Welcome to our learning session today it's called empowering special education with AI practical applications for personalized support on behalf of kids first education I'm thrilled to be part of this virtual conference and I encourage you to reach out to us if you have any questions or you would like to partner with us my name is Dr Dr Jamie Burton as a classroom teacher I obtained my national board teacher certification and then began working with other Educators seeking that same accomplishment it was during this time I transitioned from classroom teacher to principal over the next 18 years I found great joy in mentoring both teachers and teacher leaders after retiring from public education in July of this year I began working for kids first and educational organization with a mission and vision that mirrored my [Music] own our circle of success starts in the Middle with our y putting kids first by partnering with schools and districts to create success stories from the student level all the way to the superintendent level our C3 success model the orange part of the circle is is our how and then in the blue part of the circle is our what it's just a few of the many personalized services and supports our organization provides our C3 success model has three parts first we collaborate with school and District Partners to identify the needs and determine outcomes next we create a personalized plan with action steps and measures of success and last we commit to achieve the desired impact on student learning just like highly effective Educators do for the students they serve we personalize and differentiate our support for each individual school and District that we serve we also live by what we call our team trust foundations the culture of kids first carries over to those we partner with we create safe spaces to grow and learn together we know that trust is the foundation for any important relationship for example the relationship between a student and a teacher the relationship between a parent and a principal and of course the relationship between organizations like ours kids first and our partners when I began working for kids first this past July it just so happened that I had experienced a successful School Journey with the use of AI Educational Tools it was a journey that started in 2022 given today's focus on special education not only is it worth noting that my school had a large special education population it's also worth noting that AI tools were first embraced by my special education teachers probably because my special education teachers were the first to realize the full potential of personalizing learning using these resources shortly after becoming recognized as a Blue Ribbon School of Excellence in December of 2022 I came home for the winter I came home for the winter break and it was over that winter break that I discovered what many of you have already heard about chat GPT I invited the teachers at my school to join me on a journey to document our efforts for an entire year and exactly one year to the day of its release I returned to Disney and I presented on the use of AI chatbots in the classroom the presentation was really simple I just told our school story I talked about how our low wealth rural School in North Alabama slowly and successfully began to integrate AI tools into our work this past fall I did a kids first webinar on AI tools that mirrored my conference presentation and today I travel from state to state and I support schools seeking guidance in the area of AI Educational Tools today's session came out of thoughtful collaboration with trusting Partners schools and districts had heard about ai's potential to personalize learning but they just weren't sure where to begin a growing number of districts also began wondering if AI tools might help special education teachers if you have some of those questions you are definitely in the right place today we're going to learn how AI tools work and how to promote safe and ethical use of these [Music] tools we're also going to learn how AI tools can streamline the work of special education teachers and last but not least we're going to learn how AI tools can be used to accommodate and personalize learning for students with special needs this leads us to our first learning outcome how AI tools work and how to promote safe and ethical use of these tools it's always impossible to talk about Ai and educational settings without first discussing the release of chat GPT 2 years ago although chat Bots and artificial intelligence have been with us for years chat GPT was and continues to be a game Cher today most futurists agree that the release of chat GPT two years ago will forever be viewed as a true milestone in the advancement of AI let's watch this video that was created shortly after chat gpt's release where was this this when I was in high school crazy right a long thee RIS racism fear unnown the novel to kill kill Mo moing Harper Harper this is absolutely absolutely insane every time I watch this video clip I'm always amazed that it takes chat GPT the exact same amount of time to generate a six paragraph essay as it does for the person in the video to actually tell chat GPT what it wants it to cre what it wants it to create while I'm certain that thoughts of cheating after watching videos like this worried most Educators my mind went somewhere different I was wondering how might this tool help my teachers could it streamline their work could it help personalize student learning these questions led me on an exciting journey and it's a journey I'm still on today the video we watch dropped shortly after the release of chat GPT in November of 2022 in 5 days chat GPT had 1 million users and by February that number had grown to 100 million users for context it took Facebook four and a half years to see those kinds of numbers and it took Tik Tock nine months to reach 100 million users consider the fact the chat GPT was not and is not a social media platform it's simply an open-source chat chatbot by four months it was integrated into the first search engine and by five months we started to see educational AI tools like defit and Magic School appear so what is chat GPT and why is it such a big deal like all previous chat Bots chat GPT is simply a computer program one that simulates human language but what makes it so different from other chatbots is the training it's received it has been trained on a huge amount of data think the entire internet and even more and it's been trained to communicate more effectively than any other chatbot the final item to consider is perhaps the most impactful of all the company that released or created chat GPT open AI made the Bold decision to make the model available to other developers this included making it available to those that wanted to develop AI products for educational purposes almost every tool you encounter is tied back to chat GPT because those tools use chat GPT as the underlying model whenever I do presentations I've learned the importance of acknowledging concerns I often use this slide for groups of Educators to reflect for example I ask Educators how do you feel about Ai and education on a scale of 0o to five or fist to five where do you fall today and why in most cases Educators Place themselves somewhere in the middle it doesn't matter if you're an AI Enthusiast or an AI critic you have to acknowledge that there are both rewards and risks that come with AI although I'm a self-proclaimed AI Enthusiast I have come to appreciate my AI critic friends here are just a few of the common concerns I hear from Educators as I travel from state to State and again I think it's important that we talk about these concerns on the left are practical and professional challenges these are challenges that likely need or are already being addressed through clear policies and procedures on the right are concerns having to do with ethical considerations notice that replacing teachers with AI tools is considered an ethical issue students need human relationships and empathy that can only be provided by caring adults when prompted even an AI chatbot will acknowledge the fact that they can't feel or understand emotions the same way humans can this is critical to remember as AI becomes ever more prevalent in our world and as a side note the picture on this Slide the elephant in the room was an image created using co-pilot which is Microsoft's free AI chatbot over time I've noticed that more and more states are putting out guidance for schools and districts and a lot of it's really helpful this graphic was shared by North Carolina's Department of Instruction the graphic suggests that AI use may not need to be an all or nothing approach the image on the left shows Education Without Ai and Compares it to riding a mountain bike up a steep hill where learning is inhibited by excessive struggle and then in the middle it shows education with too much AI like riding a motorcycle going too fast leading to dangerous situations and then on the right it shows education with AI as a Learning Partner more like an ebike it reduces unnecessary struggle but it still results in productive learning this just seemed like such an easy way to think about teaching students or talking with Educators about appropriate AI use in schools or in classrooms much like North Carolina Washington State's Department of Education also has an outstanding website with multiple resources this is just one consider this document it shows five levels of AI use you have everything from no AI assistants on the left to AI as a co-creator on the right you might also notice the graphic in the upper right hand corner up here it shows an H with an arrow pointing to Ai and another arrow pointing to a second H this is what Washington State refers to as its human inquiry to AI to human empowerment framework I personally really like this human in the loop framework check it out on their website another resource I really like was created by educator turned author Alana winck she created something called remix and remix helps kids better understand how to use AI appropriately first you have R for responsible tool collection remind selection reminding students to only use tools that are approved e is for embrace assignment guidelines which is following the assignment specific AI instructions some assignments you may use less AI some you may use more AI but you just need to follow those guidelines the m is really important it stands for maintained privacy and this goes for adults as well as children whenever you're using an AI tool make sure to not share personally identifiable information uh that's really important to remember AI will help analyze uh data charts graphs all of those sorts of things but don't put the names of students in there and make sure your students know not to put their names or any information that identifies them specifically the I is investigate for bias and misinformation it says be a detective on the lookout early in the release of chat GPT it made a lot of mistakes I think it's making fewer mistakes with each passing day but it still does and so you need to vet whatever outputs whatever resources you generate using Ai and then X express your voice voice be a DJ and remix your ideas with AI generated content I'm going to give you an example of that in just a minute but do remember like you can create something original but you still want your voice your ideas as part of that product along with ethical considerations and guidance teachers have a growing number of AI resources to sort through sometimes it's so many it's really easy to just feel overwhelmed and shut down for those getting started I like to keep it simple I always suggest choosing one general purpose chatbot and one AI enhanced educational platform I always say if you can use one of each you can really use any of them general purpose chat Bots like those on the left chat GPT Claud co-pilot there are many others these are highly flexible and they can be used for a variety of purposes and we're seeing them being integrated already into the tools that we use just for work purposes on the right hand side the educational platforms things like magic school conmigo and defit these uh are tools designed specifically with education in mind occasionally I get asked which is better general purpose chatbots or AI enhanced platforms not surprisingly the answer is neither they're just different in most cases I like to compare general purpose chatbots like chat GPT to being like a chef in the kitchen at home you get to pick the ingredients you get to fine-tune the meal to your liking whereas AI enhanced educational platforms they're more like fast food restaurant menus you just pick something you generate it and then you move on again being familiar with at least one of each is highly recommended when I'm showing off the Speed and creativity of chatbots one of my favorite tasks to do with a general purpose chatbot is to prompt it to write a song related to the audience I'm presenting in this case I type the following into this box I typed write a song about the challenges and rewards of being a special education teacher make sure the song is positive and inspirational like an Anthem and here is what it created with a little chat GPT magic a song with two verses A Chorus and an outro although I strive to be creative writing a song is not in my repertoire I even asked it for a song title and this is what it recommended it suggested Bridges of Hope as the title for this song once I have my song lyrics right here I simply paste them into another AI tool I paste the song lyrics into sunno an AI tool designed to create music and then with the click of a button I have a finished song vocals music the whole thing I have two options I can download the final song as music only or I can download the song in like a karaoke video format I chose the karaoke format altogether it took about a minute and a half to go from the initial prompt to the finished product although this example is a song for inspiring special education teachers keep in mind it could have been a song tied to any educational topic it could have been a song about photosynthesis or a song about adding fractions or a song about the Industrial Revolution Let's listen to a portion of the song and as you listen I want to invite you to consider ways that you might use this tool or use music to reach and teach some of your students [Music] sh [Music] bright every voice deserves to sing every heart wings through every Str we [Music] [Music] World Heart Chang [Music] things e e e obviously I'd love to share the whole song with you it does save the songs that you create and every time you create a song it creates two versions so on that note let's move to our next learning outcome how AI tools can streamline the work of special education teachers AI tools like chat GPT really are like having your own personal great everything making machine we know it creates song lyrics but it can create anything with text after being introduced to it I started to document the ways my teachers were using it teachers at my school first used it for things like newsletters and emails learning goals and learning targets these were really things they just wanted to generate and not spend uh a lot of time on as they became more confident they started to use it for things like lesson plans or Center activities in the classroom and then they also used it to create formative assessments a lot of times they would meet for their plc's and they needed a common form of assessment and they found that uh AI tools were great at helping generate some really meaningful assessments and then finally they realized it didn't just have to be for educational or academic purposes they could actually use it to support with behavior so they could use uh AI tools to generate Behavior plans or behavior goals but they did still use it for a variety of instructional materials these uses alone saved my teachers hours and hours of time it also created more time for my teachers to do what they really wanted to do teach students since last presenting many chatbots are now multimodal meaning they can handle multiple types of inputs and generate multiple kinds of outputs for example the image on this slide was created with a short chat GPT prompt I just said create an image of Educators gathered around a magical box that can be used to generate anything as new features are released I always like to try new prompts here I asked chat GPT to create three types of graphs that might be used for third graders I also asked for two questions to go along with each graph when I placed uh this text into this box I wasn't really sure what I was going to get and with nothing but that simple prompt here is what it created I knew that it could create essays I knew it could create songs I knew it could create rubrics but graphs in color even the question questions were appropriate and didn't need any revision this is a relatively new feature and like I said it's only going to get better and better with time although chat GPT does create images it limits the number of images for free users for those interested in free image creation I often suggest using something like Microsoft co-pilot or or canva canva does a great job creating images as well here I didn't even push with the prompting I just simply said create an image of first one Flying Cow create an image of a mysterious town at dusk create an image of I wanted to push it see what it would give me a cartoon laptop laughing all of these I just made up off the top of my head and then last create an image of a group of teachers that look like Lego people great job really easy to generate and you could use these for a variety of educational purposes so we looked at this s slide earlier and now with multimodal features chatbots like chat GPT just continue to add capabilities daily although not quite perfect all the items in Orange are in fact possible you can create charts and graphs images it's got voice features it'll make spreadsheets that you can download it will also create a PowerPoint presentation on a topic of your choice that you can download however keep in mind it's relatively new feature it's going to be very basic it's going to look something like this but one does have to wonder with the advancement of AI and how it's getting better so quickly what might it look like a year from now or even possibly just a few months from now so before we talk specifically about special education applications it's also worth mentioning that chat GPT does have an excellent free app for your phone just make sure you select the official app there's quite a few fake ones out there it's the one that looks like this again you should have all the same features although the app does allow users to communicate with chat GPT via voice just recently the paid version released a variety of highquality voices to choose from and they're really good sometimes people worry about the accuracy of chatbots although I always recommend vetting the output it does seem that chatbots are making fewer and fewer mistakes with each passing day for fun prior to this presentation I asked chat GPT to list 10 challenges and 10 rewards um for special education teachers I asked it to organize the answers into a table the items listed seemed pretty spoton to me a few that jumped out on the challenge side meeting the needs of diverse Learners and of course paperwork and documentation and hopefully AI tools will really help uh address some of those challenges clearly significant for special education teachers and then on the reward side we have things like student growth and making a difference for any special education teacher watching know that you are making a difference and the reason I'm sharing today is I really want AI tools to be another tool that will allow you to experience student growth in my first AI presentations I would stress the importance of prompting well by using an acronym I use the acronym prep for prompt give the chatbot a task R for roll assign the chatbot a role e for explicit or use Clear examples for context and P for parameters which meant to give it suggested limits and then the examples are this instead of saying provide three IEP math goals for an eth grade student you want to be more explicit you want to be more um clear you'll say you're an expert sped teacher provide three IEP math goals for an eighth grade student with discal culia that emphasizes algebraic thinking break down each goal into manageable steps as strange as it may sound to tell a chatbot that it's an expert sped teacher some swear by the fact that you get better responses this way whatever the task is if you tell chat GPT that it's an expert on that topic it's usually going to give you something a little bit better although it's always wise to be specific when prompting let me introduce you to the wonderful world of prompt libraries so a prompt library is a place you can go and select a well-crafted prompt that you can use or edit for your own needs one of my favorite prompt libraries can be found at a website called AI for Education it even has a section specific for special education teachers it's labeled special needs by clicking on this box it opens up a menu of prompt choices the window looks something like this so here are your choices I chose writing IEP goals although I could have chosen self regulation strategies behavior intervention strategies or accommodations to name a few each of these prompts should get you really close to a high quality output related to an education or special education task once you select the type of prompt you want it brings you to a page it's going to have three items on the page the first is a prompt that allows you to insert information specific to your needs the second is an example prompt where everything's completed this not only allows you to see what a fully completed prompt looks like you can paste it into different general purpose chat Bots and kind of test it to see if it's giving you what you want and then third are some additional strategies these allow you to fine-tune the response for example after you've generated your IEP goal you might follow up and say what are ways I can utilize multidisciplinary learning to help my student achieve this IEP goal it's often important to remember when you're using a general purpose chatbot you're going to want to fine-tune the result by sometimes asking follow-up questions or directing it to do something specifically here's an example IEP objective and a goal that was generated using a prompt from The Prompt Library the goal was for a second grade student and it was tied to correct usage of capitalization rules and it does a really good job within three months when given 10 writing samples that contain incorrect capitalization student will correctly identify and make capitalization Corrections in eight out of 10 work samples across 10 consecutive trials sounds very special education like as I present on AI tools I'm always on the lookout for anything new I strive to find as many free resources as possible here's an online AI tool that's specific to special special education the IEP co-pilot tool is in fact free while the pro version and additional features offer a 30-day free trial although I do love free I have to admit that the advantage of paid programs may include greater privacy however even with privacy protections I still think it's important to be cautious when using personally identifiable information so using this website here's an example of a sample annual IEP goal although it created benchmarks for each quarter the screenshot only allowed me to show the first two benchmarks so up until this point in the presentation we've looked primarily at general purpose chatbots as we move into our third learning outcome how AI tools can be used to accommodate and personalize learning for students with special needs I'm going to Showcase just a few AI enhanced educational platforms that you can try out for free earlier in the presentation I shared this slide and we talked about how it only took five months for educational AI tools to start releasing something else happened in April sa KH the founder of KH Academy gave a TED Talk where he talked about blooms 2 Sigma problem and how AI might solve that problem he also previewed conmigo con Academy's educational chatbot in short s stated that Benjamin Bloom who most of us know for Bloom's taxonomy published an essay in 1984 where he found that Mastery teaching when combined with individual or small group tutoring had the ability to move students not just one Sigma or one standards deviation but two standard deviations or two Sigma it was referred to as the two Sigma problem because the world simply didn't have enough teachers and tutors for every single child to get these kinds of results to scale Salon argues with AI support or specifically AI tutors in combination with accomplished teachers we may finally be at a point in history where a solution to the two Sigma problem could soon become a reality here's a short clip from his Ted Talk where he showcases conmigo con Academy's AI chatbot and if you ever get a chance check out his entire Ted Talk online it's really we're at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest transitive transformation and the way we're going to do that is by giving every student way we going do that question connect to ideas not just excises it what you're watching understand the cont of your the question why do I do you why do I need to learn this and let's say the student says I want to a professional a let say the student says I want to be le about which is what this video is on that could be Understanding Nutrition and how your body works ET that take student them into exceptional take your aage stud into an exceptional stud turn them into your below average student and turn them into an above average student conmigo is always a great place to start because to the best of my knowledge it's the only AI enhanced educational platform that is currently 100% free for teachers interested in personalizing student learning not only will your students have access to the chatbot But the teacher also has access to a variety of AI tools to pick from each tool is colorcoded and you can select whatever type of tool you want clicking on the differentiation button or differentiate button allows you to access the following tools I chose the make it relevant tool which brought up a box for me to fill in some information the Box looks like this I said my objective was comparing fractions to decimals and that my students were interested in sports and fashion so after clicking on the start button at the bottom it then provided me with uh three different activities I was given the option of downloading the document in multiple formats so I chose PDF and this is what it looks like so you can see here it gave me an activity called Sports statistics and fractions another activity called fashion budgeting with fractions and decimals and then something that actually combined both Sports and fashion designing a sports uniform and so uh one thing I'll just say AI does a beautiful job making connect that would be hard for us sometimes to make it can really connect any concept you're trying to teach to any interest your students have you simply need to know the standard and then you need to know what your students are interested in and AI can merge those two uh beautifully so let's move on to Magic School magic school is currently touted as the fastest growing educational platform of all time and I have to admit the teachers at my school loved it in this short video clip Andrew Davies who is actually magic School's teacher of the year highlights some tools that are perfect for special education teachers not only are these time-saving tools but they're also tools that support plans of action that not only meet academic needs but also are always saying oh man I wish I had assistant now we man I wish I had an assistant now we do magic [Music] school. as I stated in the previous video magic school is one of the perfect AI St in the previous video Magic School features designed to save you time the tools I want to point your attention to today the coach want Point attention to today are and their I and bit this is basically designed and reconfigured basically this tool is trained on Research based to team magic school this tool is trained best practices in education the few days and I have to say it's special education want draw special education IEP suggestion generator andp what are some issues I'm having with Stud pretty amazing plug in what are some issues I'm having with the student and be definitely starting point now it may not be perfect but it's and follow for like this please make sure you hit the like button and then follow me for more educational technology [Music] tips so much like K Migo you have tools for a variety of purposes one item that currently sets Magic School apart from its competition are their student facing AI tools teachers can create safe spaces for students to have controlled access to AI tools or tools only the teacher wants the students to have the teacher can monitor what the student asks and or does with the AI tools Magic School great resource check it out one final tool that's especially great for customization and personalization is a tool called defit in this video Britney Blackwell offers a quick overview of how reading materials can be generated and adapted quickly to meet the needs of students currently defit is set up to align with every single State's Ela history and science standards because of the heavy emphasis on textual based materials it's probably not the website to go to for math resources but it is great for if you're struggling with differentiation with your students go ahead and save this because strugling stud welcome back to my series there's an automation for that where you tell me what's trusting you at as a teacher and I share automations with you to ruce that overwhelm bur the website is and it is your goto digital assistant for adopting any reading material from articles to YouTube videos any reading level all you have to do is log in upload PF or the link to theer you choose the desired reading level and then what happens then adjust that level create voist and you can them to create so many different inter gole activities interacting slides or forms that you can assign directly into Google these activties also includ teacher instru and completely customizable to make it your own and if you want more tips and tools like this to automate your teacher task then hit that plus button although magic school and conmigo similar in their setup defit is a little different you basically start with a screen like this you can select your standard or simply select a topic I chose cells fifth grade and it gave me this it'll automatically automatically generate a reading passage a summary vocabulary words and questions that are lower down on the page open-ended and multiple choice all editable um but they just didn't fit on this screenshot you you also have the option of exporting materials in various formats uh as was mentioned in the video clip so as we prepare to wrap up sometimes I'm asked where do I start my recommendation is to keep it simple first just choose that one general purpose chatbot and then uh don't forget the prompt libraries like AI for education and then next choose an AI enhanced educational platform these sites um uh Target Educators although there are costs for pro and premium versions there are plenty of free resources to save you hours of time and to support your students with customizable and personalized educational resources I also feel like it's important to stress the fact that these tools are just that they're tools yes amazing but they can't replace teachers as I continue to present I think about the following analogies a Swiss army knife and the Iron Man suit AI is like the Swiss army knife and that it's hugely versatile we barely scratch the surface today and the almost Limitless possibilities of AI tools and educational settings AI also like the Iron Man suit it's incredible and it allows the human using it to do super human tasks let these analogies sink in and what a privilege it is to live in a time where we have access to such amazing tools again I'm Dr Jamie Burton and it has been my honor to present in this virtual format if you have any questions about our services or you might want to partner with kids first please please call or email we would love to collaborate create and commit with you have a wonderful day