SpEd-Splaining
Covering a wide range of education topics with instructional leaders from North Central Educational Service District.
SpEd-Splaining
Accommodations vs. Teaching
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At one point do accommodations become a substitute for teaching? This case starts the conversation of how AI might impact FAPE.
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Are you are you ready? You're not stopping and re-recording or anything.
SPEAKER_00Uh I did stop and then I did re-record. Oh, should be going.
SPEAKER_01You didn't say anything. Normally you're like, okay, and now.
SPEAKER_02Okay, and now I think that our next podcast, Leanne, should bring Heather and I'll bring Eric and then we can just like see how that works. Great idea.
SPEAKER_04I agree. We'll tell stories about our own raising of children.
SPEAKER_00It's a good idea. Welcome to Spence Planning, where special education gets decoded one case at a time. I'm Stefan, a former classroom teacher and current instructional coach, and I'm joined by three brilliant minds in special education, Darcy, Anna, and Leanne. Each week, they take real stories, often from right here in Washington, and break them down into plain language. We use these stories as a launch pad to explore the wild, wonderful, and sometimes frustrating world of general and special education. Whether you're an educator, parent, advocate, or just curious about how the system really works, we've got you. Let's dive in.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so I am bringing this case because it was one of the first appellate opinions to bring AI in. So this is coming out the sixth circuit.
SPEAKER_00What is that?
SPEAKER_01AI? Oh, I was like, what? Just we have a fifth grader at the start. He is qualified under SLD for dyslexia with SDI in reading, writing, math, and speech. As he goes through middle school, his IEP is relatively unchanged throughout, and they're not seeing very much progress. His reading fluency remains below the 10th percentile through eighth grade. He is not meeting any of his reading fluency goals. And despite this, his IEPs continue to target fluency rather than switching over and focusing on any foundational decoding skills. So in high school, he has over 3.0 GPA. However, the Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Decent reminder just to be professional in your professional communication.
SPEAKER_01I will say. And isn't that like her job? I and I think she also is expressing concern of like, how is this kid getting these grades? And how did he get this far and not be able to read? Could she I'm assuming it's a sheet, so that is that is on me. I'm I could they have said it differently. Yes. And I think that is a a sign of documenting a concern about this kid's lack of progress.
SPEAKER_00And at least very plain language. There's no way to misinterpret that.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Did they have an IEP meeting and change the IEP?
SPEAKER_01Um, uh so I I don't know the full timeline. Um, they did add additional accommodations from when that email was sent to the time of that. I don't, I don't know. But the IEP was increasing reliance on accommodations now that they're in high school. So speech to text, text to speech, extra time. So this is through the due process, the workflow that came out for this kid is he dictated his ideas into speech to text, pasted that into chat GPT, chat GPT then generated a paper. He then ran it through Grammarly and then submitted the assignment. Stefan, what are your thoughts on the use of AI in this situation?
SPEAKER_00Why, why? Why not just dictation? Speech to text. Why chat GPT? Why Grammarly?
SPEAKER_01Um, you know, I don't know that that was like school gotcha driven. I think that was his way of utilizing so this is this is literally. So if something is due in class, he has extra time, he can turn it in tomorrow, he goes home, he can utilize everything at his disposal.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh so that's literally no different than a student without an IEP just having Chat GPT write their paper. So if your question is, what's my thought on AI for this shouldn't be used, at least not in this way. There are ways that you could leverage AI tools to support this student, but that is an inappropriate way to use it. It's doing his thinking for him. Speech to text would be a perfectly fine, I think, perfectly fine accommodation. As long as you have a tool that works and the kid knows how to use it, uh and they can get their thoughts out, why not just dictate?
SPEAKER_02I'm not gonna disagree with that, but I'm just gonna think like if I can think of examples where using chat or having a goal around how to appropriately use chat could help deepen what he's thinking and processing and being able to put down on paper.
SPEAKER_00Agreed. Like if this student had support, not just the student, if this teacher also had training and support and collaboration around how to leverage AI tools to brainstorm, um, then yeah, absolutely. Then that's something that we could give to a lot of kids. Uh but I would also caution like not giving like an open large language model to kids at all. Like they can get them on their own. He's gonna do it on his own. This is a question I get all the time. And it's really tricky is how do I use AI with students? And one of the things I tell teachers is you should not be giving them ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, because they don't, they'll do this. You know, I don't care who the kid is, they will have it do their work for them because that's human nature. Teachers do that with lesson plans or with grading. And like when you remove the human from the process, then you've remute removed everything that's valuable from the process. But if you can use it to support, supplement, augment what you're doing to um get you to either where you need to be or beyond where you thought you could be before, absolutely. But there's tools like school AI or magic school or colleague AI, like all those tools have have built-in features where a teacher can curate like a chat bot and give it to the kid and train it to help them brainstorm and help them like do everything like you just said. But then the teacher can also see all of the conversations and they're free. Like you can, but it takes a little bit of training. And so when you say what, Steph, what do you think you're I I don't I don't know what this case is, but what do you think of this use of AI? My guess, if this were in Washington state, uh, the teacher most likely hasn't had a ton of training on that. There's like pockets here and there, but it's still very much emerging. And the student definitely has not had support and training in that. And so, like, yeah, there are ways AI could be used to support and dig deeper based off of the state of support that teachers are getting and how accessible it is or how prolific it's been, and just how much there is to do. My guess is that it wasn't done with any kind of fidelity. Um, but this would be a really good opportunity for the teacher to like contact a regional tech coach or a tech coach in the region or just a teaching learning department and say, like, hey, this kid needs some other accommodations. What are the tools on the market and how could we use them appropriately to leverage? And anyone worth their salt would not be giving a kid a large language model because like it'll just do something like this. You'd find an a third-party education-facing tool to support the kid with a level of accountability, and you'd have I'll stop because I could I could go on for the next 45 minutes on on this. Because we're in my world now, baby.
SPEAKER_04You're saying give a student, though. I don't think we have to give a student AI anymore.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like I think the idea of chat GPT is so widely out there that most people know what, like, teens included, know what it is. The other stuff, I don't know that they do, but I do wonder, like you said, Stefan, had he been supported in his accommodatations outside of speech to text in a Google Doc into something like that, would he have felt the need to go use Chat GPT to write his paper for him?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. There's also another side of this, I think, of outside of AI that we need to maybe think about. That email from a high school teacher potentially is at what at what point do we stop trying to teach how to read and we start to accommodate the weakness of not being proficient in weeding in reading. And I think that high school, that some of that frustration from that high school teacher, you know what high school teachers don't do?
SPEAKER_04Teach kids how to read.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, teach kids how to read, right? Decoding, all of those kind of things that elementary that they've probably done several times in different ways throughout elementary and potentially middle school. And so now this high school teacher is looking at how do we accommodate this? And so they really built like a robust accommodation plan, whether the kid used chat or not.
SPEAKER_04Um, I think there is actually a huge argument in the academic and just society on whether or not kids should be allowed to graduate, period, if they don't read or write, get a diploma anyway. Um I still don't think there's a lot of people that would think that a student that's not like profoundly cognitively impacted should be given a diploma if they can't read or read fourth grade, you know. I so I think that's confusing for the public when they read something like that for sure, and going, what are our public schools doing? Like it didn't it doesn't play out well when that's the title of an article. And even with a disability, is that okay?
SPEAKER_02I also love that this kid can take the assignment, get enough of what the objective is, take it home, maneuver all of the things, get the extra time, and get back to school the next day and meet the objective of the requirements.
SPEAKER_01And nobody recognizing that he didn't write it.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Or if they or they knew, right? A flip side of that, they did know this isn't his writing, he's utilized something else, in which case we're still not changing anything to truly understand what he's learned.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it's an extension of the conversation we had, it'll have been the episode two weeks ago, around schools not being designed to meet the needs of kids. Because this I see more as an indictment on the task than I do on uh the teacher. Like if this kid is uh reading like you said below the tenth percentile and and and like his writing isn't there are ways you can meet those reading and writing standards without having this kid write an essay. Like we just last week had the new Washington uh ELA standards, the revised ELA standards released. And there's been a lot of shifts in those, but one of the major things that they're talking about, one of the major things they put in there is kids creating, consuming, multimodal content and reading and writing taking place in mediums that are not just print. And so you can meet a writing prompt. Uh, this kid didn't need to use speech or text. This could have, this kid could have recorded something and turned it into his teacher and met the met the writing standard. And so I think that also kind of speaks to Justy, your question about when do we stop teaching reading? Reading, I think, is tricky. There's a teacher that we work with, a math teacher, who says, like, kids when they come to me in high school should know slope. But if they don't know slope, I'm gonna teach them slope. And I think that still applies, especially when it comes to something like reading. Kids with a disability, it might be a little bit different. Cause if you're talking about cognitive impairment, like I mean, I know kids rise to the level of the expectations we put on them, but like there's other factors at play, I'm sure. Um kids still need to, like, what's the purpose of reading? Kids need to be able to navigate their world and consume information. And we do live in the 21st century where there are multiple ways to do that. And just straight up reading print text is probably the least common way a kid consumes information these days. And so there were other accommodations that could have been, it seems like there were other accommodations that could have been put in place to support this kid in his reading and writing. Because if you're sending an email that says this kid can't read at all, do you really believe that? Like if I were to say this kid is incapable of meeting every reading standard, would you agree with that? I highly doubt it. Because if you were to look at them, unpack them, and look at the intended learning underneath them, this kid can do something. This kid can navigate their world. And they've been making accommodations for themselves. It's our responsibility as a teacher to meet them where they're at and provide those accommodations and give them their tools. And to like not needing to give kids AI tools, I think I kind of agree. They are gonna go find them themselves. But I also, and I think you said something like if we were to give them, they'd be less likely to go do that on their own. I disagree. Like they're still gonna do that. Humans are still gonna take the path of least resistance, no matter what age, right? And so like it's tail as old as time. They'll put in as much, they'll put in more time trying to circumvent your rules than they will if they just had actually done the assignment because it's their job as kids. I think it's more of a symptom of doing school at kids, not with them. Like he's not invested in the task. He just needs, he just knows he needs to get it done. And so I'm gonna, I am impressed. The speech to text, chat GPT, grammar lead, turn it in. Um, those are using tools at your disposal. I think the real problem here is the task being given to this kid is not appropriate. And it's ironic because he's using tools that could be leveraged to actually accommodate and meet him where he's at and give him access to the standards.
SPEAKER_01Well, and that's what I meant when I said he'd be less likely to go to use something like chat because if you gave him that assignment in the way that met his needs, he wouldn't need to go outside and seek something else to fit in your box.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Right. Because you're not you're not requiring him to be in your box. He's working real hard. He is working probably harder than a lot of other kids are. Yeah. So in 11th grade, parents hire a private tutor that's a dyslexia specialist. They had an eval to confirm it was dyslexia. This tutoring is centered around the foundational reading skills, so alphabetic sequencing, decoding, syllable recognition, all of that type of stuff. He starts to make huge progress within a few months with this tutor. This tutor then recommends that this type of program be continued in the IEP. The district rejects these recommendations, saying that they continue the existing IEP because he has decent grades.
SPEAKER_02No, I don't like where this is going.
SPEAKER_01So parents sign the IEP formally noting, right? Because the signature is stating you were present, not that you're in agreement. So the parents sign it, but formally note concerns saying that he's not like the quote was he's not receiving all of the supports he needs to be successful. We disagree with this AEP. They file an administrative complaint under IDEA saying denial of fate, but ultimately he graduates high school with a GPA of 3.4, and he is at that point unable to even spell his own name, is what was stated in the court documents.
SPEAKER_02How is that after when he's making huge gains in reading that he can't write his own name four years later?
SPEAKER_01Well, this is that was a it would have been a year later. Um, because the they had the tutor in 11th grade, but I I think that's a good question. I also wonder um if the tutoring continued or like I don't it didn't say much about how long he was in the tutoring or those types of things if parents were requesting um reimbursement and they couldn't afford to keep it going or anything like that, it doesn't say. So I don't know if there is a regression and that's why or if there if that is a apparent statement that is not founded or found you know, different evidence. You know, again, we're going off of court documents, but that's what was stated is that he's unable to spell his own name.
SPEAKER_02The silence is because we're all very confused.
SPEAKER_00Well, and it's also three I know these will come out six weeks apart, but we've recorded the last three episodes here all in a row, and this is the third one, and they're all kind of of a piece. Which is interesting. Like they're all I mean, there's similarities between all three things that we've recorded today. Um and it what's interesting, especially like thinking about um Darcy's most recent case and this one, they're very, very similar. I just but I feel very differently about both. I'm trying to unpack why.
SPEAKER_04I just can imagine this kid having writing his name on his IEP as a goal for years and years and years.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so the the ALJ and then later the district court and then the Sixth Circuit Court, because this is going all the way to the Sixth Circuit, they is all essentially reduced the case into two questions. So one, is he capable of reading? And two, does doing so require something different from what the IEP was offering? So is he capable? And if the answer is that is yes, then what should the IEP have done differently?
SPEAKER_02Well, and they didn't talk anything about we we have no information about the evaluation or cognitive abilities or anything like that either.
SPEAKER_01And his graduation pathway was we know we'd have the graduation pathway and out of cognitive school.
SPEAKER_02I want you to have all of that. I want you to have all of it.
SPEAKER_01I know at least he does not say but he graduated as a senior throughout eight years. Correct.
SPEAKER_03So what do you guys think? I think so.
SPEAKER_02I think the answer to the first question is can he read? If that's a if that's a no, and the school had noticed that he could learn to read with these strategies and curriculum, why aren't they doing that?
SPEAKER_00There's like the thing you guys have talked about before, you know what I'm talking about, where it uh the school system needs to be like appropriately rigorous, right?
SPEAKER_04Yes, the Android F standard.
SPEAKER_00Oh, is that what that was?
SPEAKER_04Are you talking about the IEP has to be reasonably calculated for maybe.
SPEAKER_00But it's essentially like you can't just set the bar super low and like pass the kid along, right? Like you've got to guarantee a certain amount of growth and like it needs to be like uh an appropriately aligned IP. Wouldn't that kind of come into play here? Like if you've got your his freshman teacher saying this kid can't read at all. And then in 11th grade, they're like, well, he's making a ton of progress. Like, well, his grades are perfectly fine. That someone just feels off there. And so to me, that seems like it might be some kind of red flag for them to be able to like say there was a problem, you knew it, and you didn't adequately address it. So it is a denial of fate.
SPEAKER_01Which is why that I think that email from teacher comes into play, like, sure, he's passing fine, and your own teacher has reported in your system that he's not successful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it feels like the school's not being really transparent about what isn't working for him.
SPEAKER_04I don't think they're being appropriately ambitious either, which is important to meet the Andrew F standard.
SPEAKER_02And I I without knowing more, like thinking about what really is in the IEP, like what were his goals? What was he working on?
SPEAKER_01It it they all it stated for reading was that it continued to be fluency. All of his reading goals were fluency.
SPEAKER_04And that's not uh we've seen other cases where you stop teaching to read you know, kids to decode and that's not gonna align with reading science. And I think that they could be out on a limb with that too. Because the kids' discrepancy, I'm sure, was in more than just reading fluency. I'm sure that there was also an issue with decoding.
SPEAKER_02Well, if he can't read, he's not fluent at all, Izzy. I know.
SPEAKER_04How do you work on fluency when you don't decode?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that this was determined to be a denial of fape and ineffective services. So the court made several critical findings, one being that his IEP only ever focused on fluency, never decoding. So foundational skills were never directly taught. Another complexity to it during court was the district did not rebute the expert testimony explaining why fluency first instruction was inappropriate for dyslexia. So they just like essentially, if you're not review, there's no rebuttal, then you're saying, like, yeah, we agree fluency first isn't appropriate. Yep, we that's all we did was focus on fluency. So what the Sixth Circuit Court determined was that in math, accommodations were helping the student learn, and in reading, the accommodations and use of AI did the work for him. So the accommodations were actually masking his inability to read. Stephan, say your thoughts because you're making a face. Told you.
SPEAKER_00Like you can't, like, it's interesting to hear that in like a like a uh legal sense. Um, because like I just last week, two weeks ago, I was out talking to a bunch of juniors about like AI um post-high school. And I mean, I hit them with the uh it's it's not um, it's not what you know, it's the kind of person you are, you know, critical thinker, problem solver, work ethic, those types of things. Like the same things that have been valuable for years and years, decades, decades, decades. Now, the trick is where does AI fit in those? How can it push you farther? Right. But before that, I asked them, because they're and their teachers weren't in the room, I was like, how many of you have used AI to complete schoolwork for you? Uh I won't say a hundred percent because it's hard, it's hard to try that, but uh significantly over 50, potentially the 90s, right? And they're not, they're not ashamed of it either. Like I walk around, like, yeah, I use it to write a paper, I have it do my math homework for me, I have it thing. And so uh I hit them with uh like you were robbing yourself of very valuable skills, you know, of problem solving, which like we talked about not that long ago, that kind of means nothing to them, right?
SPEAKER_02Like, because if they don't have to I was gonna say, how did that go?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they don't it it the um and I didn't say that, like you're robbing yourself of very valuable skills, but that is essentially the underlying message, and that's why I put the concrete things on there afterwards. But if you go and you say that to a group of kids, oh, just think of all of the problem solving and hard work that this math homework is instilling in you. Like that's the hope we have as teachers, I think sometimes misplaced, but that is never the message that kids are taking away from that. Like, I've got more important things in my teenage brain that I want to go do, and this is just a means to an end, which is why the why they will use AI tools just to do it for them. Because shocking to no one, a 16 to 18-year-old is not good at long-term thinking and thinking about long-term consequences. So it is interesting for me to hear, like uh in a legal proceeding, like a judge say their use of AI tools was masking their actual ability, and that's a problem. And the school can be held like at fault for that.
SPEAKER_01And this this is just February 2025, so it's very recent.
SPEAKER_00And uh, to be fair, that is exactly what teachers are worried about everywhere I go. Not necessarily being like some sort of legal consequence, but they are terrified that kids' use of AI tools, and like you said it 15 minutes ago, uh, you guys said we don't have to give it to them. They can go find it and they will find it and they will use it. Um, that that's what teachers are afraid of. I don't know what they actually know because they're using some other tool to mask their actual ability, and then we're gonna push a bunch of kids through who don't know how to form a thought on their own.
SPEAKER_02Is this the same argument as a calculator?
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_04It's also the same argument as like we've had this about having a scribe on an IEP too. Like, there's a few times where this comes into play and we're like, it's an accommodation, but we don't want to take away from the skill building that needs to make the accommodation go away at some point.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Is it's not that it's not that utilizing a version of AI is inappropriate. It's saying that if technology can replace a skill that the IEP is supposed to be building, then our IEP is inappropriate.
SPEAKER_00I I was talking to no, this is a better example. I was I was talking to um a colleague of mine who had spent the weekend reading uh applications for a uh a scholarship. And they said, it's so disappointing of the dozens of applications I read, how many of them were so clearly written by AI? Because there's tells. It's always three examples. Um, it's always certain adjectives and transition words, the end dashes in there if you're not taking those out, right? It's possible to mask those things, but typically you don't. And I said, to me, that seems like more of an indictment on the application process for the scholarship than it does like the kids using Chat GPT or whatever. Because if it's a skill that can be replaced by AI, at the very least, we should be rethinking what we're doing. And like I always use essays. And to your point, Darcy, is this the same argument as a calculator? Yeah. In my trainings, I've got this picture that I like to show people of a bunch of math teachers picketing with picket signs that say ban calculators in schools. Like it's it's a it's a picture in black and white for a very specific reason. But even me going through high school, graduated in 07, my teacher's like, you're not gonna have a calculator everywhere you go. You're right. I've got a supercomputer in my pocket that has more processing power on it than the computers in NASA that put the first man on the moon, right? Like it's but what's good, and that that's an example that's used all the time. But what gets lost in that conversation is the computing power that actually put a man on the moon was up here in our brain. And that's what teachers are afraid of. Darcy, big moon landing denier that checks out. Uh, but like that's what teacher is afraid of is like it is it is the argument against the calculator, but I think it's also like turned up to 11 because calculators can do computation for you. Um Chat GPT, large language models can automate a huge variety of tasks that will just rob you of or just allow you to not think, just allow you to throw things out there. And it's impossible to track unless you do things like like the first red flag should have been like, oh my God, this kid is turning in a bunch of work that we know he's not capable of without. And overnight, all of a sudden he's able to, you know. Um, but it I think the appropriate response to that is we should be rethinking the way that uh the tasks that we are giving kids. And that starts by looking at standards, you know, and providing the appropriate foundational teaching uh that that student needs. You know, look at your standards, unpack them, create a learning progression, start where that kid actually is and focus on mastery-based learning. And then where and when can you involve AI tools in that process without robbing kids of the skills that actually matter?
SPEAKER_02And how do they fix this now?
SPEAKER_01So the ALJ and the Sixth Circuit affirmed uh one hour per session of lost instruction of dyslexia tutoring totaling eight hundred and eighty-eight hours.
SPEAKER_03Wow.
unknownThat's a lot of hours.
SPEAKER_01That is a lot of hours.
SPEAKER_02So the court and also stated um I think Let me get my calculator out and see how long that's gonna take him to finish.
SPEAKER_00Um 880 hours divided by like a six-hour school day. Oh 888 hours. So yeah, you can't. I like that the just just the random number. 888.
SPEAKER_01Um it said five sessions per week, one hour per session.
SPEAKER_00Uh it's like 148 days.
SPEAKER_01If you did six hours a day.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_04That's crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's probably like five years if you think of 30 36 weeks in a school year, right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. So they'll just write it.
SPEAKER_00So uh 888 days, six hours a day is 148 days, and then a a school year is 180 days.
SPEAKER_01Right, but you're you're still talking six hour days. He's not doing six hour days for the days.
SPEAKER_00Oh, you're talking like how long will he actually be receiving the services? Is this one of those because you guys have said it, you guys have said it before, and we've we've had cases where like the the judge is like, we're gonna give you this like bonkers amount of time kind of to prove a point. Or do you think this kid actually got 148 or 880 hours worth of comp ed?
SPEAKER_01Well, the district is obligated to give it, it's on the family to utilize it, right?
SPEAKER_02Did they give a time frame when they have to be done?
SPEAKER_01Um not I not that I wrote down, so maybe I can see if I can find it.
SPEAKER_04I mean, ever since I found out that you could just give the family the money and then they go and obtain that compensatory ed. I just now I wonder if that's just what every district does. Because managing eight hundred and eighty-eight hours of service time is a ton of work. It does not. I would manage the eight hundred hours.
SPEAKER_01It it just says eight hundred and eighty eight hours.
SPEAKER_02They won't show up for all of it.
SPEAKER_01They denied it. The family had requested it come from their dyslexia tutor, and that was not specifically that was denied. But the 888 hours. Didn't say didn't have a time frame. But again, this is recent. I mean, this is was settled 2025.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that those services are ongoing as we speak. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And the court also stated that we reject the argument that a GPA or a graduation determines fate.
SPEAKER_04From other cases, but people it it's hard to um not factor in grades when you're looking at a student. You know, how are they doing in school? Like we're grades are the first thing we would look at.
SPEAKER_02So it doesn't be interesting because that was the case was one year out, whereas the the one we talked about a few weeks ago recorded today, um was three or four years out of high school, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That's a lot of comp ed, and I would caution the district to to just pay that out. I think when districts do that, it makes a bad precedence and word gets out real quick that you're gonna do that rather than keep track of the comp ed, especially for that many hours.
SPEAKER_04I mean, we always say you can't sue for you know monetary amounts, but then when you pay out comp ed, it's not actually holding that standard. So I don't like that idea of writing a check to a family, but I also understand that it it's less work for the district.
SPEAKER_01Okay, Steven, last plug. How would you recommend teachers utilize AI in their classrooms?
SPEAKER_00Um there's a couple of things I say in all of my intro to AI professional development with teachers. Uh first and foremost, it's a tool, and that tool has the potential to build something great or do great harm, just like a hammer can be used to hurt someone or to build something cool. So all technology is a tool, it's not the end result, and you need to learn how to appropriately use the tool. And there are frameworks to be able to do that. My favorite is SAMR, S-A-M-R, Substitution, Augmentation, Modification Redefinition, which is a framework for self-reflection for how you're implementing technology in the classroom with your students. Just go Google it. And then when it comes to AI specifically, I tell people there are three ethical things to consider when you or anyone is using AI. The first one is to be a good custodian of yours and your students' data. So uh personally identifying information, don't put IEPs, 504s. Like it would have been a very different case, or very I would have had some very different thoughts, or just another bird walk, if you had said, and this teacher in their email said they dropped this kid's IEP into Chat GPT and got a list of accommodations. That's a big no-no. Like, don't do that. So careful with personal identifying information. Um, this is what worries me a little bit about that kid plugging something in there, these these next two, which was uh AI can be very biased based off the data that it gives you and it can make things up all the time that sound really, really good. So if you just go plug something into Chat GPT and you ask it. I was listening to some people over the weekend talking about how they're using AI, not not academic, and they said, Have you ever asked it to give you a profile of yourself? And they all did it and they're laughing and hearty harha, look, it's got me so good. Oh my gosh, yeah, it's sycophantic and it's trying to tell you what you it thinks you want it to hear and what you want to hear. So careful with those things, but kids don't know that. And kids don't know what they don't know. And so when it spits out something that sounds really good, this kid's gonna be like, oh, that's great. Same with teachers. Um, and then the last one was the most important one. Um, start with a human problem, involve AI in the process, and then end with human critical thinking and fact checking. And like if you just had that conversation with the kid, it would address kind of what Darcy said a while back, which was there are ways to incorporate these tools that can really support with brainstorming. Yeah. So if this kid used uh, it'd be awesome to do this in class with him and give give him some kind of speech to text software where he can just freeform his brain, his what's in his brain onto like a Google Doc. And then you give him an AI tool and you say, You're not gonna ask this thing to write for you. You're gonna say, give me feedback on what I'm thinking and give me some ideas for how to create a topic sentence or whatever, right? And give you some options. And you can use it as like a thought partner, but then there are other tools out there that the kid could use to be doing that work, right? And be plugging, plugging those things in there and be responsible for the final product because it's important that teachers are getting things that students have created. That way they can their assessments actually mean something. You're assessing what a kid knows and not what Chat GPT has created. So those three big ones. Watch out for bias, involve humans in the process, and be careful of student data.
SPEAKER_01Thanks for tuning into SPEDS cleaning. If you have questions or thoughts about today's episode, we would love to hear from you. Head over to our links in the show notes where you can drop your questions, join the conversations, and connect with us. Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this episode if you found it helpful. Until next time, keep learning.