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Lindsay Jones: Breaking educational barriers with universal design · aiEDU Studios

• 0:05
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Hello everybody.
• 0:05
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I'm Alex, co-founder and CEO of AIEDU.
• 0:08
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): We're here at the Austin edition of AIED Studios with the amazing Lindsay Jones.
• 0:13
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Lindsay, you're going to do a better job introducing yourself than I will.
• 0:16
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But yeah, tell us who you are and maybe just about what you're doing here at South by Southwest.
• 0:22
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
• 0:23
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's always great to talk with you, Alex.
• 0:24
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I'm excited to be here at South by Southwest we.
• 0:26
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Thank you so much for having me.
• 0:26
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's always great to talk with you, Alex.
• 0:27
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I'm excited to be here at South by Southwest.
• 0:29
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We've got a lot of great stuff going on.
• 0:30
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): My name is Lindsay Jones.
• 0:31
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I'm the CEO of a nonprofit organization named CAST and formed 40 years ago a very simple premise People aren't broken.
• 0:40
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We can design systems better, and that's what we do sort of every single day, and what we do is focus on designing in research, in professional learning for K-12, higher ed workforce and in bringing together a community that's committed to variability and neuroscience and cool, fun design.
• 1:02
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It makes the world better.
• 1:05
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And CASA's a lot, so maybe you can just reach into the hat.
• 1:08
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It doesn't have to be your best story.
• 1:09
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): What's just like one project that you're really proud of.
• 1:13
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Yeah, there's so many.
• 1:14
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I mean, I almost think I really think honestly, one of the ones that is super important right now that we are really really interested in and learning a lot from is our Sight Center.
• 1:27
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We run a center that brings together people from across the United States, totally focused on conversations about how do we make all technology in schools inclusive.
• 1:38
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So many people think about just very siloed, they think in very siloed ways about technology, and this center is all about convening and conversation and learning and that's thinking about living the UDL principles.
• 1:54
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We've invented something called universal design for learning and what I think of with that is the work that's come out of that, which is amazing.
• 2:01
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's tons of guidebooks for districts about how do you do with this and it's ways that they work together and it's super inspiring.
• 2:09
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But I actually think the way that CAST was created is something that we live every day and that is there were some neuroscientists working at Harvard and they had an idea about people not being broken and they started working with individuals with disabilities who had really significant disabilities so physical, cognitive ones where people were being told you know, their parents were being told you will never, your child won't live alone.
• 2:37
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So they worked with them intensely and all of those students went to post-secondary education, which was like completely unthinkable.
• 2:47
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But what they decided was we can't work intensely with every student, but now we've seen this amazing possibility and it was what created universal design for learning as a framework that's used all over the world.
• 3:02
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I'm trying to think.
• 3:02
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): 40 years is like this is the dawn of the internet and personal computing.
• 3:07
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Yeah, it started in 1984.
• 3:09
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So, like the year personal computers are kind of coming out right.
• 3:14
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They tell stories of bringing their computers into Harvard Like there were no computer labs.
• 3:23
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): There were.
• 3:23
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Yeah, there were no computer labs there were.
• 3:25
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Yeah, there were no computer labs.
• 3:26
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): There was nothing and they were.
• 3:27
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Just they did some of the early creation of like speech to text.
• 3:31
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They did ways to.
• 3:34
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They created a top, something called Book Builder which we use all the time.
• 3:38
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We highlight text right, they were the first groups kind of working on that and creating that, and so to see it accelerated through the market today is incredible.
• 3:47
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Yeah, and it feels it's interesting because we were just at a round table and you know people were.
• 3:51
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): There was a lot of talk about user-centered design.
• 3:54
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): How do we make sure that the folks that for whom AI is being built are actually a part of you know informing the design?
• 4:00
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And I and it feels like Cast has been really elevated in your profile You've been tapped to be a part of some of the leading organizations that are advancing AI equity in education, edsafe AI Alliance being a great example of that.
• 4:15
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It's not a new topic, though.
• 4:20
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): This idea of the user-centered design isn't new.
• 4:23
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Is the AI moment creating a new opportunity for us to sort of have that conversation with folks who you know previously?
• 4:29
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Or maybe a little heartburn from the way that attack was sort of thrown at schools without necessarily the investment up front?
• 4:35
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): and understanding what needs were actually were yeah, that's a great way to put it and that's what I was just thinking about in that conversation, because people, I think AI, the moment that we're in with AI is so democratizing right, the way that people can, it can be.
• 4:56
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Let me qualify that a minute but like it can be, and one of the things that we, that we are trying to do all the time is help make things born, accessible, born user friendly, and most of the time they aren't.
• 5:11
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We heard some concerns down there about kind of how it can be too expensive.
• 5:16
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): You have to have people really focused on that know it.
• 5:20
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And then we heard from other people that actually it's happening a lot that people user design around neurodiversity or even bringing down other barriers is happening a lot.
• 5:30
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): People are just calling it different things because there is a reality of like there's a market that you're selling to.
• 5:37
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): You want to sell to the biggest market or at least make your product as available to the most people who can buy it.
• 5:43
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So we heard two really interesting things down there.
• 5:46
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I think two sides of it One which is accessibility, can be expensive.
• 5:50
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Another one which was we're just not calling it that, we're just not using some of those same words, and that's where we want it to get to, where it is completely built in.
• 5:59
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's not separate and segregated.
• 6:01
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So I thought that was exciting and AI presents a moment for that, because many ed tech products, if they don't use AI, come right, which are the predominant number of them in some ways.
• 6:15
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But they come to us and we have a product certification.
• 6:17
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We created it because educators were like I can't, I don't even know.
• 6:21
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): People say it's UDL, I don't know if it is.
• 6:23
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): There's a lot of confusion in the market, but they're done, they're already created.
• 6:42
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So they're having to go back and retrofit their design and it's clunky.
• 6:43
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It can be wonderful, but it's expensive to retrofit.
• 6:44
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's clunky.
• 6:45
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So with the newness of AI, it's a great moment to just revive that conversation and say you have a great ability here to do something incredible right from the start and it's an accelerator and it's an innovator or a way for you to innovate.
• 6:58
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I mean, to me it's like a very similar argument to the space program.
• 7:02
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Right, you're starting to create things.
• 7:05
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): You don't even know what you're going to invent.
• 7:07
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So we're working really hard every day with people to try to make them see the possibilities there.
• 7:15
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I mean, I think it was one of the threads that I found very compelling was when you talked about retrofitting and the exorbitant cost of having to go back and, you know, modify something that wasn't designed from the start.
• 7:29
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It's actually way more expensive than if you get it right from the beginning.
• 7:32
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And so, you know, I think it's an interesting bridge that we can build for folks who maybe they're not necessarily coming at this motivated by, you know, access and inclusivity, but they are motivated by, you know, successfully deploying a product, and one of the things that we keep hearing from the AI space is that the capabilities keep moving forward and organizations have just not figured out how to deploy them, because there's just sort of gaps in terms of the folks who are the end users don't really understand what to do with these tools, and so there's a bridge that we can.
• 8:02
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I think that we can build what to do with these tools, and so there's there's a bridge that we can.
• 8:06
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I think that we can build, and I'm curious, like, what are?
• 8:07
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): How early on are we in this process?
• 8:08
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Because cast is, you know, a big organization by nonprofit standards, but you can't do this alone and I mean, do you, do you have the resources to get this done.
• 8:17
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I mean, what's standing in the way of, you know, achieving this vision that you just described for us?
• 8:30
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Yeah, so we can't do anything alone.
• 8:31
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I feel like there's no way.
• 8:31
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And then, even in this environment, it's more important than ever to be working with good partners to start to be, because there's so many conversations happening, so many things being built and they're going to reach such bigger audiences that we have to be at the table in those conversations.
• 8:44
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And I think that's what we are trying to do.
• 8:46
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We're trying to learn on our own and build, and I mentioned with our districts the 300 plus school districts that we work deeply with in the United States, which is a tiny amount, but it's a lot and in all different kind of ways that we're working with them.
• 9:03
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But we surveyed them to see are they reflective.
• 9:07
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We asked them questions about AI what do you know about it?
• 9:10
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Are you using it?
• 9:11
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Are you interested in it?
• 9:12
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And we have some preconceived notions about it.
• 9:14
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): If you're a district that's working with us, you're open to.
• 9:17
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): You know you're looking to bring down barriers, you're open to innovation, but we're still kind of wondering are they matching what we're seeing in national surveys?
• 9:26
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And 100%, they are, absolutely, and I think that one of the biggest things was about 70% of them that responded were very focused on.
• 9:34
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We think that we could be doing a lot more with our technology for multi-lingual learners, for learners with disabilities, and so that just tells me CAST needs to partner, because we have unique knowledge about kind of how you can embed UDL in different ways.
• 9:50
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We've got a product certification that we've worked on for years.
• 9:54
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That's a rubric where we're deeply looking at those.
• 9:56
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But there are so many people building we can't even and we're like a teardrop in the bucket.
• 10:04
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I mean, oh my gosh.
• 10:05
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So that to me, if everybody could build in from the start with some of that knowledge, can we start to build developer processes.
• 10:15
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That would be awesome.
• 10:16
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That's what we're really trying to do is where can we get at the foundational level to inform the design?
• 10:21
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So we're not going product by product like our founders did, person by person.
• 10:26
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We're trying to say, okay, udl framework opened it to everyone, what's that for AI?
• 10:31
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Yeah, we have.
• 10:31
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I mean, it's just, I feel like it's such a gift to be in this moment of time where, once in a generation, there's this sort of technology paradigm shift and we're at the very beginnings of this new era of AI.
• 10:47
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I feel confident saying that I think maybe two years ago I would have been more qualified and I don't know if I'd call it the age of AI.
• 10:52
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I think we are actually entering the age of AI and we have the benefit of having had a few revs with sort of rapidly scalable technology like the internet, the computer.
• 11:04
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You know when the internet came around.
• 11:06
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I'm curious.
• 11:07
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I mean I was, I was in, I was in high school, I was in, I guess, elementary school and I had like dial-up.
• 11:12
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): The first time I accessed dial-up, um, and I mean, were conversations like this happening?
• 11:17
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Was there sort of this almost, you know, meta conversation about like what does this all mean?
• 11:21
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Or people much more tactical.
• 11:23
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Tactical like, just like how do we get computer labs into schools?
• 11:27
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's so funny.
• 11:27
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's so funny you mentioned this, so I was a little older than you at that time.
• 11:32
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I'm not going to you know, obviously not that much older, but one of our founders was David Rose is David Rose and he has in every conversation he's with us as an emeritus member on our board and in every conversation I have had with him over the last year he consistently says this reminds me so much of when the internet, when we launched.
• 11:56
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): When the internet launched and hit the world and we were all trying to figure out what's it going to mean for us and what's it going to look like and how are we going to use it, and there were all these initial questions about if you can just get information off the internet.
• 12:10
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Kids are cheating, like so many parallels, right.
• 12:14
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So that's actually been really helpful for us as an organization in our own learning to try to think about, you know, because there is no roadmap and your brain is seeking certainty.
• 12:25
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And how can I predict, how will I make the best product, what should I avoid and things.
• 12:29
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And we have the UDL guidelines helping us in.
• 12:33
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): You know his ways, but it has been really striking and it's been the commonality between the age of the Internet and now this, and that's been a good frame for us internally as we're doing our own design, thinking about should we approach people in this moment and what they need.
• 12:49
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): You know, alex, it was so interesting in the conversation that we were just having downstairs Someone mentioned the normalization of this.
• 13:00
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I thought that was so spot on, like it's happened so fast.
• 13:05
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I totally, you can totally, say it's the age of it.
• 13:07
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's not an overstatement, but that now we're talking about how do we normalize it so we can kind of approach it calmly, see where it fits in our world, make sure it doesn't displace teachers, make sure it enhances education.
• 13:23
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We need to be thinking more about that.
• 13:25
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That was a really interesting moment and that's very similar to internet the panic around it initially.
• 13:30
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): How will we control it?
• 13:32
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): How are they going to use it negatively?
• 13:34
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): What will kids see?
• 13:36
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Many of the same concerns seem to have surfaced then as well.
• 13:41
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And the computers and the Internet.
• 13:42
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It's really interesting because you know if you were someone that back when the Internet came around, and.
• 13:49
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I would argue that you know, because I was around for a couple.
• 13:51
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I remember the first time I used Facebook and I feel like most of the conversation was not about this is going to decentralize information and with that will come sort of this mixed bag of opportunity and the democratization of information.
• 14:07
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But also, you know, a lot of risks that come from now not having control of what and where people are getting information.
• 14:13
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And there's a good side to that coin.
• 14:15
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): There's also this you know darker side, and we're seeing this um, there's a lot of examples of, uh, you know, the internet creating sort of like bad outcomes, uh, at scale, and and so I I feel like the internet creating bad outcomes at scale.
• 14:29
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And so I feel like the internet kind of teaches us that we have to take seriously.
• 14:32
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): When people are talking about risks and concerns, these are not just sort of idle worry, and yet I don't know that.
• 14:41
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): What could we say differently?
• 14:42
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You go back it's like the Internet was definitely going to happen there.
• 14:45
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It's not that we had an opportunity to stop it, and so I think sometimes I worry that there's so much of a focus on the dangers and the risks that we're not able to move into this space of almost like troubleshooting and problem solving together.
• 15:00
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Yeah, I totally agree.
• 15:02
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Yeah, I totally agree.
• 15:29
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And I think that that was when he said the normalization normally a word I don't like normalization right in the world of variability, but it was true.
• 15:28
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It was something like how can we calmly?
• 15:33
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Technology is a massive positive if you are an individual with a disability, because what things that are nice to use for people who don't experience that disability are wide world opening for someone with a disability.
• 15:38
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So I think maybe I am predisposed to optimism around this because I've seen incredible progress and just amazing, life-changing, amazing uses of technology and I want that to keep happening.
• 15:51
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So maybe I'm like very optimistic, but I don't think you can.
• 15:59
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We want to control it.
• 16:00
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We need to be cautious, given what we've learned with the internet, but I don't want that to stop us from some of the incredible stuff that's coming that we really can.
• 16:12
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That will help everyone learn.
• 16:15
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And you talk a lot about the importance of educators and that's not going to change.
• 16:18
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That shouldn't change.
• 16:29
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But we can, I think, accelerate their power and their work and bring students into it more in ways that I mean when I'm seeing some of the stuff that we're seeing like it's incredible.
• 16:42
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It's living up to a lot of the promises that were being made.
• 16:44
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I mean, have you played with Sesame?
• 16:47
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I don't know if we've talked about this yet.
• 16:48
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): No, no, so there's this tool.
• 16:49
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): What is it?
• 16:50
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I don't even know what that is.
• 16:50
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Sesame is a, a, a company, that, or it's a tool, I don't know if the company the company is also called Sesame is a conversational voice chatbot, so kind of like what you know, a year or two years ago, people were, you know, foretelling.
• 17:07
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Like you know, in the near future, you're going to literally be able to just have a seamless, fluid conversation with AI and I think Sesame is the now the closest we've ever gotten and it's, you know, there's like there's a few, it's not perfect, but it's very clearly we're going to almost near indistinguishable conversationality and so many concerns right, like if you're a parent, right, and it's a good thing it isn't Elmo, because I think I would have some questions of my own about whether kids should be talking to an AI Elmo.
• 17:36
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But when we think about students who are English language learners, students who are neurodivergent and, frankly, students who don't have two parents at home to just talk about what they've learned in school when they go home, these sort of big ideas are now evolving into very potent and plausible tools and technology, and I guess this question is how do we sort of materialize the vision of the beneficial outcomes from that?
• 18:04
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And it feels like this is actually something that the technologists can't do by themselves.
• 18:09
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And so I guess, like one thing that I've and we're going to be talking about this in our panel later today you know you talk about educators and sort of like what is the role of, or how do we get folks comfortable to a place where they're able to actually participate in this exploration and contribute and sort of move the ball forward towards those beneficial outcomes?
• 18:29
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): One of the things that seems to be standing in the way is just a level of comfort and almost this sense that you have a role in the conversation and shaping it, and I think that's a really big barrier to cross because people understandably like AI has always been something that is in the realm of technologists in silicon valley and you know, I was literally told point blank by somebody once that I'm just not, not smart enough to be founding an ai nonprofit, because they're like you don't know, you, you've never created a machine learning model like, why, like, who are you to be sitting here and like, trying to, trying to do work in the space?
• 19:02
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Um, but you.
• 19:04
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But to your point now.
• 19:06
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Language models have sort of significantly lowered the bar and made it more accessible.
• 19:10
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): People can get hands on um and yet I still feel like a small sliver of people have really gotten like, have rolled up their sleeves.
• 19:17
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Maybe they've played with it.
• 19:18
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Um, what?
• 19:20
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): What can we do, whether it's aid or just like anybody who's listening, like what are the?
• 19:24
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Yeah, what are the?
• 19:24
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): What can we do, whether it's AID or just like anybody who's listening, like what are the?
• 19:26
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Yeah?
• 19:27
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): What can we do to bring more organizations and individuals into this project?
• 19:29
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Yeah, well, first of all, that person is just like such a stereotypical jerk, right.
• 19:35
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We all have to deal with those people.
• 19:37
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But that aside, I think there's two things that are really important about why many voices have to come in.
• 19:45
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): First of all, you're going to have a much better design, right, the way to find barriers is to try to think about someone else, like it's trying to put yourself into someone else's shoes and see how they might experience it, right.
• 19:58
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So UDL guidelines try to help you do that, but the best way to do it is co-design and developing relationships with different members, intentionally seeking out community partners.
• 20:10
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I think at this stage, we are going to have to normalize it among our community, so it's going to take a little bit of work, and maybe this is where our organizations have a role to play, right, which is getting our communities ready to be in those conversations.
• 20:22
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I don't think you need to be a technologist or whatever the right word for that would be right.
• 20:28
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Software engineer.
• 20:28
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I don't even know Whatever those people are.
• 20:30
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We don't need to be that to be able to inform the design right On our team.
• 20:36
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We work with developers.
• 20:38
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We don't have any in-house developers.
• 20:39
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We used to and now we work with lots of, because there's so many amazing developers out there running their own companies and they work with and we have different size projects and we work with.
• 20:48
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We can kind of pick and choose based on what they do right.
• 20:51
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We don't need them in-house.
• 20:52
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): The in-house what we have is kind of the knowledge around UDL.
• 20:56
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And this is the second thing, which is one of the best things that universal design for learning or any design thing is.
• 21:04
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): You don't have to any focus on inclusion.
• 21:06
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): What is the goal I'm trying to accomplish?
• 21:10
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Right, what is the goal of this?
• 21:13
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And that's actually it seems like.
• 21:15
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Of course you're going to say what's the goal, right, but when we actually start deeply asking that, all of a sudden you realize oh, there's a lot of stuff I'm lumping into this product or question.
• 21:29
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's not actually needed to get to the goal.
• 21:32
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And I think that's where you're going to co-design.
• 21:36
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Voices are going to come in and they're going to see that the easiest example of that as a problem is, if you are testing someone's ability to read, to see words on a page and read them right, then it's important that they actually you watch them right read the words, physically read those words.
• 21:55
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But if you're testing their comprehension, do you care if they read them with their eyes or do you care if they read them with their ears?
• 22:02
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Do you care?
• 22:02
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It doesn't matter.
• 22:03
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That's not the goal of the lesson.
• 22:05
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's a simple, simple example.
• 22:06
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But I think, when you were thinking about the technology, what is the goal of the product?
• 22:10
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And that's something where educators need to be involved.
• 22:14
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I'll also just say about why we need educators in this and where our organizations, I think, can really help, and what I'm excited about.
• 22:23
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Because of my history in disability rights and education, I have toured, like many, I've been very lucky to tour many incredible private LD schools, schools that serve kids with learning disabilities around the country Incredible, extremely costly schools.
• 22:42
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So these are very private schools.
• 22:44
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They can cost $100,000 a year.
• 22:46
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They're very expensive.
• 22:48
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): This is a small slice of our world that is able to go to those schools, but the incredible thing about them is the commonality is they're teaching kids about the brain and the teachers have been trained in many different programs, many different interventions, many different things, and they are like artists, right, they are sitting with a kid, understanding the complexity, getting to know, and they're kind of bringing them in.
• 23:19
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They're weaving them in based on what they see and what they're then observing, and sometimes they do follow a program right, weaving them in based on what they see and what they're then observing, and sometimes they do follow a program, right.
• 23:35
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But that is not something that you can have.
• 23:37
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Maybe, eventually, ai will do that, but I think we're years away from something like that.
• 23:41
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): What you have in that human is an understanding of the student, an understanding of all students.
• 23:45
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Right, you're bringing a lot of expertise to this that you've observed over the years.
• 23:50
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But that kind of access to knowledge and the way they're creatively constructing individualized programs for students if they had, the first step to me is they'll have AI tools helping them.
• 24:05
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That will become part of what they're doing.
• 24:07
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But that is a uniquely human interaction that's happening and I think probably people would say, oh, there may be people out there like, well, we could see AI doing that.
• 24:18
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We are that's far, I think.
• 24:21
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I agree.
• 24:21
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I agree, you're looking at me for confirmation.
• 24:23
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I think that's right.
• 24:24
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Because you're looking at me and I'm like maybe it's not far, but I think it is actually.
• 24:28
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Well, I think the idea of completely replacing the role of the teacher is, if not far away.
• 24:34
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Maybe it should never happen, even if it was possible.
• 24:39
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But yeah, I mean, I think over the next, let's say, five to 10 years, what seems much more likely is the suite of tools at the disposal of a special education teacher, for example, is going to get significantly wider and higher quality, but it's still going.
• 24:53
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): There is not going to be like I mean.
• 24:55
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Also, I mean, even if we just try to narrow from, you know, diversity from the disability community and focus on neurodivergence, there is not one tool for a neurodivergent student.
• 25:07
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It's like well, are they dyslexic, are they autistic, do they have ADHD?
• 25:10
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And so the only way this works, I think, is, to your point, teachers that are able to understand when and how to deploy some of these very powerful tools that they're going to have at their disposal.
• 25:21
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But it's interesting because you mentioned something about like actually really understand, like what is the?
• 25:27
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): What are you actually trying to do?
• 25:30
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And something that was mentioned earlier today in a conversation was this idea that you know a lot of people building AI schools right now are making this assumption about education, which is, well, the need the teachers have is they need more time.
• 25:46
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): They're overworked, they're burdened with all of this sort of compliance-based work that they have to do, and so, if AI can give them more time, that's going to drive demand for the products.
• 25:58
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But then if you really ask, well, what is the goal of it?
• 26:03
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): What is the teacher's goal?
• 26:04
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It's not to save time, right.
• 26:05
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): The teacher's goal is to actually improve outcomes for their students Now.
• 26:13
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): If they have more time, they have more time now to focus on how they can improve those learning outcomes.
• 26:18
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But it's, I think, an example of if you're not sort of in the seat of an educator, you can have these assumptions about what the motivators will be.
• 26:24
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): In the seat of an educator, you can have these assumptions about what the motivators will be.
• 26:28
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And to your point about the value of this is I mean, everybody's trying to carve their space out in the AI space.
• 26:37
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): All these startups are trying to figure out what their competitive advantage is.
• 26:39
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): What you're describing to me sounds kind of like a really ripe you know greenfield set of things that companies could do to actually stand out.
• 26:48
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And I mean, have you worked with for profit companies?
• 26:53
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Have there been startups that have come to you and said hey, you know, we're trying to figure out how to actually develop something to be a little bit more to appeal to the folks that you serve.
• 27:02
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I mean, is that a service that CAS provides?
• 27:04
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Yes, absolutely, and it's so fun, it's so fun, it's so that's like our favorite thing because it's boring.
• 27:10
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They're coming to us and they're saying we want to be born accessible, as we would say Right, but yeah, there's a lot of these startups that have come to us and we're working with the new schools venture fund with a couple of them, and that's good Cause.
• 27:21
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We again, again, it's like trying to get to scale is always, um, the issue, but yeah, um, gladio lit lab a lot of them are are out there and creating incredible products, but they are.
• 27:34
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They have an understanding of what is the goal.
• 27:38
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): What am I trying to solve?
• 27:40
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So what's the problem that I want to solve?
• 27:42
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That's my and my goal.
• 27:44
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I'm going to be really rigorously focused on that.
• 27:47
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And they have, I would say, a humble sense of I don't fully understand my market and I want to figure out how to understand my market.
• 27:59
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They don't typically have tons of capital, so they're thinking, you know they can't run huge focus groups and do those traditional kind of things, but it's like universal design is a way to kind of bring that in and I think bringing in it they're already committed to bringing in educator voice and student voice is actually the best part of all of this is because when you this made me think of this, when you just said what do teachers actually want?
• 28:24
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And I think when we talk with our teachers, they want I'm going to say it in a very quick way right, but there are magic moments when you are working with a student and you see them get it right, or you see them feel confident or learn or try again or whatever form it takes.
• 28:45
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's learning, it's thinking.
• 28:47
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I just changed this person's life right, like I gave them, I opened a door for them.
• 28:52
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That's what we're trying to get at, and it's hard, it does take time, but I think that's where, if we can normalize some of this.
• 29:02
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And then the hardest part of this is thinking about the current conditions in schools right now are challenging the sort of working conditions.
• 29:13
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Everything the structure is so hard right, that you were mentioning this with how ed tech tools and new AI tools or others can seem like just another thing.
• 29:24
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's hard.
• 29:25
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): How will I fit that in?
• 29:26
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It feels like we see that with UDL as well.
• 29:29
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's like you're telling me there's 30 different brains in my classroom.
• 29:34
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Now I got to make 30 different versions of the worksheet I got to.
• 29:37
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I can't Like what are you talking?
• 29:40
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): about.
• 29:40
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): How do you respond to that teacher.
• 29:45
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Yeah, I mean, how do you respond to that when you hear something like that from a teacher.
• 29:47
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We hear that so much and what we do is we bring in other teachers who talk about why actually this?
• 29:54
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): When you are working with UDL, there is a process, as you're putting.
• 29:59
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): You've got to invest with us in the beginning time, right, and all of a sudden you will watch that you won't be investing as much time, the classroom will shift and change and you will experience more of these moments and the students will start to lead their own learning.
• 30:16
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That's the thing that gets me also like.
• 30:18
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So first of all it's like, oh my lord, I got 30 brains in a room, holy moly.
• 30:23
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And then it's like you want the students to lead their what?
• 30:27
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Like it's going to be chaos, it's going to be.
• 30:30
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That is not a good idea, right?
• 30:31
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Even I have to say I'm not an educator, even as a parent.
• 30:34
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): When I first saw that I was like I'm not sure we should be doing that and it's not quite.
• 30:40
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But they learn.
• 30:41
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): The point is you scaffold and they learn how to lead their own learning.
• 30:44
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And then I have walked into.
• 30:47
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I'll take you into Bridges Academy in charter school in DC the next time you're there.
• 30:52
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Unbelievable educators in that room and they fourth, fifth grade classroom.
• 30:59
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Amazing.
• 31:00
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): What 30 kids, a couple teachers, two teachers in the room and you think, are these kids going to?
• 31:07
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): This could be total chaos, and watching them learn the system, interact and work with their own learning is stunning.
• 31:16
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I think it's stunning every time I see it and I deeply believe it should be in every classroom.
• 31:21
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But that's how we win over teachers it's, but that's how we went over teachers.
• 31:28
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Yeah, I mean there's, there's, there's.
• 31:29
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): So all this multi-dimensional, uh you know, systemic challenges in education.
• 31:31
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): One of those is students don't feel like education is relevant anymore.
• 31:35
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You know, levels of um, their truancy are going through the roof there.
• 31:39
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I mean, there's some districts there's like 40 of the students are not showing up to school every day.
• 31:44
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Um, and what you're describing, I mean, while it seems it might sound really intimidating, it feels like we need to figure this out.
• 31:52
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It feels like we need to find ways to empower students to actually be more invested in their own education.
• 31:59
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I don't think there's an AI tool for that.
• 32:02
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I think that's actually where teachers are going to have to come in and they understand the unique circumstances of their students and their cultural context.
• 32:09
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But I have to imagine that there's actually in the hands of a teacher who, you know, is a literate.
• 32:17
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You know, when I just interviewed the founders of this, one of the leading podcast studios called Kaleidoscope, and they're telling a story about how using stories is one of the ways that they are able to connect audiences with sometimes esoteric and complicated topics.
• 32:30
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): They're like the key is you need to hook them right at the beginning, and so you have to have some sort of surprising story or fact that you know, just sort of like gets them to.
• 32:39
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You know, start paying attention.
• 32:40
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You know, my first reaction is well, not every teacher is going to be able to come pull into the reach in their pocket.
• 32:47
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): plot like the perfect story yeah and not every student is going to care about that one story that you pull.
• 32:52
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You may need a few different examples.
• 32:53
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Um, language model seems like a really good uh, that seems like a really good use of a language.
• 32:58
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Models like whatever you're teaching, especially like the really dry, uh parts of your, your syllabus.
• 33:03
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You know, ai can, actually you could partner with AI to figure out, like, how do I create this engaging moment or even just sort of short inquiry or project-based learning activity right at the front, the beginning of the class?
• 33:12
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But I just don't know.
• 33:15
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): There's a script where it's not like well, every class starts with a story because at a certain point maybe that will get dry, right.
• 33:20
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): So I think you need to like so, yeah, the magic of how you get people to feel empowered and to sort of have this ownership.
• 33:28
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It feels like the nut to crack.
• 33:29
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I'm who are the other stakeholders that need to be a part of this?
• 33:32
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I mean, obviously the teachers, and we need to figure out how to support them.
• 33:36
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But yeah, who else is sort of a part of this movement?
• 33:39
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You know, if we're talking about building cultural norms, you're really talking about building a cultural movement.
• 33:44
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I think it's students and parents.
• 33:46
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): When I think about disability law, the only thing that has moved that civil rights law forward Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is parents Parents coming together with educators, and I really think it's students.
• 34:02
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I mean, what you're citing about engagement is real.
• 34:05
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It is dropping like a rock in many different factors.
• 34:09
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We see it.
• 34:10
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Gallup polls have it right.
• 34:12
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): There was just an article the other day.
• 34:14
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Rebecca Winthrop's book has just come out I can't think of the name of it, but Atlantic talked about it.
• 34:19
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So many middle schoolers not engaged Young men, young men I'm the mom of a 17 year old.
• 34:25
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): There is an issue with young men in our nation and something that our schools are are not engaging them, and I see that.
• 34:34
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So there, it's very real.
• 34:36
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): As you said, chronic absenteeism is one startling example of it, but I think you have to have students involved in it.
• 34:44
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): In fact, with UDL, that's part of it, right, and you hear it with lots of different things voice and choice XQ was talking about it, right, there are factors as they're looking through those, but I really feel like it's a different way to think about.
• 35:00
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It has to be a partnership of parents and students and schools, and that's hard right now in our country right, it has always been a challenge.
• 35:14
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): There's sort of a creative tension between parents and schools in some ways.
• 35:18
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That has always existed and has been good and made the system better.
• 35:22
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): So if you're a parent that's listening, like literally, what is step one for that parent?
• 35:27
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And like let's say they're at a school where there isn't you know a history of sort of like really engaging, there's not an obvious forum for them to just show up Like what would your advice be to a parent who's trying to figure out, like what do I do tomorrow to kind of just like start nudging my school to start thinking about this stuff?
• 35:45
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I mean, my advice would center on start with, things like universal design for learning, because I'm, you know, I think inclusion is really important, but it's like thinking about ways you're going to approach the school to understand what they're doing.
• 35:54
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I do think it's, you know, a way in is there are many parent organizations, there are ways, I believe in public schools and we work with charters, we work with private schools, we work with anywhere learning is happening, we work, but I think most people are still working with public school or sending their children to public schools, and so you know there's a lot of different ways and I think, interestingly, with AI what a great question to ask it right To start.
• 36:21
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I personally think that's a great way to get some initial information about how you should move forward.
• 36:28
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): There's actually that's actually another good point.
• 36:30
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You then the problem would probably go something like I'm a parent, I'm about to meet with an assistant principal.
• 36:35
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I don't know about whether they're leveraging universal design principles.
• 36:43
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Maybe I'm feeling a little bit intimidated.
• 36:45
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I don't want to get into an argument, but I really am passionate about, you know, helping the school evolve.
• 36:51
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You probably get a really helpful, almost like, agenda for the meeting with some great opening questions, and what I'm hearing from you is starting with curiosity.
• 36:59
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): So maybe don't make the assumption that I think assuming good intent is going to be important, because there's a lot of antagonism between parents and schools and, as with every anytime, you're trying to work collaboratively.
• 37:14
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I think figuring out how to build that bridge is critical, otherwise you're not going to get anywhere.
• 37:19
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But so I think we're starting to see the need.
• 37:21
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Actually, what I would say is I think it's a recognition that we need to be normalizing some of these concepts with parents.
• 37:28
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We need to be familiarizing is maybe a better word.
• 37:31
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We've lived at CAST in the realm of research, neuroscience, all of those things, and we work with educators, but it just seems like educators work with parents too.
• 37:42
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We need to be kind of helping them explain universal design, inclusion and students with disabilities and various needs to them.
• 37:51
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So that's really we just saw a need for it right now.
• 37:54
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But you know what's so funny?
• 37:56
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): You mentioned your mom was an educator.
• 37:59
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Is your mom still working?
• 38:00
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): She's in her last year at Akron Public Schools.
• 38:02
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Look at her Congratulations.
• 38:03
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Good for her.
• 38:03
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): She's probably really excited year at Akron Public Schools.
• 38:05
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Congratulations, good for her.
• 38:06
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): She's probably really excited.
• 38:07
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): She is pounding the days, no doubt.
• 38:10
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): My mom was an educator in Ohio, in Lakewood Public Schools, and she was a special ed teacher, special ed teacher, special ed director.
• 38:16
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So I grew up in her classroom, going after school to her classroom right, and that had a profound.
• 38:22
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That's actually probably why I do what I do.
• 38:24
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It had a profound impact on me as a very young kid.
• 38:29
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Right I was particularly in third grade.
• 38:32
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I went to a school down the street from where my mother taught.
• 38:35
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): She taught in a public school and at the time I was in a parochial school right down the street and I would go in the morning into her classroom and I would come after school and I knew all of her students right because they would be come in the morning, be coming after school.
• 38:51
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And one day our school schedules did not mix and so my mom didn't have childcare and so I just went for the whole day to the school and I went into someone else's one of her friend's classrooms a third grade classroom.
• 39:05
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I just went for the whole day to the school and I went into one of her friend's classrooms, a third-grade classroom.
• 39:06
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I was helping in the classroom or something, and it struck me that entire day I never saw my mom, I never saw her kids.
• 39:14
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I was like where are they?
• 39:17
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Because obviously I was looking for them.
• 39:18
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I remember distinctly looking for them all day.
• 39:21
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Where are they?
• 39:23
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And that was the day that I learned what segregation is in my life.
• 39:26
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They were special education students and they were not coming into lunch, they were not coming in the hallway, they were not.
• 39:34
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They were occasionally.
• 39:35
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I'm sure they were more involved in the.
• 39:37
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They were in specials, they were in other things.
• 39:40
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Right, I was in third grade.
• 39:41
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But the absence of that and it it was such a stark moment because I was pretty good for I was, I like, know those kids, I was friends with those kids.
• 39:51
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They were people.
• 39:51
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They are I don't know them today, but they were people to me then and it was just such a moment of like that is a design problem.
• 39:59
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Everyone loses in that and we've come come so far.
• 40:04
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That was in the whatever, the early 80s maybe, as CAST was being formed when I was in middle school.
• 40:11
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I distinctly remember the special education class was totally separate and sometimes they would sort of emerge out of the room that they had.
• 40:19
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And so you've said we've made a lot of progress but at the same time no-transcript.
• 40:48
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Literally every single brain is unique.
• 40:50
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Kind of intimidating to a teacher who now has some very unique new fingerprints that they have to design for I mean, I have some obvious we could have a conversation about the role of AI here, but I'm curious about what has worked really well for teachers who you've seen, like you know, take this on and thrive.
• 41:11
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): What can we learn from teachers who you know took that challenge on and were really successful in addressing it?
• 41:17
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I think the first thing is the way we think about the problem, and that is parents fought for inclusion In the special ed world.
• 41:26
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That's a legal term and we use it all the time and it means access to the general ed curriculum.
• 41:31
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I feel like it's something I need to say now.
• 41:33
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But parents fought for that because they're with kids all the time, right, all day, and they see kids for who they are all the time.
• 41:41
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Sometimes our researchers want to segregate kids and provide interventions in a medical kind of way, almost, where you take a dosage of this and then we see if it works.
• 41:51
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But we don't live our lives that way.
• 41:52
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Right, we don't have workplaces.
• 41:54
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's not like AIEDU has an office where all the people with disabilities go in that back corner over there, right?
• 42:00
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So some people will ask the question in our community how can we better resegregate to?
• 42:07
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Just?
• 42:07
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): There's a hope that we'll teach the kids separately and then they'll come to a place where they can integrate and socially they'll just be all OK.
• 42:15
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We've moved beyond that.
• 42:18
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Right now it's all about how can we do it better in an inclusive environment where everybody's in the room.
• 42:27
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): One of the ways we do that is universal design for learning, because it's about barriers and how do we find them and drop them, and educators are right to say they need support.
• 42:35
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's about staffing models in schools.
• 42:37
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's about empowering kids, and you don't need tech or AI to implement universal design for learning.
• 42:46
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That's really important, I think that's very important to say.
• 42:49
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): AI is not the unlock for this.
• 42:52
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Yeah, but if you can use it well, it can be really helpful, which is why co-design with educators is so important and students Because they're already living they will give you all the problems they're facing, the design problems.
• 43:06
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So if you're co-designing with them, they're going to help you get to your goal.
• 43:13
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): They're also going to help you think of new products you should be creating, right.
• 43:17
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But I think that's so.
• 43:18
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That's what I would say.
• 43:18
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I would say like we can't think about going back.
• 43:21
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We have to think about how do we educate everyone together, because they're going to live the rest of their lives together.
• 43:29
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And we also know that right before I left NCLD, we did a study of students with reading, writing, math disabilities and they experience anxiety and depression at two to five times the rate other students.
• 43:44
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I believe that that is because they're in schools that make them feel like failures and they fail.
• 43:52
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): And they fail because the design isn't right, and I'd be happy for someone to prove me wrong and then we'll go look at something else.
• 43:58
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): But I think it's like I've heard enough stories of that, that I believe the social cost of resegregating to deliver some dosage in a perfect environment, which isn't happening anywhere anyway, isn't the answer.
• 44:14
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's like let's go all in on.
• 44:16
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): How do we do a better job in the general ed classroom so they're prepared for career, for college, for whatever they do in the rest of their life?
• 44:25
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Yeah, yeah.
• 44:26
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And if AI can help us get there, so be it yeah.
• 44:29
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I think this is a great way to close.
• 44:30
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I mean, I'll take some license to share a closing thought because I think this is really, really important.
• 44:37
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You know we have.
• 44:39
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You know AIEDU is relatively young as an organization.
• 44:42
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): We've been around, you know long by AI standards, we've been around since 2019, but we're really early to this space compared to orgs like CAST, which have been around for 40 years.
• 44:53
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And you know, we've enjoyed a lot of, like a huge influx of funding and support because of this like shiny object, which is artificial intelligence, and it's not a Trojan horse no-transcript, and it's not a Trojan horse, because I'm very open about this.
• 45:05
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): So I don't know what the transparent version of a Trojan horse would be.
• 45:09
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But I mean, I think our strategy is very much use AI, harness AI as the shiny object that is bringing people back to conversations for which they've thrown up their hands and the philanthropy space is getting smaller.
• 45:23
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): The philanthropy space is getting smaller for K-12.
• 45:26
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): And when I've talked to funders, it's because they're like, yeah, we've tried, we've been doing this work and you know what, we're not really feeling like we're moving the needle enough, but we're really interested in artificial intelligence and I think that this transparent horse is all about.
• 45:41
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Use this moment as a chance for us to go back and really double down on some of these, like the answer you know the answer to how do you build ai tools that are going to successfully scale as universal design and user-centered design.
• 45:55
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): The answer to how do we get kids ready, uh, for the future of work and for, you know, the jobs of the future.
• 46:01
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It's not using ai, it's actually durable skills.
• 46:04
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): You know, it's the amer AI, it's actually durable skills.
• 46:06
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): America Succeeds had their durable skills framework.
• 46:08
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): We have portraits of a graduate which for decades, have talked about critical thinking and now we're hearing from the smartest thinkers that that skill is actually maybe the most important for a student that's trying to differentiate themselves.
• 46:21
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It's a bit of a sleight of hand where you're bringing people in and sort of inviting them to get excited about this new technology, which is legitimately exciting.
• 46:30
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): But I think there's a role for the non-technical focused orgs the orgs that aren't specifically squarely focused on building the technology to center all these other concepts that we now have a lot of experience under our belt, to kind of know what does work and what doesn't work and the challenges.
• 46:49
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Many times in project-based learning is like this.
• 46:51
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): We know project-based learning is important.
• 46:54
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It's not necessarily being implemented successfully, and so the issue is not that PBL isn't important.
• 46:59
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It's that we need to help teachers do more PBL.
• 47:01
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Ai might be able to help you do that actually.
• 47:03
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): So that's sort of the that's what we're thinking about.
• 47:09
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): It.
• 47:09
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Lindsay, anything that you would.
• 47:11
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): We're in South by Southwest right now, so it's March.
• 47:15
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): This will probably come out in April or May.
• 47:17
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Very hard to imagine what the world is going to be like even just two months from now, but what is a closing thought that you'd like to share with the audience?
• 47:26
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Someone who is maybe inspired by this conversation is trying to think about whether they're a parent or otherwise.
• 47:30
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Yeah, what advice would you give someone who's trying to lean in a bit more?
• 47:36
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Well, I'm going to say two things.
• 47:37
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): The first thing I'm going to say is that's why your answer, what you just said, the way you framed kind of how AI can help us in this moment, is exactly why it's important that you are who, you are right, that you are bringing your view to AI EDU, that you have a view of education that you've seen through your mom, Alex.
• 47:55
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): That's like the way.
• 47:55
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I totally agree with the way you just framed that.
• 47:58
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's a wonderful tool to get at some of these issues that we've been dealing with for many years and that we can fix.
• 48:05
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We can fix them, we can iterate on those designs, and you're the perfect person to be doing that.
• 48:12
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So I'm just thinking of the person who said to you well, you're not.
• 48:14
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): You know, you don't have all that.
• 48:17
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): It's like, yeah, it's good, you don't.
• 48:18
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): In many ways, you're bringing a lot of other amazing things to it.
• 48:22
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So that is something I want to say because don't lose sight of that that's an important view that we need.
• 48:29
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): What I would say two months, holy moly.
• 48:31
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): This has been a race like a really bananas race, but what I would say is I think parents are a big part of what makes good education as we move forward.
• 48:44
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): I think educators and parents working together is the secret to everything, and then engaging students, and so I would just say from Cass' perspective, we're looking at really working deeply with parents and helping them understand and trying to understand how they can influence education, how we can just share some information about how kids learn what they may want to know as they go into schools.
• 49:09
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We also are really focusing on faster ways to get to educators.
• 49:16
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We're focusing on kind of reading and math.
• 49:18
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Our NAEP scores are a challenge right, and so I think, going forward, we're trying to figure out what are good ways to get information to people, and then reading and math are always good as grounding influences.
• 49:32
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We all agree on reading and math as things that kids should learn in school and parents need to have good information to help them feel empowered and confident in conversations with schools, and those make the best conversations and then, honestly, it's just helping our educators have a better sense.
• 49:48
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): We've got that survey and now I'm like we got to do something for our educators and we're going to need good partners like you guys to make that happen.
• 49:54
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): So I appreciate all you're doing.
• 49:57
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Yeah, there's a lot of work to do.
• 49:57
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Lindsay Jones, thank you so much for joining me.
• 50:00
  Lindsay Jones (CAST): Thank you, and then I think we're literally walking to our panel right now.
• 50:05
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): I think we're gonna, we're gonna stop rolling and, uh, I'll probably have to find my suit jacket wherever that is.
• 50:10
  Alex Kotran (aiEDU): Um, yeah, thank you again thank you so much.