Nubo white paper

Adapt without watering down

Seven principles · 110 references

Open access: the book is in Spanish. Read it in full here or download the PDF, no sign-up.

Cover of Nubo's white paper: “Adaptar sin recortar. Siete principios, 110 referencias” (Adapt without watering down. Seven principles, 110 references), on a purple background with an orange circle and a green diamond.

What it's about

In Spain, 1,255,398 students have a specific educational support need. The law requires schools to adapt. The classroom still works from a single set of materials. What happens in between is a handmade adaptation, done at the last minute, that almost always ends up doing the same thing: cutting. This book explains why that cutting is unnecessary.

Before proposing anything, it helps to be clear about what is broken. And to close two doors that many people believe already solve the problem: Universal Design for Learning and general-purpose artificial intelligence.

The seven principles describe how we think: understand the student, look at the task, and follow the support until it is withdrawn. This is the page you can read in full, chapter by chapter; the last chapter brings them together on a single page you can photograph.

The seven principles

  1. ISeparate what must be learned from what must be navigatedThe content is left alone. The access barrier is rebuilt entirely. Everything else follows from this.
  2. IIDescribe the student by what is hard for them, not by their labelA diagnosis says what condition a person has. It doesn't say what they need on Friday.
  3. IIITreat the profile as a living estimate, not a fixed snapshotWe keep what we believe and how strongly we believe it. No past report decides what a student can do today.
  4. IVAdapt the task, not the studentA difficulty only matters if this task demands it. Adapting what didn't need adapting tires students out, singles them out and creates dependence.
  5. VDesign for the student facing the most barriers, without lowering the ceiling for anyoneThirty different worksheets don't fit in a classroom. We group by what each task asks for and set access for the student facing the most barriers; the intellectual challenge stays intact for everyone.
  6. VINo help is foreverA scaffold that is never taken down stops being a ramp and becomes a ceiling. Taking it down is planned, too.
  7. VIILowering the curriculum is the last resort, and a machine doesn't decide itFormat first, then conditions, and only then content. With evidence and a human signature.

Full contents

  1. Chapter 1. The problem: today, adapting means cutting
    1. 1.1 What really happens in a classroom
    2. 1.2 Adaptation as cutting, and its cost
    3. 1.3 The cognitive fracture
    4. 1.4 Why UDL isn't enough
    5. 1.5 Why a general-purpose AI doesn't adapt: it simplifies
  2. Chapter 2. What we know about a brain that stumbles
    1. 2.1 How a task travels through the brain
    2. 2.2 Working memory and its three loads
    3. 2.3 Reading is not one single thing
    4. 2.4 The profiles that share a classroom
    5. 2.5 What psychometrics adds: measuring what you think you're measuring
  3. Chapter 3. Nubo's seven principles
    1. How they fit together
  4. Principle I. Separate what must be learned from what must be navigated
  5. Principle II. Describe the student by what is hard for them, not by their label
  6. Principle III. Treat the profile as a living estimate, not a fixed snapshot
  7. Principle IV. Adapt the task, not the student
  8. Principle V. Design for the student facing the most barriers, without lowering the ceiling for anyone
  9. Principle VI. No help is forever
  10. Principle VII. Lowering the curriculum is the last resort, and a machine doesn't decide it
  11. Chapter 4. The teacher stays in charge, and can see why
    1. 4.1 Nothing goes out without checking that the content is still whole
    2. 4.2 The teacher has the final say
    3. 4.3 Every change says why it is there
    4. 4.4 The record that can't be altered
    5. 4.5 Learning from the classroom, with a brake
  12. Chapter 5. What Nubo doesn't do
    1. 5.1 We don't diagnose
    2. 5.2 We don't measure social interaction, and we don't want to
    3. 5.3 We don't make a different worksheet for every student
    4. 5.4 Children's data doesn't train anyone's models
    5. 5.5 What is established and what is still being tested
  13. Chapter 6. How we are testing it
    1. 6.1 Why you won't find an efficacy figure here
    2. 6.2 The four questions that need answers
    3. 6.3 Who has to answer them
  14. Chapter 7. The seven principles at a glance
    1. What it takes for this to work in a school
  15. Glossary
  16. References

How to cite this book

Nubo Learning. (2026). Adaptar sin recortar: siete principios [White paper]. https://www.nubolearning.com/libro-blanco

Open access. The book is in Spanish: read it in full here or download the PDF, no sign-up.

Read the book (in Spanish)Download the PDF in Spanish (156 pages)

© 2026 Nubo Learning · Published under a CC BY 4.0 license: you may share and reuse it, citing Nubo Learning.