Daphne Russell Lead District Technology Strategist Rialto USD

In the SBCSS Digital Learning Bits and Bytes podcast, Tonya Coats, Jamie Leafstone, and Daphne Russell discuss the transformative potential of AI in inclusive education. Daphne Russell, a lead district technology strategist at Rialto USD, highlights how AI can amplify student voices, particularly for those with unique processing needs, through tools like text-to-speech and translation services. She emphasizes AI's role in saving teachers' time and empowering them to focus on personalized instruction. Russell also mentions her district's AI training series, which aims to educate educators on AI's benefits and responsible use. The conversation underscores AI's growing importance in enhancing educational accessibility and efficiency.

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Music by ItsWatR from Pixabay - Wataboi Flavour

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Jamie Leafstone, Daphne Russell, Tonya Coats

Welcome to the SBCSS Digital Learning Bits and Bytes podcast, inspired by our dedication for equitable and inclusive educational technology and computer science.

Tonya Coats  00:14

Hello, everyone. My name is Tanya Coates. I'm a digital learning and Computer Science Project Specialist for San Bernardino County, superintendent of schools. And with me today, I have the amazing Jamie Lee stone, Jamie, could you please introduce yourself? Absolutely

Jamie Leafstone  00:30

Good morning. I'm Jamie Leafstone of West End SELPA program specialist. I work with nine local school districts and county programs supporting Special Education, and I'm thrilled to be here today discussing such an important topic. In each of our episodes, we sit down with an educator making waves in accessible, equity minded teaching.

Tonya Coats  00:53

So today's guest is Daphne Russell from Rialto Unified School District during our AI for Inclusive Learning workshop. We had so many impactful conversations with her, we had to get her on the podcast. Stephanie, you wear so many hats. Could you please introduce yourself? Yes,

Daphne Russell  01:11

absolutely. Hi everyone. My name is Daphne Russell. I'm the lead district Technology Strategist at Rialto USD. I specialize in bridging gaps between innovation and student impact. So whether it's through AI education, AI professional develop training, instruction, design, or any scalable digital tools for schools, so my passion, essentially, is to open up technology for the rest of the world to empower them. Great. Thank you. So

Tonya Coats  01:39

let's get started with your experience at the workshop we had. What was your biggest takeaway, and was there an aha moment that helped you see how AI can be better support diverse learning needs?

Daphne Russell  01:54

 You know, I love that question because I, by the way, I love being at that session, because it was so inspiring, and it was so uplifting because one of the trend, or one of the pattern that we usually recognize when speaking about AI, is the fear of AI taking over is a negative feeling. But one of the biggest takeaway from our session that I took was that AI as the developing technology that it is right now is actually not harmful or a barrier to success for our students. It's actually the Bridge to Success. You know, the same tech that we use to help multilingual learners can be turned to support students with our unique processing needs, but if we build that bridge intentionally, so the aha moment for me was realizing that AI can actually amplify students voice, especially for learners who we've known historically had fewer ways to express themselves, text to speech, closed captions, translation tools give instant support, invested key instant support tools like prisc or magic School, AI can help reword or scaffold content by Lexile or cognitive abilities. So when I watch a student with a processing disorder light up because they can actually speak the idea into an AI tool and see it transform into something powerful. That is different, that matters so much so it makes me think maybe the most inclusive thing we can do is to give every student more ways to be heard. That's what I took away from our session.

Tonya Coats  03:31

I love that. And you know, unfortunately, AI wasn't really big and prevalent when I was teaching, so I feel like I missed out on that wave of AI in the classroom. How do you see it being impactful for teachers? How do you see teachers use it, utilizing it, day to day,

Daphne Russell  03:50

day to day? There's so many different ways. Let's figure out, like what scope, right or what area when I'm imagining myself as a teacher, I don't have to imagine too long, because I've been a teacher for a while, I want to think about, how can I incorporate technology as impactful for my students, educating my students and my teacher workflow, right? And AI can be used in all of those if I'm talking about AI and how it can help me improve my teaching skills. There's so many different AI tools that allows me to make my content more engaging, to quickly scaffold an article to or create resources that are much more accessible for my the different variety of level of students in my class. Now, before we have aI like you and I, Tanya, we we had to do it ourselves, right? We kind of have to use our teacher brain, and we're like, Well, I don't think fourth grade would know that word so, and it would be hours. I would spend hours on weekends, weekdays after school, making these resources, pulling in all these pictures to make my content accessible for my students. Now I'm gaining those hours back because I. I go in and I whichever AI tools I'm using, whether it's brisk, whether it's gamma, whether it's Canva, just name all those, right, I'm able to instantly generate first draft and then go in and then use my teacher brain and my knowledge of my students, because that doesn't go away and kind of go in and fine tune it, but the heavy lifting, the laborers, stuff that takes forever is now gone. So instead of spending two, three hours, I spent maybe 510, minutes, or maybe 20, if I really wanted to get a deep dive, then in terms of, how can I support my students, how can I use them in a classroom, I consider my students developmental age and how they socialize, and a lot of the time, students might not feel comfortable asking me a question. So if I can remove that social barrier away and give students something that they can feel, that they can drop down that ego that they have, or that that subconscious barrier that I taught sixth grade before, so there's a lot of self conscious barrier, if they can strip that away and then give them a tool that they can ask all the questions that they know they have they're just too shy or too proud to ask that will empower them. That's that instant feedback. That's the instant scaffold. I

Jamie Leafstone  06:15

I really love how you're talking about amplifying the student's voice and the accessibility and the additional teacher time that teachers are able to devote for that one on one instruction and building those relationships and things like that. And circling back to where you were discussing focusing on inclusion, do you envision AI creating more opportunities for students with disabilities, and what shifts Do you anticipate may happen in the day to day practices for teachers, we're seeing a lot of different models now of co teaching or students pushing into general education classes, general education classes being more responsive, realizing That special education is not a place, it's a service. So how do you see AI assisting with that?

Daphne Russell  07:05

I like what you just said there, that special education is a service, right? And this is what we're giving them. This is a tool or service that we're giving them that meets the need of every individual learner. We know in a classroom there's one teacher or sometimes two, if we're lucky for all the many students. So having a personalized tool to help students game changer, but in terms of opportunity, yeah, I absolutely see AI creating more opportunity for inclusion by acting as that bridge. So that way, it leaves that teacher the opportunity to interact on a more personal way with the students. So for students with disability, it's not about the content, right? It's especially with our special education students, is how that content is delivered. So AI tools, the various ones that we have, can easily scaffold reading and all and deliver the content in various ways. So at our session, we talked about notebook LM. It is a tool where we can upload the content material, the PDF, the pictures, etc, and it either creates a podcast. But the key thing there is that it creates the delivery. It changes delivery of the content to something less academic and more easily consumable to our special students. Additionally, it lets them pick their venture. If they don't want to hear it, they can have a virtual assistant where they can just ask questions in layman's term, and then it will the tool will give them the information in a manner that they would understand. So all of the different AI tools are going to change the way that kids learn, and that's for the better. Teachers in the future are going to be, I think they're more of a facilitator, a learning implementer. They're going to be the person creating the educational experience for our students and letting these AI tools, do the nitty gritty of the one on one, while the teacher supervisor. 

Jamie Leafstone  07:07

That's a really that's a game changer. When you think about it, instead of the sage on the stage, we're going to be more of the facilitator of the learning and the different modalities that you were describing within it. And I really see that as so powerful, because looking at our students who may require special education services. We know that we can embed those things that you were talking about within the classroom, but they also assist all of our students within the classroom. The Choose Your Own Adventure is really what we all want to see in sixth grade. There's a reason we we all read the books, right? We have a different aspect to it. So looking at the particular AI features that you were talking about, such as personal chat bots, accessible assistive technology or lesson supports, what do you find? The most promising? 

Daphne Russell  09:05

The most promising you know that's. Gonna be a hard question to answer, because it's almost like you telling me pick my favorite student, which I obviously don't have any

Jamie Leafstone  10:09

that's great

Daphne Russell  10:11

for me as a teacher and the teacher background, it always comes down to my students. I appreciate the extra hours I have because now I have this like personal assistant that does a lot of heavy lifting for me, and I come in with my brain as supervising it. But what gives me happiness is watching my students feeling more empowered, understanding that there are so many different tools that they can now use to empower them to do things that they think they couldn't do before they have the idea our kids have great brains. They just need different ways to express their ideas. And if we all of these, the AI tools that help them express themselves better. Because if I have a processing issue where I rather say what I think over typing it or writing it, because the fear of writing something down might get in the way of me actually expressing the true genius in my brain. So having these AI tools, having students as to speak their ideas to it, and then it writes it down for the students to fine tune that's giving them voice, that's giving them voice and choice other AI tools that, as teachers, we can think about how we can we manipulate this to help students? Tanya showed me suno the music AI music generator.

Tonya Coats  11:26

I love suno. I love that.

Daphne Russell  11:28

And being able to give students that love music a way to express their knowledge through music and combine their passion with what they need to learn, right? But it makes learning fun. I remember I had a student two years back. We did a rap on Cleopatra. She did not care about reading the article, but when I said that she could do a rap, she loved it. She went back through that history book, and she was looking for the details to include into her rap. But now imagine she can have the software the ability to make the soundtrack to it look how much it empowers our student. I have a lot of hope for any tools that us teachers, we know our kids, we can manipulate it and translate it into a tool that will empower our students.

Tonya Coats  12:14

I agree with that so much. Daphne, first of all, I am a Hamilton fan that involves music I will learn from I truly wish you know when I was growing up that a lot of information would have been delivered in song versus just words. I think I would have grasped the information. And I think these AI tools allow students to learn in different ways, and it personalizes that instruction for students. And you mentioned earlier that you have been using notebook LM, another one of my favorite tools, because you can use your own information to generate content. Is there we talked about several tools during the workshop? Is there any other tools that stood out besides suno, notebook LM, or any of the frameworks that you are most excited to share with your colleagues that you learned?

Daphne Russell  13:06

Golly, there was a lot. I mean, your sessions are always so informational, like I walk away with a wealth of knowledge. By the way, I appreciate that. Especially all those free access code keep them coming.

Jamie Leafstone  13:23

We know the hearts of teachers.

Daphne Russell  13:25

 We don't get paid much, but we have the passion now for students, there are simple tools like brisk. And here's the thing, can I ask around a lot? And my friends who use AI a little bit more, they're like, why do you need brisk or magic school? Ai, you can do all of that. Chatgpt, right? But just in my mind, just like how we scaffold for our students, we have to scaffold for our teachers as well. Not I grew up in a time before Google before, search engine before, Ask Jeeves this AI and how fast it moves or have changed this is leaving a lot of educators out in the code going, what's going on? Like, what is this AI? So I love that all of these programs, like bris Magic School AI, kind of scaffold the technology for entry or new users to understand the power of AI. Because if I were just to give a be given a blank prompt box on chatgpt, I will have no idea what to ask, right? But if I go into magic school, AI or bris, where I can click a button and it says, Would you like me to make you a presentation? Would you like to scaffold? This is a fourth grade reading level. And I was like, Oh, you can do that. All right. Let's go so brisk, easy, accessible on any page once you download the extension, it the button is there whether you like it or not, and then on any website, any page, you can access those AI tools to transform all of those content for our students back to school. Ai have a wealth of resources that tells you what it can do. Hey, do you have a video? That you want to create questions for quickly. Here's a tool, right? So those are some great tools that you showed me. Oh, one more that I absolutely love. And this is not necessarily for my teacher friends, but for my school counselor friends. I ran home and I instantly messaged the our district lead counselor. It was school AI, where it was the career exploration. 

Jamie Leafstone  15:25

Oh yes, yes, that's one of my favorites, too.

Daphne Russell  15:29

 Because here's the thing, sixth graders, they don't want you to tell them thing, because I'm an adult, I'm old, I'm lame. Education is not important if I say it, but if I have a chat bot that has that we program to look like a cool YouTuber, content creator, headphones, everything, and it's just asking questions one on one, my students are gonna be more receptive to the content in that delivery mode than if I were to have them read an article and make them answer questions. So school AI for my counselor friends was amazing, and I'm trying to push to have that as an event in our listening and numeracy event next year.

Tonya Coats  16:07

So glad you shared that with counselors, because I think sometimes they certain positions don't know how to engage with some of these AI tools, and the fact that you were able to present it and how it can be beneficial for students. Thank you for you know, sharing that with your teachers, and I agree with you when you said what AI is changing daily. Even during the workshop, some of the participants were telling me some new features that I didn't know had changed within, like, the last week. So AI is changing very fast.

Daphne Russell  16:42

Yeah, absolutely every single time I go into a room or meeting, I hear a different AI tool. And people think that I know a lot about AI, but anytime I go into a room, I feel like I don't know enough, because there's always something new, something changing as well. Recently, I think GPT came out that they're going to give college students access to their  4.0 model for free. And that was new. And I was like, nice, let me make sure all of my students know this. 

Jamie Leafstone  17:09

Yeah, it's amazing how the tools are spreading and accessible. I really like how you talked about and mentioned the scaffolding AI for teachers. The reality is that teachers who are in teacher preparation programs right now, most of them are digital natives, so all of this technology is very accessible to them, but you mentioned how other teachers may not have that and may have some trepidation going into it. So looking at the next five years and looking at the diverse audience that we have and the implementation process, how do you imagine AI's role evolving in teaching and learning? 

Daphne Russell  17:55

That's an interesting question. But I would like to push back a little bit on the idea that our younger generation of teachers are coming in as tech natives, as the tech strategist for our district I or actually as a person who always volunteer to help people with their tech I can assure you that's not necessarily the case. I need this is something I feel strongly about. Just because someone can use their cell phone does not know that. That does not mean that they know how to use technology fully to as well as capacity. 

Jamie Leafstone  18:27

Oh, that makes so much sense. And I appreciate you calling it out, because it really is a generalization. I was thinking more in terms of the digital native in the fact that they have that digital footprint and that they're a little bit more comfortable with social media sites and having information and videos out there on the web. But, yeah, no, I appreciate that. It definitely is, 

Daphne Russell  18:53

Well new generation, new knowledge, new experience, right? They bring, they come in with all of that. But with that being said, I don't want to understate the wealth of knowledge that are are more experienced veteran teachers have. They might not have they might not grew up in the tech age, but what they do have is years and decades of experience with students and the development stage and educational process of students. So with the right education and knowledge and training, I really think in the next year, five years, AI is going to become less of like the scary or maybe the shiny tools, and more of a teaching partner, like a virtual assistant. If anyone is a Marvel fan, it will be the Jarvis to every for every teacher. So it's not gonna replace teachers because there's too much wealth of knowledge there, but AI is gonna be helping them scale differentiation, you know, accelerate this feedback and design more inclusive content faster. So we're not painstakingly doing all of this. And. Saves us time to actually explain to the student what my feedback means. It gives me more time to interact with the students. So I imagine AI being even embedded directly into the platform we already use. Take a look at Google and how they're embedding their Gemini, our less lesson planners, IEP generators in Google Classroom, they even have a feature that says, Hey, do you want me to generate a prompt for you or a hook to activate knowledge? So it's going to be embedded, and it's just going to empower our teachers. It's not going to replace them. Is this going to transform the way that we teach? And I think it's going to be for the better.

Jamie Leafstone  20:38

Yeah, absolutely. I definitely see how the importance of with the technology, being able to have our essential professional lens when we're utilizing it, and the different capacities that we can individualize it. What are you thinking? Miss Tanya,

Tonya Coats  20:56

I think this is a great conversation, and I'm looking at the time we're actually almost but before we go, Daphne, I heard through the grapevine that you've been working on an AI training series. We would love to hear a little bit more about that. Would you are you willing to share?

Daphne Russell  21:16

I am. I can't disclose Module Two yet because board. But one of the great thing that Rialto USD is doing, they're like, at a forefront, like they years back, they knew that this was going to be a thing. They created a task force, and now they're rolling it out. And I was honored enough, and they trust me with my expertise, enough to say, Hey, can you create the training modules, the training materials for our district, because our goal is to educate every single one of our educators, educators, our teachers, on the power of AI. So not only are we going to educate our teachers on what AI is, some concerns and some safeguards to consider, but we have Module three is focused on empowering teachers on how to scaffold and how to use AI response in the classroom to empower students. Module Four is going to be exciting. Now I'm going to show teachers how they can teach their kids to use a in a classroom responsibly. How can we avoid those concerns of cheating and etc? Module Five is going to be my favorite. I hope they go through all the modules before they do five. Five is my teacher hacks, my all the all the hacks and tricks and AI tools that are going to reduce our workload so that we can get our Sunday back. It is research based. I've been going through so many different AI meetings, training cert programs, just to bring all this data back and compile it for the teachers of Rialto. We're launching it next year. To say that I'm excited is an understatement. To say that I'm proud is an understatement to say how honored and proud together I am of my district to facilitate something like this, while other districts aren't even talking about it, is. I'm just too excited to say anything else,

Tonya Coats  23:04

excited for you. I mean, the fact that your district is on the forefront of actually bringing this to your district, I'm excited for you, because a lot of districts aren't doing the work yet. So I'm excited to see what becomes of this project. And congratulations on being you know, basically like you're the trailblazer in your district. And in terms of presenting AI to everyone there, I do, plus,

Jamie Leafstone  23:32

it's definitely amazing, yes.

Tonya Coats  23:34

So definitely, thank you so much for being here today and championing inclusive practices in your district, and before we go, is there a way for people to get in contact with you, to you know if they would like more questions, if they have any more questions for you? Is there any way they can talk to you?

Daphne Russell  23:53

 Absolutely, I'm always on LinkedIn. I love all the information that's shared on there. So just Daphne Russell, or if they need to email me if they want to share expertise or collaborate. Is this daphne_russell@icloud.com

Tonya Coats  24:07

and she is on LinkedIn. We actually primarily communicate on LinkedIn, and I she, she will answer you back if you do, and I will also make sure to add this, these details in our podcast notes. I just want to say thank you to Jamie and Daphne for being here today. I'm so happy we were able to keep this conversation going and until next time, keep innovating and empowering every learner.

Speaker 2  24:32

Awesome. Thank you so much, 

Daphne Russell  24:34

Awesome Thank you folks.

Sonal Patel  24:36

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