2 Awesome Ways #SchoolAI Supports Accessibility #Accessibility #EdChat

As a person with ADHD and Dyslexia, among other things, accessibility is very important to me. Decding to leave the classroom is not an easy decision because I know that my neurodivergence might not thrive outside of the classroom. Having been with SchoolAI for 5 months now, I have seen how much they, not only value neurodivergence, but how much we stress accessibility. I am excited to showcase two things that can help make learning more accessible for students right now. 

1. Voice to Text

It can be tough for younger students to type all of their thoughts accurately and efficiently, so it is important to support them and create tools that make it easier to share their thoughts and ideas. Voice to Text is a feature that now allows them to press and hold the space bar to record their thoughts. They can pause and resume by simply lifting up and back down again. I also loves this for users that process their thoughts at different speeds. By creating an easier way to engage with Text to Speech, users can now share their thoughts without the worry of spelling and how long it might take them to type due to dexterity issues. This can help lower anxiety issues which will allow the user to think more clearly and engage more completely. 

2. EasyRead Mode

Being dyslexic and an internet user means that I often spend too much time rereading things because the fonts are not designed to support more processing. There are a multitude of fonts, but most of them do not support readers with dyslexia. To help with this issue for users, SchoolAI built EasyReader Mode. A students can simply turn it on at the top and the text will adjust and become a dyslexic friendly font. I have to say, this makes my brain so happy. Not just because I was on the Hackathon team that worked on this idea during HQ Week, but because it is easier for me to read. It is estimated that anywhere between 6% and 17% students have some for of dyslexia. Many of those students go undiagnosed. That means there are thousands of students out there that simply feel dumb because school is so tough for them. Little things like this can help make a difference for diagnosed and undiagnosed students. 

These are just two ways that SchoolAI is more accessible to students. Teachers can also use our Tools to level and translate texts to make them more accessible to their students. 20 years ago, the act of trying to make learning more accessible to students in the classroom was a very long and difficult process. Today, there is really no excuse not to make an effort to use a wide variety of edtech tools to support students who are looking for just a little help so they can engage in class. 

Stay tuned for more updates on features and things that can make learning more accessible to all students. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

Nick

Giving Students Space #EdChat #AIinEDU

One of the things that I learned during my time in the classroom is that giving students Space can be make a huge difference. You can be the most engaging teacher in the world, but some students will not engage. The have so much going on that the 50 minutes in your classroom is just not working for them on some days. Some teachers will drill down on those students and make sure they engage in some way, but all that does is make the students curl up tighter in their own ball of security. 

I think it is not realistic to expect students to be ready to go and engage and learn every class. The world around them is vastly different than it was for many of us growing up. They know far more about the world around them and have a wide range of issues that they are dealing with, that there are going to be days that they do not have the bandwidth to commit to school the way a teacher would like them to. 

I remember the first time I realized that my class is not the most important thing in the world for a student. I say this, because there are teachers who still act like their worksheet is the end all be all of learning and not completing it is a high crime. Anyway, I talked to a student after class to ask them why their paper is not completed and submitted. They looked at me and their eyes welled up and said they have been up late for multiple nights taking care of their sick sibling while their mom works the late shift this week. She wanted to get the paper in on time, but she just has not had the energy to commit to it. 

I felt like a grade A turd after that. Two things stuck out to me;

1. I have not created a classroom environment that allowed for this students to feel like they can ask for extra time. 

2. My class should never be more important that a student's wellbeing. 

I worked really hard to change the way that my class functioned moving forward. I also worked really hard to make my class as accessible as possible. It was a catalyst for me to move away from textbooks and use Evernote to store all class notes and readings so students could access them from their phones. I started to dive into EdTech to bring as much equity to my class as possible. As the tools changed, the goal was the same, how do I make sure all students feel like they can engage when they are ready to engage. Anytime, anyplace learning. 

I bring all of this up because there are plenty of conversations about AI in the classroom and I do not hear enough people talking about the value of AI when it comes to accessibility. There are so many students that benefit from using AI to help them learn when they are ready to learn and are in a place that allows them to learn. Sometimes, those places are not in a school. Sometimes, they are in their home, alone in their room, blocking out the noise from down the hall. Sometimes it is when they get to visit their friend and take a deep breath and let it out before diving into classwork with a peer they trust. There are so many reasons why a student will not be ready or able to engage in class, and space is the best think we can give those students sometimes. 

I look at how I started using AI in the classroom before I left to create content and to training for SchoolAI and it was always around accessibility and inclusion. Creating Spaces for students to help them when they needed help was a way to support their learning when they were ready and where they were. Does the student need to take a mental health day and cannot get to school? Well, the Space I created was there for them when they were ready to explore. Student have another doctor's appointment that had them miss their 17th day of school? There was a Space for them. Did a student have a hard time getting their writing started because their dyslexia makes them feel less than? I had a Space for them too. 

Using Spaces from SchoolAI allowed me to make sure that my students were able to get the access and support they needed when they needed and when they were ready to engage with it. You can use just about any AI tool out there to make a worksheet and the students can use AI to answers all of the questions on the worksheet. Using a Space that allows the students to drive the learning and focus on the parts they need to learn is all about personalization and differentiation in a way that was not possible for teachers before. 

The next time you are thinking about creating more busy work for students to engage them, take a moment and think whether or not Space is actually what they need to be successful.  

Hugs and High Fives,

NP

Support Young Writers for Be an Author Month #EdChat

 

Figma and Book Creator have collaborated on an amazing project that is worth checking out if you want to dive deep into supporting your students as writers. You can click the image to be taken to the book they created that provided all of the details on the event and contest.

As someone who has written a few books, getting started with anything can be very tough. As a student, I would stare at blank pages and know I have a story in me, but I had not idea how to get over the hump in my brain and let the words spill out. A teacher always told us to read when we were stuck with writing and the ideas would pour out of us onto the paper when we are filled with ideas. Sometimes that worked, but others times, I still had a blank sheet of paper in front of me late at night. Have taught ELA for over 15 years, I know that this is still true for students. Sometimes, students just need a little nudge in the right direction and the idea will flow. I was thinking about this when I saw the Be an Author Month posts and thought about how much I would have wanted to do this as a kid, but I would have been terrified on how to get started. I just needed something to get the ball rolling and I think I might have built something using SchoolAI Spaces that would have helped me tell the stories I wanted to tell. 

Here is a Space I prompted that can help guide students through the creative process to build their story without writing it for them. You can take my Space, remix it, connect your standards, and edit however you want to fit the needs for your students. This is a wonderful way to make creative writing more accessible to students who struggle take the ideas out of their head and getting them on paper. 

Utilizing AI to make various projects, assignments, classwork, etc. more accessible for our students is such a quick win. I highly encourage you to take the time and use the Space to help those students who have a story to tell and just need a little help to tell it. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

Start Small: 3 Easy Ways to Introduce AI Without Overhauling Your Lessons #AIinEDU #EdChat

"AI in the classroom? That sounds like too much extra work right now."

I get it. You have been hit over the head with all of the AI talk right now. You do not have the time to sort through the chatter to find the things that will simply help your students learn or help you teach. These feelings are not new. When other internet based tools were released, there were many teachers that had no idea where to start, so they didn't. It's not like everyone jumped on board Google Docs, YouTube, Web Quests, etc. when they were readily available. The thing is, you are using AI all of the time and you might not even realize it. Whether it is search results in Google or Netflix suggestions after you binge a show, you are using AI and getting awesome results from it. It takes time to ease into using a new tool and I want to give you 3 easy ways to bring AI into your life without having to overhaul all of your lessons that move beyond having AI rewrite your email or create another worksheet.

1. AI as a thought partner

One of my favorite things about using AI is that it can help me think through issues I'm having. It is not about having AI solve my problems, it is having AI walk me through the problems and suggesting solutions. Some of the suggestions are terrible. They are not practical and they really would not work in the classroom. However, those bad ideas often lead to the solution. As I work through the logistics of the suggestions, I will find the answer along the way. It is really something amazing. 

This is truly no different than the times I spent with teachers in the hallways between classes thinking through lessons or classroom management issues. I wonder if you have found, like I did, that those hallway conversations are not happening like they used to. Those free moments have been taken by other tasks and those interactions are not happening at the same frequency. Using an AI Assistant in SchoolAI or using ChatGPT to quickly work through ideas is an easy way to bring AI into your educational career without the worry of having to change everything that you do. 

Example Prompts you can use:

Sometimes you are at the end of your rope with how to deal with a student and need other suggestions to help solve the problem. This is a simple prompt to get the ideas going on supporting classroom management issues. 

1. I’m having trouble with __________ (specific challenge, e.g., students staying focused during group work) in my __________ (grade level/subject) class. Some students __________ (specific behavior, e.g., finish too quickly and get off-task), while others __________ (another challenge, e.g., struggle to get started). Can you suggest strategies to __________ (goal, e.g., balance pacing and keep everyone engaged)?

Find new ways to support a wide range of learners in the classroom can be very tough. It is important to make sure that 504 and IEP students are getting what they need to be successful. A simple prompt can help so many students in the classroom. 

2. I’m designing a lesson on __________ (topic, e.g., ecosystems) for my __________ (grade level/subject) class. I want to incorporate activities that support __________ (specific needs, e.g., visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners) and also accommodate students who __________ (unique challenges, e.g., need reading support or are English Language Learners). Can you suggest ideas that keep the core objective intact while addressing these diverse needs?

Variety is a spice of life they say, but it is not something that always gets into our lessons. After a while, teachers fall into a rut of the type of assignments or projects they give to students. It can be tough to get out of the rut, so asking AI for lesson ideas can help move to a new space with new ideas. 

3. My __________ (grade level/subject) students are struggling with __________ (specific issue, e.g., staying engaged during history lectures). I want to make the material more __________ (teaching goal, e.g., interactive, relevant, or student-driven) and help them see how it connects to __________ (real-world application or student interests). Can you suggest strategies or tools to help achieve this?

2. Formative assessments made easy

We all love the idea of formative assessments, but they can be time consuming to create and collect the data. As there is an even greater push towards data driven instruction, we need a way to get these formative assessments into our every day class structure. I think this can be done with bellringers and exit tickets. The traditional way of having students write on notecards or scraps of paper can work, but the teacher is often stuck trying to read handwriting and group similar ideas/concepts to help inform the next steps. It does not have to be that way AI. 

Utilizing AI to help create bellringer and exit ticket questions is the easy part. Having AI take a look at the answers and come up with common threads is how you can take these formative assessments to the next level and it can be done in a matter of seconds. Here are two scenarios that can help you get the formative assessment data to make data driven decisions for your classroom. 

1. You can create a formative assessment using Google Forms and share that with students. The students spend the next five minutes doing a short response to the topic for the bellringer and all of those responses go to Google Sheets. Trying to parse data in Sheets in a pain in the butt. However, it can be downloaded as a CSV file and that can be used to get answers. Take the file and upload it to ChatGPT or SchoolAI Coteacher and ask it to find common themes in student answers. You can drill down as much as you want depending on how much info the formative assessment collected. That information can be used to inform the direction you take for the rest of class. Once you get comfortable with the workflow, it will become faster and faster to accomplish in class. 

2. You can take out the middle man and use a Bellringer or Exit Ticket Space from SchoolAI instead of using Forms. Create the Space, launch it with your students using Google Classroom, Canvas, or posting the link in another LMS. The students engage with the Space, the teacher can see their interactions in real-time and then use the insights provided on the dashboard to inform next steps in class. Again, the teacher can go even deeper by downloading the Space as CSV file and uploading to Coteacher to get more in-depth data. The nice part of this approach instead of using ChatGPT is that the data shared with SchoolAI is secured and fully COPA and FERPA compliant. That cannot be said of all AI tools. Be mindful of that when using AI and sharing student or teacher data. 

These two approaches help teachers create and use formative assessments to make data informed decisions. This is a huge step in the right direction of AI use in the classroom. AI is great at parsing data and it does it quickly as part of a workflow you can establish. The amount of time that is saved using AI for data driven decision support can be used for other tasks or for taking it easy on a Wednesday night so you can watch some TV and enjoy a nice beverage. Either way, you now have the time to make that choice and you did not have that chance before. 

3. Differentiate like a boss

One of the things that I found to be most difficult and time consuming, but extremely important, was differentiating assignments, tests, projects, etc. Besides being legally required to do so based on IEPs and 504s, it is important to give students the best chance to be successful and meet them where they are. However, if you do not have a support person in the class that can differentiate assignments for you, you are on the line to make sure that every students that needs an assignment, test, project, reading piece, etc is differentiated. That can be long and arduous process. AI can now make that process simple and fast. Here are just a few prompt examples that you can use to help differentiate different class assignments in an instant. 

You can alter reading levels for students and even have translations as needed. This prompt will help you adjust reading levels as needed for students. If you want create them in a batch, just add a sentence that requests the content in multiple reading levels.  

1. I have a __________ (grade level/subject) class reading __________ (text title or topic), but I need the text adjusted for students who read at a __________ (different reading level, e.g., 4th-grade level or ELL beginner). Can you simplify the text while keeping the core ideas intact and include __________ (optional: vocabulary definitions, guiding questions, or key takeaways)?

For students with ADHD, chunking is a wonderful approach to helping them stay on task and do each part at a time so they do not feel overwhelmed. Instead of having to go over each assignment with these students and chunk it for them, AI can chunk it quickly and then it can be shared to them via email or printed and handed to them. You can do this with almost any AI model. 

2. I’m assigning __________ (type of assignment, e.g., a research paper or science project) to my __________ (grade level/subject) class, but some students struggle with completing large tasks. Can you break this assignment into __________ (number of steps, e.g., 4-5 manageable sections) with clear instructions and include __________ (optional: deadlines, checklists, or guiding questions) to help students stay on track?

Sometimes using AI is about giving students more options that you can think of at the moment. As I moved to more of a project based learning approach, I wanted to make sure that all of my students had a chance to showcase their work in ways that were meaningful to them. I can't think of all of the projects all of the time, so having AI create options that I can easily share is a huge time saver. If you want to take it to the next level, you could use SchoolAI to create a Space that would ask students a variety of questions and then suggest a personal presentation approach. Here is an example you can use in your class. 

3. I want my __________ (grade level/subject) students to complete a project on __________ (topic, e.g., Ancient Egypt), but I want to offer them choices in how they present their work. Can you suggest __________ (number, e.g., 3-5) different project formats (e.g., slideshows, posters, videos, or podcasts) that align with the same learning objectives, so students can pick the format that best fits their strengths and interests? 

There is a time and place to have AI write your emails or create another multiple choice test. That is not where a teacher should stop when it comes to AI use. That just scratches the surface of what is possible when it comes to using AI to support teaching and learning. These three approaches can help you become more comfortable in your use of AI and give you time back to use as you see fit. AI can and should be used to support sound pedagogy if you truly want to help students. Keep that in mind when you see and use AI tools. 

If you have any questions about using AI, please feel free to reach out, leave a comment, or connect on socials @TheNerdyTeacher. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP