K12LEADERS

Tag: #AI

  • ChatGTP Offers Multiple Layers of Support to Students With ADHD

    ChatGTP Offers Multiple Layers of Support to Students With ADHD

    Artificial Intelligence is building an impressive track record of offering learners with ADHD multiple layers of personalized assistance. Differentiation tools and strategies will continue to play a large role in education as student populations become more diverse and students with special needs are increasingly placed in general education classes. According to aChatGTP Offers Multiple Layers of Support to Students With ADHDChatGTP Offers Multiple Layers of Support to Students With ADHD survey that I did, personalized learning is also the area of education that teachers believe will continue to be the most impacted by AI.

    AI algorithms analyze students’ learning styles, strengths, and weaknesses to create tailored learning plans that are differentiated by content, pacing, and rigor. Robots are improving social skills via storytelling directly affecting childrens’ cognitive performance, watches with sensors provide reminders for students to focus, software provides immediate feedback and develops personalized, engaging, lessons, and much more.

    Each student with ADHD is unique and has different support needs; but a common theme is tasks related to executive function such as organization, structure, and focus. The accessibility of ChatGPT means that students have the independence and agency to access support at any time and from any place. Students can ask ChatGPT to create a study schedule for them within their personal time constraints, create a list of suggested tasks to complete a project or assignment, provide ways to effectively study and manage time and much more.

    Students can also independently access commonly used scaffolding supports through ChatGTP such as visual aids, a summary of main concepts, comprehension questions, examples, the text restated differently, outlines, the text translated, steps to a process (with explanations), etc. When students with ADHD are taught to use AI as a support, far from “cheating”, they are accessing metacognitive learning strategies. The process of developing the awareness needed to identify the type of support a learner needs coupled with access to that support is one of growth and empowerment as students embrace the technology that will shape the workplace they will enter.

    Younger students require a significant amount of guidance and instruction on the effective use of ChatGPT. These skills have to be explicitly taught but the investment definitely pays off as they are integral to students owning their learning and becoming self advocates. It should also be noted that for students under the age of eighteen, parents and educators should use ChatGTP together since it is not currently authorized for minors due to legal and privacy concerns.

    Reading can easily become a landmine of distractions for the ADHD learner because of the sustained effort and focus required. Without going into the possible distractions that a student might experience from finding the text boring, a mismatch of rigor, or possible difficulties with reading, the assignment itself can present considerable distractions. When students are not able to understand a text, reading it over and over again can be overwhelming. Multi-step problems, word problems, and using formulas in Math present similar challenges for students in terms of maintaining focus and becoming overwhelmed. Students can easily find themselves in a negative cycle that ends in frustration and not completing their assignments.

    Enter ChatGTP which can function as a personal tutor of sorts. Students can type in specific questions or enter blocks of text and ask for a summary. They can also request a specific formula or multi-step operation with examples. ChatGTP’s interface is easier to use than a search engine since it is designed to be conversational in tone. It also provides an answer rather than a wide variety of results (some irrelevant) that are essentially just more information to sort through. ChatGTP can summarize difficult concepts or answer specific questions, provide steps for problem solving, and quickly defines terms within seconds.

    People with ADHD are brilliant, fast thinkers and many have trouble organizing their thoughts into linear language since they’re not linear thinkers. Their minds shift from different topics quickly and then at times they can hyperfocus in one area. While this way of thinking can facilitate forming connections that others miss, it can be difficult to communicate their ideas to others. The planning and organizing aspects of writing, as well as gathering research for longer pieces rely heavily on strong executive functioning skills which is an area of weakness for students with ADHD. ChatGPT offers assistance with creating outlines and templates, enhancing the style of writing, grammar, answers to specific questions, as well as a dictionary and thesaurus. This doesn’t mean that ChatGTP will do all of a person with ADHD’s thinking, researching, or writing for them; it means that ChatGTP can provide the executive functioning support that neurodiverse people need to be able to publish their ideas in written form.

    It’s important to understand that AI is a resource, a prompt, an organizer, a tool, not a think tank or a fount of innovation. Humans still reign as the planet’s visionaries, those with ADHD being some of the most brilliant and creative among them. The support that AI offers students who have ADHD can reduce or even remove some of what is standing in the way of kids with ADHD from communicating their thoughts and being successful academically. What more could geniuses with ADHD such as Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, and others have accomplished with AI by their side?

    Nicole Biscotti is a Momvocate, Educator, & Author whose focus is on the future of school as being informed by relevancy and the needs of our currently marginalized, under-supported learners. We have a lot to learn if we listen!

    Nicole wrote I Can Learn When I’m Moving: Going to School With ADHD http://bit.ly/icanlearnwhenimove with her 9 year old son from the unique perspectives of a child and a mother who is also a teacher. She has seen both personally and professionally how children struggle to be understood and how adults are often at a loss with how to handle the difficult behaviors associated with ADHD. She empowers parents and teachers to provide game changing support for children with ADHD in school through sharing her and her son’s story, along with researched-based strategies.

    Nicole has also translated books into Spanish such as El Cuento del Perdón by Melody McAllister and Todos Pueden Aprender Matemáticas by Alice Aspinall. I Can Learn When I’m Moving: Going to School With ADHD is also coming soon en español.

    Her next book, Invisible con ADHD: Real Voices, Real Policy for Latino Students is co-authored with Andrea Aguirre. They address the issues around the disproportionate lack of support that Latino children with ADHD are faced with. Through interviews with former students, educators in the United States and Mexico, and extensive research, they will offer educators a holistic view of the obstacles that currently stand in the way of protecting kids from poor outcomes as well as offering research based solutions.   

  • Resource Share – SlidesGPT

    Resource Share – SlidesGPT

    I, like many of us in educational technology, have been somewhat taken away by AI over the last few months. ChatGPT, Dall e, and Midjourney have been weekly, if not daily, topics of discussion, along with AI policy, frameworks, assignments, and assessments in education. For example, just in this past week I have run an edcamp session on AI in schools, developed coursework for an AI course, and shared a presentation with a local educator team on creativity and AI.

    However, throughout all of the changes, I have been keeping an eye on two specific threads. First, is the aforementioned creativity aspect of AI and how it will change the creative output of learners and educators. Yesterday I discussed how a decade or so ago, education feared the proliferation of cell phones and its limiting of creativity in individuals, but we have seen the opposite. Short-form videos are just one example of how cell phones are a tool for creativity right now. The other strand I have been following is the easy-to-learn, adaptable tools for any classroom. Tools like Conker, Mote’s AI quiz generation tool, or Firefly, Adobe’s in-beta AI Swiss knife, are two that immediately come to mind as useful tools for many educators to move through their designing, planning, and creation phases in their classrooms.

    SlidesGPT is another tool that I think fits this group. If you are unfamiliar, SlidesGPT uses an AI Chatbot format to build a slide deck for you on a topic of your choosing. In the deck above, you will find my first exploration of SlidesGPT. I had it build a presentation on a topic I presented early this year and it did a fairly good job of addi威而鋼
    ng pictures (from Unsplash) and providing good content. The really interesting thing is that slide two was generated by SlidesGPT and it is basically a caveat for users that it might generate inaccurate or offensive content. Other education-focused AI tools have particular blocks that will not accept specific, inappropriate content (looking at you, Conker) as prompts. As a starting point for slide decks, much like using chatbots to help build assignment descriptions, SlidesGPT is a good starting point if you are not sure where to start or need help with an outline, but the human element for editing, rephrasing, finding accurate information, and personalized content, is where the rubber hits the road. Check out SlidesGPT at this link.

  • AI Teacher Tool Round Up

    AI Teacher Tool Round Up

    As an instructional coach, I am always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to enhance the teaching and learning experience.

    Artificial intelligence (AI) is a rapidly growing field that has the potential to revolutionize education by providing teachers with powerful tools that can automate routine tasks, analyze student data, and personalize learning experiences. In this post, I will explore some of the most exciting AI tools that are currently available to teachers, and explain how they can be used to improve student outcomes and create a more engaging and effective learning environments.

    Whether you are a seasoned educator or just starting out in your teaching career, this post will provide you with valuable insights into the world of AI and its potential impact on education. So let’s dive in!

    1. Conker : Conker effortlessly write a variety of questions for quizzes on an array of topics when you give it a simple prompt. Quizzes can be exported to Google Forms in a click. Conker is free to use and archives your work automatically into a library.

    2. Twee : Twee generates quiz questions from YouTube videos. One downside is generation is limited to 5 minutes at a time, but you can easily move the timer and regenerate for more of the video. Here is a demo I created for use with my school’s LMS.

    3. Nolej (pronounced as Knowledge): Nolej is a powerful virtual digital content generator that not only takes course materials and generates lessons and interactive content, but also allows content to be shared in a variety of formats, including Google Classroom and SCORM packages that can be imported to many LMS. See an example here.

    In conclusion, the future of AI in education is both exciting and promising.

    As we continue to develop and refine these technologies, we can expect to see more and more AI tools being integrated into the classroom, enabling teachers to personalize learning experiences, automate routine tasks, and analyze student data in real-time. While there are certainly some challenges to overcome, such as ensuring that these technologies are used ethically and responsibly, the potential benefits for both teachers and students are enormous.

    It is our responsibility to stay up-to-date with these developments and to help our colleagues understand how they can use AI tools to enhance the teaching and learning experience.

    By embracing these technologies and exploring their full potential, we can create a brighter, more innovative future for education. (Content generated with the help of ChatGPT)