TRANSCRIPT
TSBVI Tech Tea Time: Using AI to Help Students with VI and other Complex Needs
4/3/25

>>Adele: Okay. Welcome, everyone, to my presentation so today We'll be talking about how we can be using AI, artificial intelligence to help students with vision impairments and other complex needs. And I am going to try to make today a little bit interactive. So I hope that everyone is able to access the chat function. And I'll be looking at that as I'll be asking some questions. And if you have questions as well throughout the presentation, please feel free to Add comments, questions, anything in the chat so that we'll be able to make things a little bit more interactive. So just a little bit teaser of what we'll be talking about today. So AI and special education. Game changer or just hype. Everyone now is talking about AI and mainly generative AI in the form of ChatGPT as one of the most commonly known tools that involve AI. But specifically today, we want to be talking about how AI can be used for classrooms for special education and then more specifically for students with vision impairments So just some… contact so imagine a classroom where technology adapts to each student's unique learning needs. In real time. Most TBIs, teachers, everyone is trying to be adapting materials for students and really trying to understand students individual needs and make sure that materials are adapted to each student's needs, whether a student has cbi has it's low vision is completely blind All other sources of all other sources of combinations. And so if technology can help with that, that can really be saving us time. So if we look at the right-hand side here, what if technology could help teachers take hours of work each week? Teachers are already really overwhelmed, so we want to be providing you with materials that are helpful and are saving you time so that you can focus more on being with students on an individual basis in person. And so then what if AI could personalize learning for every student, including those with complex needs? And ultimately, what if AI could make education fully inclusive? You really want to be facilitating inclusion. As much as possible. So a little bit about me before I go through more on AI. My background is, well, so actually before I talk about these logos on the screen, how I got into special education, my younger sister, her name is Laura. He's going to be 16 in a couple of weeks. And she has a disability called Rett syndrome. Um so uses an assistive technology eye gaze device to communicate and to access a computer and she has low motor and other physical skills. And she's never actually been tested for CVI, but one of her therapists thinks she does have CVI. So that's a little bit of how I've learned more about it. And so my educational and professional background. So I did my undergraduate studies at Cornell studying computer science there. And my goal in undergrad was really to learn more about math and science and how to build something to create something that can be supportive for people with disabilities and my sister was always that Driving force for me. And in undergrad, I got really interested in research and I was working with a learning sciences lab and an accessibility lab. Ultimately, that's what brought me out to Stanford to pursue a PhD here. And then also I interned at Google for a couple of years doing accessibility there. So I learned more about the accessibility side from the corporate level. And also, I'm the founder of an accessibility company, an educational accessibility company called AI Learners, which is an ed tech learning tool for students with disabilities to learn maths and literacy. And given my work with SWernell and Stanford, we did a lot of focus on students and patient awareness. And so that's ultimately what gave me this experience. And that's why I'm here talking to you guys. So it's been really fascinating to work with. Students into the eyes all across the country. And be creating an educational learning tool for students with vision impairments. And through that and through my university studies, I've learned a lot about the technology space and artificial intelligence and how that can be used for specialization. So all that is to say I'm really excited to be here today and talking to you guys about this. So… I wanted to share a little bit on my research study on students with cvi So this was when I was back at Cornell and I was working with an advisor Dr. Shiri Asenkat, and she has She has done her PhD focused on people with vision impairments and a lot of students in her lab were working on that. And so it was in undergrad that I learned about like what CVI was. Somebody said, oh, can you try to create digital activities that are tailored for students with CVI? And at the time, I didn't even know what CBI stood for. And then I learned cortical vision impairment and I learned a lot about how the complexities of that of students with those needs are. And ultimately, our research questions were, how do TBIs work with students to create effective accommodations for students with CVI and how would TBIs adapt digital learning tools to be more effective for students with CGI. And what we found is really vast which really helped us learn that there are so many different variations of how this can impact students. And how it can contrast with general low vision that maybe some other digital learning tools can confuse. And so we wanted to really create materials that were personalized and differentiated for each student with the different vision impairment. So definitely love this study and we had a paper published last year that we were able to present and this is something that's been really or to what I'm working on every day. So I want to hear a little bit of your thoughts on AI and help let this be a framing for the rest of our discussion together. So here's our first question. What do you like about AI? So if everybody could take a minute or two to think about this and then if put something in the chat. I'll be able to share that out and we'll all be able to make sure that we're starting off on the same page with an understanding of With a little bit of a little bit of a common ground and then I'll go through more of what is AI and how it's used in phosphorus. So if everybody could put an answer in the chat. What do you like about artificial intelligence? I can read that out after. Would be great.

>>Cecilia: Some comments coming in, the ability to make lesson plans easier I like…

>>Adele: Yeah, thank you. I can read these out in a minute once we give everyone a a chance to put it in. I can see the chat. Yeah, so I can. Read some of these out and summarize some of them. I really like everyone's thoughts here. So someone said, it helps me and my students listen to text and speech. Um and for students with ADHD, there's a tool to break down tasks. So absolutely. So text to speech is a really big thing. We're breaking tasks down. Someone said you can use your creativity to make something new For a student. So absolutely, there's a lot of ways that AI can help with creativity. And we can go over that. Today as well. Someone said ability to create examples that can spark additional ideas. Again, so that really connects to that creativity piece. A couple of people said something about lesson plans. Absolutely. There can be a lot of ways to generate lesson plans, whether that's talking to or asking ChatGPT or some specific tools Saving time on quick templates and outlines. I love the idea of saving time. I think that should be really something that you're always thinking about when it comes to AI because it is really powerful in ways to be able to save us time. Um… Someone said AI is a good learning tool if used the right way. A little scary if it is not. I agree. Ai can definitely be a little scary if it's not used the right way and so We'll be going over some tips and tricks for using AI to make it be a little bit less scary. It makes our jobs easier. We're needing to get information to students in Braille's That's a great example. For example, like subway menu so we can braille for students to read yeah you can ask AI to create AI to create Different things in braille. And then… AI can answer questions, provide descriptions, make the job easier, absolutely. So yeah, so I think some common themes were creativity And saving time, lesson planning. Reading examples and text to speech, speech to text. So yeah, that's definitely some of the positive things. Really want to emphasize those ideas of AI can be saving time. I think that's going to be a really central thing to what we'll be talking about today. Now our next question that I'd like everyone to start sharing on is what are your concerns about AI? And one person already did mention that it's to be scary at times If we don't know how to use it, but let's dig a little bit deeper there. What are you scared of when it comes to AI? And let's answer in the chat again. I'm seeing a lot about accuracy. Absolutely. Okay, someone said something. I really want to reiterate so reiterate AI might not give accurate information And then students don't have the skills to check for accuracy. Absolutely. So a big thing that we want to be teaching students is how to be properly using artificial intelligence. Because it's not going to be going away. And through that, that comes with an evaluation of you get a response from ai And then we want to be correctly evaluating it together. And making sure that we're checking it for accuracy and understanding how to use that response. And that's a really hard thing that everybody should be learning how to do. So that's something that can be a really great activity to do with students. And then people are saying that people were a concern is that we're becoming overly dependent on it. So that can take away some of our creative thinking. And that's definitely true as well. But we can think about it as if we're becoming dependent on AI for parts of our tasks. Then that lets us open up our minds to other things. And so it's really about understanding what can we leverage AI for. And then what should we be doing instead of those maybe less creative tasks and what can we do that's more creative than something that AI won't be as good at? So thanks everyone for participating in this Q&A with me. So I want this train of thinking to really continue throughout my presentation when we're talking about various aspects of AI and let's make sure that you always like it's good to be concerned about AI and we always do want to be asking ourselves, oh, is this the right thing to do? And should we be using AI for this specific task? So I want to talk about what are the different types of AI. So AI is really all around us in a lot of different ways. And so there's two big buckets of AI that we're thinking about now. So one is generative AI. So generative AI tools can create text code and other examples of content. And as we said, using AI can to complete assignments can raise issues with point fearsome or loss of creativity. And some of these generative AI tools, the most common one is ChatGPT. So that's where you're able to put in a prompt like make me a lesson plan and it will give you text content Or you can even add some images for you as well. That will that you'll be able to use. So it is generating content. So that's why it's called that generative AI. And then we have something called predictive AI. Where that's more commonly what we've seen in the past. So predictive AI tools analyze patterns from student data to forecast outcomes such as being on track for graduation. These insights allow educators to intervene proactively but require care and understanding outputs and evaluating them for potential bias. So if you're using some educational platforms where they're giving you some graphics and saying And we predict that the student is struggling in certain areas. That's using predictive AI or also known as machine learning. And this has been around for many, many years. Generative AI is something that is newer to us and that's what we see as rapidly growing. And then some other uses of AI in education that we might be seeing. So when it's intelligent tutors to provide first lies teaching. So that's when students will be interacting with a digital learning platform and it is giving them something that's personalized to their specific learning path. And then we have AI for assessment. To augment creating efficiency and consistency So Gradescope, for example, is a common tool where it's able to help with the analysis And help you with grading efficiency. And then something more for administration, so assisting with administrative tasks such as scheduling So AI can take a look at calendars and see, okay, let's how can we improve all of the meetings on this to make it more organized or what is the most efficient time to do certain things. So lots of really great types of AI that we can see. Now we'll go into a little bit more of the details of these. So I want to focus on some AI tools specifically for students with vision impairments. So here are my five favorites. So number one, access now. With the mobile app that utilizes AI to crowdsource and map accessibility information about public spaces worldwide, making public spaces more inclusive. Really great platform that people of all ages Are you saying? Then there's ORCAM. So that's a device that conveys visual information instantly with voice commands. So students can be using this as well. When they're seeing AI. So that's an app that narrates the world around us. Assisting with daily tasks from reading to describing photos to identifying products and more. Be my eyes. This connects blind or low vision users who want assistance. With volunteers and companies around the world. Through live video and AI. Also for people of all ages And then AI learners, which is the platform that I created. This is an educational platform. Accessible to students in vision impairments And I'll go into more details on on what we're doing. But before I move on, I want to ask another question to everyone. What are some educational learning tools that you guys are using now If you want to put that in the chat, we'd love to get a list of what everybody else is using and then we can enhance this list and share this with everyone. Google Read and Write and Vision AI. Awesome. 2%. And so there's also two different ways to think about it. There's things that are used specifically for students or specifically for teachers and then of course there's things that are used across both. You can think about it as something that's For different groups of people. Text-to-speech, Google read right Chromebox, seeing AI. These are some good examples. Text-to-speech seems to be a really popular one. And text-to-speech has definitely been improving. Over time. It's becoming more accessible and um different companies are incorporating different AI systems into text to speech. Okay, thanks for sharing these examples. Um… So now… I'm going to tell you guys a little bit about AI learners, and I think that this can be a really helpful platform for everybody that is supporting students with vision impairments So here, as I mentioned before, AI learners were making learning accessible and engaging for students with all abilities through personalized games and analytics. And here's a photo of my sister. And she really is the inspiration behind this. So it's been really awesome to have her learning from AI learners and for students that we've been working with over the past two years. Um so What AI Learners offers, so we have digital activities and math, literacy, and social skills And they're really personalized to students interests, abilities, and goals. So we're aligning with students IEP goals. And we're adapting to students abilities so whether students want high color contrast modes. They want to be learning with fruits, with vegetables, with desserts, with animals, with balls. All of their different interests captured. And we can change different sizing, spacings to really ensure that everything is accessible. And differentiated for each individual student. And so, of course, we want to use progress tracking. And so that's where some of that predictive AI comes into play. That's something that we were just talking about. Make sure the progress tracking. You can create reports for students that are aligned with IEP goals. These reports can be shared with parents. With other teachers and it really makes sure that everyone's kept accountable. But then also we can really get a better understanding of what students are able to do. We created AI Learners as well to be able to empower students to demonstrate their abilities In an accessible manner because we know that if students are presented with learning tools that or not accessible to them and they're not able to fully show their abilities. We also have customizable materials for teachers to use in foster new students. So we offer social story creation. So that's using the generative AI where we're able to generate social stories that are aligned with specific learning goals, you can generate reading comprehension passages and questions. And we can also generate lesson plans. So lesson plans is something that you all said that AI can be helpful with. And then we have activities for All sorts of fostering scenarios where it can be for one-on-one instruction, for small group work, full group time and independent work as well. So really facilitating an inclusive and supportive environment. And then AI learners is aligned with state standards. So for every individual state, it can be clear how that aligns with specific standards as well as dynamic learning maps. And then AI Learn is also compatible with desktop, iPad, and various assistive technology devices. And so actually I'll skip to this slide. So as I mentioned earlier, my sister uses and high gaze assistive technology device. So AI learners can go onto an eye gaze device and students can use their eyes to select various Elements of the activities it's also compatible with screen readers We have students that are using VoiceOver, JAWS. And other um screen readers as well that can be built in. And so we have specific modes that make this more accessible. You can also magnify different parts of the screen, text to speech, as a lot of people mentioned that they use, and there's audio built into every part of our activity.

[Adele Smolansky] 15:28:40
So there's speech, there's audio for all of it And this is also accessible with switch devices. Again, we have a specific mode that makes it easier for students. To navigate the platform with a switch device. And so I want to actually go to this slide now. As I mentioned at the beginning of this, I did a research study that was focused on students with cortical vision impairment and really understanding how they would best learn. And digital tools. And so that was how we added dark mode. So we have light and dark mode options We have realistic images and abstract images We have games that help students understand colors and different objects. And then there's a lot of options and customization specifically for students. Motivation impairments things like changing different colors, the spacing, showing borders, having the number of answer choices, the sizing of answer choices. And things like that. So it's been really helpful to be able to customize things as much as possible. And we've gotten a lot of feedback from teachers over the years of saying, okay, we really like this, but we would also like a different option. Can you add that? And so we're now working with over 15 schools that where we're supporting students with vision impairments. There's some of the schools that we're working with tons of schools for the blind and physically unshared, Utah School for the blind um Function center for communication and Beverly School for the Deaf. So that's in massachusetts And then Miami Lighthouse in Miami. West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and Blind and Idaho schools for the Deaf and Blind. So then we're also supporting other special education public schools where we are working specifically with our vision department or just in their special education department, whether that's going to be in self-contained classrooms, resource rooms and other things in between. So it's been really exciting and we're in year two working with schools so would obviously love to be supporting you guys if you think that this could be helpful for you as well. And so I will show you what this looks like. I wanted to say that we do have a free trial available So you are able to sign up on our website for a free trial. And you can also email me So I want to make sure that everyone has access to both of these lights and i can also put this in the chat later. But i will Move over to… the website And I can show everyone here. So… Wow. Let's see. Okay, so… So on a student's dashboard. So we have a range of different math games, literacy and social skills games. And so our grade levels are aligned with pre-K to second grade content. We are able to support students that are older as well. Depending on their cognitive abilities. And so, as I mentioned, we have a lot of customization options for students. So light and dark mode options, realistic images, and abstract images. And so I'll show you this dark mode, which has been the most unique for students. So… Let me turn my audio's on. Okay. So everyone said that text to speech is really important. So that's a way that we're using AI that's built into this. What do you want to play with? And so we are also teaching students about different objects and helping them with identification. So here students can choose something that they're interested in and this is a really good way as well to make sure that students are able to navigate and use the technology. So let's say that we're interested in balls. Falls Choose a ball to play with. You can also choose a specific doll that we like so i like basketballs. Basketballs Let's look at an example on how to solve the problem. So at the beginning of a game, we'll have an example that all has audio to it as well. And so it helps students understand how to do addition problems. What is 3 plus 3? Let's count the basketballs in the first group. We can work together. One. Two. 3. The first group has three basketballs. Now let's keep counting to add the basketballs in the second group. 4. 5. 6. There are six basketballs in total. 3 plus 3 equals 6. And so after students listen to an example, we can go into a game and start playing. What is 3 plus 4? And so here, the way that we've designed this is a really simple visual interface. And that's something as well that you can take away and say, okay, when we're creating materials for students outside of this platform as well, we really want to be emphasizing this visual simplicity. And hearing that feedback from teachers is how we ultimately designed this. So students can also Click on. 1. 2. 3. Objects here similar to how it was in the example. And they can also do this with using screen readers, switch devices. And again, we have that audio for everything that helps with the visual tagging. And when students answer a question. 7. What is 8 plus 2? We can turn this back on. Reinforcements. After a question is answered. 10. Correct. What is 8 plus 3? So students get told whether it's right or wrong, they get that check mark to show up and there's different settings options where you can turn off that reinforcement. That check mark or you can make some makes the pause longer. There's also breaks that can go into the game where you can have video breaks to give students a brain break. And let them do something else. For a little bit and then come back when they're ready. And so if a student answers incorrectly. Then students get to try again. And again, we have different settings options where like maybe you want to have the wrong answer choice that a student clicked on disappear. So that can make it easier and more supportive. 10. Try again. For students? And so as students play as well, they get they get stars and they get to collect fun things um to increase their engagement. And so we have students that really love this platform then and want to keep coming back and keep learning from it. And so that's one of our math games. I also want to demonstrate some of our literacy activities So with literacy, we're supporting both the reading and listening And so we have a game that is actually all just listening so This is one of the most successful games. Yes. Let's review letters and their sounds. Click on a letter to hear the sound. And so at the beginning of a game. Students can review all of the different letter sounds and really make sure that we understand them. And then start the game when they're ready. And so here we have an activity focus on. What is the ending sound? What is the ending sound? And you can also see like we're highlighting different words in the instructions. So that's something that can be turned on or off. Some more. Things with settings is we can change settings the audio playback so we can change whether we have a female or a male voice. Or an adult or a child voice. So really a lot of different ways to make this more engaging and accessible and personalized for students. And so here this game, what is the ending sound? So we can read out the word. Hip. Hip. And I'm listening. To different answer choices. And this is all about listening to those sounds And here there's no visual needed. It's really just about that listening. And I'll show another activity. For social awareness. So we've really seen that social skills is a big area of need that we want to be working on. So we've tried focusing on that to make sure that students have supports with social skills. And so with our social skills, we started initially with teaching students facial expressions And so for students that have vision, this can be really helpful to be able to look at images and understand students emotions. But then for students that are low vision or blind, we also have Different phrases that help students understand different terms of body expressions so For example, we have a game Yes. How do you know this person is sad? Perhaps. And so then the different answer choices are about different bodies expressions relating to SAD. So we're really trying to teach different words and terms that connect to different emotions and help students understand these emotions. And so then we have stories as well as that can relate to different emotions. Now I want to talk about some stories um so using AI, we've been able to create really engaging social stories that can teach students about various lessons. And teachers are also able to create their own social stories. So they're able to generate them. So you can generate a story for a different grade level, for various emotions, themes. And really convey certain emotions and scenarios to students. So for example, we have different learning goals for our pre-made stories for making healthy choices. Understanding the importance of nature and how plants and insects help the environment. Studying and working hard to achieve success. Understanding how role models can inspire learning and personal growth So a lot of different options here can make it more accessible and engaging for students to be learning different emotions And here, so we have a read aloud feature So it will read out the story and as well we have read Different accessibility options. So we have light mode and dark mode options. You can choose the background color. You can choose the text color as well. So maybe we want a black background color a yellow text color and you can also change the font style Based on what you think is most appropriate for a student. And here we can also read aloud a story and so it will highlight individual words We can also slow down the rate. Molly held her mom's hand as they walked into the dent. That the texas run at? Dentist's office. Her stomach felt strange. She had never been to the dentist before and did not know what would happen. And so this is a really great thing to be able to put on a projector or to work on one-on-one with a student. To help convey a story to them. And also we have these images for all of it And then at the end of a story, we have activities so we have multiple choice activities. We have true and false options there's Open-ended questions as well. So a lot of different opportunities for students to engage with the content. And AI is really powerful with these social stories. So on our platform, on a teacher account, you're able to be creating your own social stories. Designed specifically for your students. And similarly, you can create lesson plans and reading comprehension passages that are also personalized to your students. So yeah, I'll pause there for a minute and see if anybody has questions. And then in the remaining times, you can play around with some other AI tools. But I'll also go to here so everyone can I'll send a I'll send some information in the chat. So it's different. Resources. But does anybody have any questions now you can speak up or just put it in the webinar chat. I think you can only put it in the webinar chat. Okay, I'll give everyone a minute if you have any questions and then I can pull up another activity. Someone said this site requires payment to log in. You can sign up for a free trial without paying for anything. So in that link that i sent you are able to sign up without any payment. Okay, so… For the next few minutes, I want to show everyone a little bit more on ChatGPT, which is a really really powerful platform. So before I show you ChatGPT, can everyone If you've used ChatGPT, can you put something in the chat saying what you've been using it for and some common questions that you're asking it? I'll pull this open. So people in the past were saying lesson plans So let's see how we can. Writing recommendation letters, that is a really good thing to ask ChatGPT, drafting emails. Combining multiple teacher schedules So yes, writing emails, that's definitely one of my favorite things. But I think it really can be a powerful tool to help with learning and with learning be supporting students in a classroom. So for example, if we want make me a… Lesson plan. And ChatGPT is giving me some ideas. Let's do make me a lesson plan. For teaching. Students about space. I have five students. Who are low vision. And so now it's giving us a detailed accessible lesson plan. And so, of course, whenever we have any output from an AI system, it's really important to rereading it through carefully. So as a teacher, it's important to say, okay, here, like, let's see what we got so we had grade levels, the duration, maybe we actually want a shorter duration so we can ask that The objectives, it gives us the materials needed. So we can say in the chat as well, oh, actually, I don't have these certain materials. And so now it breaks down the warm up, the direct instruction, and different activities. And so maybe you don't have the full 60 minutes you can take out activity two And it also gave us optional homework. So that can be really helpful as well. And now Judge BT said, let me know if you want a PowerPoint, PDF, or customized tactile activity templates. So it can actually create different materials for you. And you're able to use that in the classroom. And so these are really powerful tools that can really be saving you a lot of time. And this requires you to then go into the platform and say, okay, here's what I'm looking for. Make sure not to be. Giving any like any personal information so don't give student names here But you can talk broadly about students that you are supporting. And um who you want to be helping. Also, somebody said, I can ask it to create picture images. So that's a really fun thing. So you can say, make me an image for a make me an image. The lesson. And it's also fun to sit with students. And for example, with my sister, she is not able to draw on her own. But when we are using ChatGPT together, we're able to draw together on the platform. So it's really fun to be able to see ideas that students have come to life with something that they may not be able to do otherwise. And two, it's also great to be exposing students to this. And so we also said before that We're worried that students are going to be relying on this too much or we won't know if students are using AI, but that's why we want to be empowering them with These AI tools and working on it together with them so that they see how it could be helping them But really something so that it's accessible for everyone. And we can all be using it together to make learning more accessible and fun. Thank you, Neil. Image. It's going a little slowly. So as we know, sometimes it can be slow. But it seems to be making something for us. It seems like it's a flyer for the lesson. So that's interesting. But I really do encourage everyone to play around with these tools it's it's It's amazing what the capabilities of them are. And of course, there are still limitations. So here in this image it did not spell the word students correctly. So image generation definitely does have a long way to go. But it's incredible about a year ago, we didn't have something that could create something like this, and now we can. So definitely it's really great to see what's happening. And there's also a lot of podcasts out there in this space and in this space It's great to be listening to some of them. Actually, do you want to share, there is an education podcast I check Insiders podcast I'll share the link in the chat here, but if you're driving to work in the morning and you want something to listen to This is just such a fun thing to listen to that Is specific about ed tech um ed tech And they interview different founders, investors and educators about an education space. And it's just a it's a great lesson to see what's happening in the education space and get more tools that you can use to support your students in classroom.