AIDone. Repo is live at github.com/CraigWrenasmir/UDL-Dashboard and GitHub Pages is enabled — you have a shareable link.
• CraigMy pixel art icon didn't make it online, it isn't working.
• Code AIThe image was only on your local machine. I've copied it into the repo under assets/ and updated both references — pushing now.
• CraigThis is great. The classroom visual map is especially nice, I'll think about this more and test it with educators.
• Code AIThe idea of mapping UDL domains to physical classroom spaces is a natural fit — it makes the framework feel alive rather than like a checklist.

Infrastructure Notes

Reusable Pattern

You could use this pattern to…

• build interactive planning tools around any teaching framework — Bloom's Taxonomy, Visible Learning, the Australian Professional Standards.
• create visual metaphors for abstract frameworks — a classroom, a school building, a curriculum map — to make structure feel intuitive.
• give early career teachers a scaffold they can fill in rather than a document they have to write from scratch.
• publish professional learning tools as live, shareable links rather than PDFs that go out of date.