Latest / DiveIn: Diving into Special Education's Most Complex and Pressing Debates / The Inclusive Education Series: On instructional Design with James Basham
Transcript
- 0:05From the Division of Research of the Council for Exceptional Children.
- 0:09This is Dive in, the podcast where we ask difficult
- 0:13questions about the education of students with disabilities and occasionally we
- 0:18pretend we have the answers. I'm your host, Federico Vitolo,
- 0:22professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. So, are you ready?
- 0:26Let's dive in.
- 0:29Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of Dive In.
- 0:33Well, we are back. In our last episode,
- 0:37we took a short trip to Washington, D.C. where I made Kuna
- 0:41Tavalin wrestle with basically every federal special education policy
- 0:44nightmare I could think of. Ossors moving to HHS
- 0:48idea, lack of oversight, lack of funding,
- 0:51autism policy, school vouchers. Who's actually in charge of what?
- 0:55I'm happy to report that Kuna is doing fine,
- 0:58at least when she's away. What happens during sleep, I can't tell you due
- 1:02to Fairpan legislation. But after our brief detour
- 1:06from Washington, we are returning to our Inclusive
- 1:10Education series. If you have been following the series, we have already had some
- 1:15fascinating and very different conversations. We begin with David
- 1:19Connor talking about inclusive education through disability studies and disability
- 1:22rights. Then Doug Fuchs challenged some of
- 1:26the arguments of for full inclusion and pushed us to think about evidence intensive instruction
- 1:30and the question of where and how students with disabilities should be taught.
- 1:34Ainsco took us around the world, reminding us that inclusion is not simply a destination,
- 1:38but an outgoing process of identifying and removing barriers to
- 1:42participation and learning. And most recently, Valentina Migliarini
- 1:47taught us an intersectional perspective, prompting us to
- 1:51think about disability alongside with race, migration, language, society, class and
- 1:55other forms of difference. So we have spent quite a bit of time
- 1:59asking big questions like what is inclusive education? Why does it matter
- 2:03where students should learn, what counts as evidence? What needs to
- 2:07change in education systems today? We're going to
- 2:10do something slightly different. We gonna get our hands dirty.
- 2:15I know you've been waiting for this. Maybe you've been looking for an
- 2:18excuse to finally try a mud sculpture. Maybe the oil in your car had
- 2:22needed changing since the 1990s when you decided to skip to listen
- 2:26to the Backstreet Boys. I think for what? I've seen the stats of who
- 2:30is listening to my show and the demographics of my audience. I think you get
- 2:33the reference. Or maybe you've been thinking, today's the day
- 2:37I'm finally going to unclog the toilet myself. I tried to do that once
- 2:41while watching a movie at the same time. It did not go particularly
- 2:45well. But we're going to leave that story right there. Some stories do not belong
- 2:49to a podcast about Special education Today we move from some
- 2:54of the more conceptual and philosophical debates about inclusive education to
- 2:58a very practical question. If we want inclusive
- 3:02classrooms, how do we actually design inclusive instruction for them?
- 3:07How do we redesign learning environments from the beginning
- 3:11that anticipate that students are going to be different?
- 3:14Different backgrounds, different strengths, different ways of engaging,
- 3:17different ways of accessing information, different ways demonstrating
- 3:21what they know? In other words, instead of designing instruction for some
- 3:25imaginary average students and then scrambling afterwards when
- 3:29actual humans show up, so can we design for
- 3:34variability from the beginning? To help us wrestle with that question, my guest
- 3:38today is James or Jamie Basham. Jamie is a professor in the Department of
- 3:42Special Education at the University of Kansas, and his scholarship has focused extensively
- 3:46on universal design for learning, instructional design and technology,
- 3:50learner centered design, innovation, and the design of learning
- 3:54environments that work for a wide range of learners.
- 3:57And this is where our conversation gets practical. Because universal
- 4:02design for learning is a term that many education have here before.
- 4:06It appears in professional development, it appears in teacher preparation
- 4:10programs, it appears in policy documents, it appears on PowerPoint slides with
- 4:14very attractive diagrams. But putting three colorful boxes on a PowerPoint presentation
- 4:18does not actually make instruction universally designed. Unfortunately, I checked.
- 4:23I won't tell you what happened. So in this episode, Jamie and I wrestle with
- 4:27that and actually what it means to design instruction universally.
- 4:31What does it mean to begin with learner variability rather than treat variability
- 4:35as the problem that appears later? What does instructional design
- 4:39have to do with inclusion? And perhaps most importantly, how do we move from
- 4:43saying yes, yes, udl, multiple means of everything, I got it. To actually
- 4:47designing learning experiences in which a wide range of students can participate
- 4:51in learn and succeed. Because ultimately, if inclusive
- 4:55education is going to be more than an aspiration, a policy statement, or a very
- 4:59beautiful poster hanging in a school hallway, something has
- 5:03to happen when the classroom door closes and teaching begins.
- 5:07That is where today conversation take us. So roll up your sleeves,
- 5:11put on some clothes you don't mind getting dirty. Actually, I know you've been
- 5:15waiting for an opportunity to wear those coveralls your in laws gave you for last
- 5:18Christmas. You know the ones you open the box, hold them up, and immediately produce
- 5:23that very special reserve from gifts from your in laws. Oh wow,
- 5:26coveralls. These are so cool. While thinking when exactly I ever going to
- 5:30wear this? Well, today is the day, my friend,
- 5:34that lie becomes reality. Go and get those coveralls.
- 5:38Cut the tags off. Because today we're getting our hands dirty with universal design
- 5:42for learning and instructional design. Again, metaphorically, there will be no
- 5:46Mud. No mud at all. And for everybody's sakes, no clock toilet.
- 5:50Are you ready? Let's dive into my conversation with Jamie
- 5:54Basham. Well, thank you so
- 5:58much, Jamie, for being with us. In. Dive in. Yeah. Well,
- 6:02thanks for having me. I think it's exciting. As I was telling you
- 6:06when I got the invitation, it's a podcast I've been kind of keeping an eye
- 6:09on and listening to. So it's been great being asked to be here.
- 6:12Hey, so you're that one listener that Spotify is telling me that we have.
- 6:16That it's from cancer. That's great that we have a
- 6:20day identifier. I thought it was my mom, but no, it's you.
- 6:24Anyway, so we've been having this series on inclusive education. I really
- 6:28wanted to have you on the show because you have done a lot of work
- 6:30on instructional design, on technology, and how to bring UDL
- 6:34to inclusive environments. So I really want to hear his perspective, you know, and I've
- 6:38been starting with this question pretty much with all interviewees
- 6:42about what is inclusive education? Because I felt sometimes we're
- 6:45having debate about inclusive education, and I'm not sure we're talking about
- 6:50the same things. So the first question that I have to you is,
- 6:55how do you define inclusive education and what does
- 6:59it mean for practice? Meaning when do you see something and you say,
- 7:03okay, that's inclusive education. You know,
- 7:07I think this is a topic, obviously, right, for the time,
- 7:10unfortunately, we're still having this conversation in education, not even
- 7:15special education. When I think about inclusive education, I think about,
- 7:18you know, educational environment and education system that's
- 7:22designed to meet the needs of all learners, that provides learning
- 7:27environments, learning experiences that are meaningful and beneficial and
- 7:32equitable, let's say that word, right, for all individuals.
- 7:36So that ensures, like, belonging, participation, equitable access.
- 7:40Obviously, some sort of collaborative practice, probably.
- 7:44And we'll talk about probably as we get into this, into the
- 7:48podcast here, some of the paradoxes with the special education system
- 7:53and probably universal design for learning, right? So that we have a
- 7:57proactive, proactively designed environment that is thinking about the variability
- 8:02that exists within all humans and supporting
- 8:06that variability as much as we can. From the onset,
- 8:10you mentioned udl, and it has become such
- 8:14a big word around the globe. I've been doing work internationally.
- 8:18I know it's even written some Spanish legislation.
- 8:21There are people writing about udl,
- 8:25putting it in policies pretty much around the world.
- 8:30At the same time, it's being criticized
- 8:34for the lack of empirical support. It's like this buzzword
- 8:39that Become very popular. But they're critiquists, but it has very empirical support.
- 8:43How do you make sense of this? Do you agree with these criticisms?
- 8:47Well, you know, that's a kind of an interesting question.
- 8:51And I don't know if you, Elisa Lowery and I just wrote a piece that
- 8:55came out recently in Journal of Special Education Technology which,
- 8:59you know, if we look at the history of udl, it kind of emerged
- 9:03from that journal, right? It really emerged from that journal. And so in that piece
- 9:08we kind of got into kind of the history of UDL and
- 9:12why it emerged and why we both actually as young scholars
- 9:16back in the day kind of came to UDL and then also
- 9:21kind of how it emerged through time and where it is heading.
- 9:25And one of the critiques we raised that critique in there,
- 9:27that udl, by and large, it's difficult to
- 9:32conduct research on. Right. So the field as we've, in this sort
- 9:35of functionalist sort of paradigm, if we're going to get into paradigms and such,
- 9:39which, you know, I think we're all multi paradigmatic in some ways,
- 9:43but, but if we're going to look at the micro objective
- 9:47sort of perspective of doing research, it's really hard to do research on something
- 9:51like udl. Because what UDL kind of, kind of puts forth
- 9:55is the notion that if we look at the designed environment itself
- 10:00and we think about it proactively, is it actually meeting
- 10:04the needs of the diversity of learners, the variability of learners that are in it?
- 10:08And we've known for a long time that, that it's
- 10:14not. And so I think what UDL kind of promotes is
- 10:17that we need to think more holistically around
- 10:23the idea of how do we design environments designed for
- 10:27all learners? And it's hard to do research on that. It's like
- 10:31hard to do. It's the same thing. And I know our field generally has
- 10:35ties to the medical model. We can critique, we're going to maybe critique that later,
- 10:39but, but the, the, the medical model has
- 10:42the same issue, right? It's hard to do preventative care and show that preventative care
- 10:47is actually, you know, supporting something that's not broken.
- 10:51So we have that same sort of issue in udl.
- 10:54That being said, I think there is a need for rigorous
- 10:58research to take place within udl, that we need ways to identify whether
- 11:03UDL is being implemented in our environment. How do we actually go forth
- 11:07and measure it? And a lot of my work has been like how do we
- 11:10measure UDL in environments? And how do we support then
- 11:16the Notion that, you know, that just simply putting
- 11:20a. It used to be simply putting, you know, 20 years ago,
- 11:24simply putting a digital whiteboard in an environment,
- 11:27someone would say, well, that's udl. Not really, that's not udl.
- 11:31But when we think about the diversity of learners and we go forth and
- 11:35deploy it across environments and the other
- 11:39thing that makes UDL hard to measure is that environmental notion
- 11:43of it that the districts, if we look at
- 11:47school districts and educational organizations that have gone forth
- 11:51to integrate UDL into the way they practice,
- 11:55at the core of how they practice, it impacts more than just
- 12:00students with disabilities. It impacts all learners. Right. It impacts
- 12:04people, all aspects of the curricula and
- 12:08all aspects of the environment. So suddenly we don't have siloed sort of systems,
- 12:12special education, general education, that aren't talking to one another,
- 12:16they're actually talking to one another. And then people are also having discussions
- 12:21with the bus garage because we know there's some sort
- 12:25of exclusionary practice that's probably happening with the way we do busing. And so we
- 12:29think about how do we design systems that are meaningful and beneficial for
- 12:33all learners. And again, it's really hard to do research on a systems
- 12:38level sort of thing that's not just a quote unquote evidence based practice
- 12:42or a system of practices. Yeah. And I imagine even like trying to sit in
- 12:46the classroom. Like, I mean probably all our audience will know UDL
- 12:51has like three different principles. Multi moment of representation,
- 12:54action and expression and engagement. But then we have all these different,
- 12:58you know, sub guidelines, checkpoints, how they call it.
- 13:02Right. And it's like, what about if your teacher is doing. You observe the
- 13:06teacher has like 50% of those checkpoints. Do you code that?
- 13:10Is it doing udl? It's not doing udl. I mean, what percentage of those checkpoints
- 13:14you need to be seen to say, okay, we are actually measuring udl.
- 13:18Yeah. And that's something that so years ago.
- 13:21So if people don't know my history in this area,
- 13:25you know, as an Assistant Professor 20 years ago, I think thereabouts,
- 13:30you know, my dean came to me in the spring of
- 13:34my first year and said, hey, look, we got that grant award
- 13:38to help transform some schools that are not doing so well.
- 13:41And so you're going to lead this project in the summer if you want to
- 13:45keep your job to go through. And it was the
- 13:49first school under NCLB shutdown that I helped lead
- 13:53that project. And the idea was, is we were going to go through and transform
- 13:58the school, shut down the school, reopen the school to be a UDL based
- 14:01STEM school. And, and we saw drastic
- 14:06change to the environment as a whole very early on. And there's, I have publications
- 14:11on that back, you know, 2008 to 2010,
- 14:142012, somewhere in there. So we saw drastic
- 14:18change in that environment early on. So we were seeing transform,
- 14:22transformative shifts not only to the environment, but to the way the neighborhood was
- 14:26interacting with the school, parents that were participating.
- 14:29Part of the idea of that school was that it became a community based environment.
- 14:33So we were working with the kids obviously through
- 14:37the week and then on Saturdays we were working on digital literacy for
- 14:42the neighborhood and opening like how, you know, working with the neighborhood
- 14:46in that area. So, so, but what was interesting
- 14:50is, and we made Safe harbor first year, all that kind of stuff. But what
- 14:53was interesting about our outside evaluator came in and said, so it's
- 14:57a UDL based STEM school. I understand STEM because I can kind of see they're
- 15:01doing project based learning, they're doing all these sort of STEM related activities.
- 15:06But, but how do I know UDL's taking place,
- 15:10you know, and so forth from that point forward. And that was
- 15:152007, 2008, somewhere in there I
- 15:19kind of took on the notion of how do we measure udl? And it's
- 15:23a very difficult sort of thing to go through and measure.
- 15:26And actually a colleague of mine, Jim Gardner, who's since retired
- 15:31from the University of Oklahoma, he and I kind of took on this task back
- 15:35in the early days to say, well, yeah, Is it that 85% of
- 15:39the teachers are talking about UDL? Is it actually UDL? Is there a
- 15:43way to go forth and measure? And the idea is that
- 15:47you're going to have greater aspects of UDL alignment throughout the
- 15:51system. So just like we have variability of learners
- 15:55and we kind of acknowledge that now we have variability within a school, within an
- 15:59education system of alignment to udl. And so from
- 16:04there, without getting into
- 16:08too long of a story, but we, I helped co founded the UDL Implementation
- 16:13of Research Network, which was a global nonprofit. Yeah, it was a global
- 16:17nonprofit to kind of bring researchers and practitioners and education
- 16:20leaders together to talk about these very issues.
- 16:23And so for the, for from about
- 16:272010 to 2019, we're, we were, we had the largest gathering in UDL
- 16:31across the globe every year, the UDL Iron Summit.
- 16:35And a big aspect of that was research. Like how do we
- 16:39do research in this area? And the idea is you could do research on smaller
- 16:43projects of implementation. And we have people
- 16:47like Kavita Rowe and others that we had on a research committee that would develop
- 16:51guidelines for measurement. And we've had
- 16:55other tools. I had a tool that came out in 2020 with Jim
- 16:58Gardner and Sean Smith on measuring this.
- 17:02So there are ways to go forth and measure it.
- 17:06But the critique stands. And I think the critique exists because
- 17:09we just need to have, There does need to be, regardless of,
- 17:14regardless of the promise of udl. And we know that
- 17:18the variables associated with the udl, with udl,
- 17:22provide for meaningful learning. I mean, we can, we can map those back.
- 17:25I mean, you can map em back to various types of research.
- 17:29But when we look at what are the impacts of
- 17:33bringing these things together and how are they supporting meaningful
- 17:37and beneficial learning for all students? For all students.
- 17:41That's a, that's a question that has to be asked. And,
- 17:44and, and so it's an important question. And I know we don't
- 17:48have too much time, otherwise I'd get in deeper on it. No, no, no,
- 17:51but it's valid, you know, and in, in a, in a sense
- 17:54we can say the critique, it's valid, but the critique
- 17:58that you really also have empirical support at the same time,
- 18:02it's also, I think, as a justification to completely
- 18:06disengage from it. Yeah, I think that's the wrong.
- 18:10That's the concern I have. Right. I think it's pretty easy
- 18:14for, from a functionalist sort of perspective to say,
- 18:18oh, well, we can't measure this one specific practice
- 18:23and therefore, because it's not one specific practice,
- 18:27let's run from it or let's pretend that we don't need to talk about it.
- 18:31The idea that we, we, we as I think all researchers
- 18:35would agree that, that,
- 18:38that, that the variability of human, human variability is
- 18:43driven by the interaction between a
- 18:47designed environment or any environment and
- 18:51the human themself. Right. So the idea that,
- 18:57and we have plenty of research to support that, but I also think it's just
- 19:01a little bit of common sense and so
- 19:05to just kind of throw out the design environment as a whole and say,
- 19:09well, it's not important how we proactively design environments.
- 19:12It's just crazy to even think about that because the
- 19:17designed environment is at the core of how we operate. So for instance,
- 19:21I was working with a group during COVID and we were working in
- 19:26developing countries and this is when USAID had
- 19:30funding. And one of the things that we're working on
- 19:35is within design environments across the globe,
- 19:37they don't have things like ada. Right. Ada.
- 19:42As Americans, we kind of look at that. We Say, well, yeah, of course physical
- 19:45environments are going to be accessible. Yeah. And we can debate
- 19:49whether they're accessible enough in fact. Right. We have these debates,
- 19:53but in other parts, how much is reinforced. Yeah.
- 19:56And the rest of the globe that's not the case. And so when UNESCO
- 20:01and other entities implement and have taken UDL
- 20:05under their wing as a foundational sort of framework for thinking about design,
- 20:10which is incredibly important,
- 20:14some of the aspects that we were dealing with in these developing countries were
- 20:18just the opposite of some of the stuff we're dealing with now in our country,
- 20:21which is in that country. We were talking to families and individuals
- 20:26that were saying, I have access to the materials,
- 20:30I have digital access to the materials. And so we've
- 20:34accomplished that part of it. What I don't have access to is the physical
- 20:38environment. And so, and so again that
- 20:44variability outcomes, outcomes for all humans
- 20:48are driven by the environments they interact with.
- 20:51Right. And so what we knew at that point was
- 20:55that that was a larger conversation. So these individuals
- 20:59that happened, the one, one family we're working with
- 21:03had had a, some, some kids that were blind. They could, they could
- 21:08interact with the environment digitally, but they couldn't interact with, they couldn't get to
- 21:12the environment physically. And so they couldn't have that sort of collaboration,
- 21:16they couldn't have that growth and development that takes
- 21:19place in, in that sort of sphere. So, so what UDL
- 21:24and the reason we shouldn't as a, as a, and I'm going to say a
- 21:28field of special education, but education as a whole needs to embrace something
- 21:32like UDL is because what it is saying is that we need to
- 21:36look at the designed environment and UDL for the people that are
- 21:40kind of like throwing rocks at it. By the way, takes into
- 21:44account that yes, we have some practices that are evidence based or
- 21:48even high leverage practices that need to actually be used in these environments.
- 21:53It is actually calling for the use
- 21:57of what we know is proven through science to be effective in
- 22:01teaching and learning. I have a follow up with you
- 22:05because it feels very well to what I was about to ask you.
- 22:09Some scholars would argue that UDL can reduce the need for special education.
- 22:14Well, I'd argue that no, no way.
- 22:18Specialized instruction will remain essential for some students.
- 22:22How do you see the relationship between UDL and
- 22:26specialized instruction? Maybe even separate classroom?
- 22:30You know, I was talking to a FUSA who was talking about, yeah, maybe we
- 22:34can transform the classroom. That would be basically a sort
- 22:38of like Tier 1 RTI or MTSs, you know, but there is always students that
- 22:43are not going to respond to that. You always need that specialized, more intensive
- 22:47instructor at a different level, maybe at a different setting. How do you, how do
- 22:51you make sense of that relationship? Udl, Specialized intensive Special education instruction.
- 22:55You know, I think about my late colleague Tom Skurdick quite a bit.
- 22:59Oh, yeah, these kind of conversations kind of come up. And some
- 23:03of his early work and his work throughout his life and his career
- 23:08dealing with things like the paradox of the special education system.
- 23:11The idea that we as a. As special educators,
- 23:15as a special education system, our system was born.
- 23:19Was born due to the fact that we were excluded.
- 23:23That kids were being excluded. Yeah, that kids were not being included
- 23:27in the conversation or in the system's design.
- 23:30Right. So that we had individuals being excluded. So that the,
- 23:35the very idea that, that, that.
- 23:39The very idea that we're having a conversation
- 23:44about reducing the need for special education, that actually
- 23:48should be the goal. Right? The goal should actually be that
- 23:53if we had an education system that was actually designed for all learners,
- 23:56for all people from the very beginning, it was meeting the personalized,
- 24:01individualized needs of all learners,
- 24:05there wouldn't be need for special education. So I
- 24:10think that is actually should be the goal and the dream. Now, I know
- 24:13people will scream at that and say, well, you work in a department of special
- 24:17education. That's true. But yeah,
- 24:23yeah, we do. And this podcast is about special education. But,
- 24:27you know, I recall my days. I recall
- 24:32my days at my undergraduate at Eastern Illinois University under
- 24:36direction of Kathleen Shank and some of the leaders at that great teacher
- 24:40preparation institution. The goal very
- 24:44early on said, look, if we can meet the needs of all learners,
- 24:47that your goal as a special education teacher should be to get the kids.
- 24:52At that point where I talk about least restrictive environment, we still do in law,
- 24:55that your goal should get the kids to be able to support
- 24:59the kids in a general education setting and should be to support kids
- 25:03to not have the needs. And so UDL kind of lays into that
- 25:07and says, yes, let's proactively think about.
- 25:12And UDL coming about in the late,
- 25:16what, early 2000s. But really the late
- 25:201999, 1990s is
- 25:25really when it started to come forth, was like we could proactively design
- 25:29environments to better meet the needs of all learners. So what does it mean in
- 25:33today's time, the relationship between UDL and special education?
- 25:37UDL is about educating all kids. Special education
- 25:40should be about educating all kids. Yeah.
- 25:45We as a US System, categorize them based on
- 25:49the categories, put forth an idea. We all know that IDEA
- 25:53does not cover the variability of all human variability.
- 25:57We know that if we look at the dsm, in fact, there's many more
- 26:01sort of, you know, labels and things that we can categorize kids
- 26:05that, that aren't dealt with in under
- 26:09idea. Should we exclude kids based on
- 26:13the fact that one, they're not, they don't meet a quote unquote label
- 26:18within idea? No, we should not. We should develop an
- 26:22environment that designs for all kids and UDL gets us towards that.
- 26:26Now, are there specific needs that a UDL
- 26:31environment may not support?
- 26:35And that's a big question around how do we measure udl?
- 26:38It kind of gets into what is udl? And I think this
- 26:42is like we go back and, you know, I remember Dave Eddyburn and Joy Zabala
- 26:47kind of arguing this at a CEC conference. But will there be need for
- 26:51specific instruction and for instance, assistive technology for.
- 26:56Yeah, there's going to be need some kids. Now, I would argue
- 27:00though, that it shouldn't stop at the labels that we've
- 27:03given kids with disabilities. Yeah, I would argue that we need to support all learners
- 27:07and we need to work towards a more personalized environment that's
- 27:11personalized for every single kid. And again, I've done research in this area
- 27:16of a publication, I think 2016, 2017, where we looked
- 27:20at systems that were personalizing for each and every individual kid. Some kids also had
- 27:24IEPs, but every kid had a personalized
- 27:28learning plan. And I think if we look at, you know,
- 27:32what we produce in those environments and as we get into artificial
- 27:36intelligence and talk about those, the role of technology and what we're facing as we
- 27:40look at the future, I think that's what we're aiming for. And so we need
- 27:44to go back to some of Tom's work, Tom Skurdick's work and others and say
- 27:47what if at the very beginning of time, then we
- 27:51designed the education system we didn't segregate and we
- 27:56didn't exclude. What if we had a system that was actually designed
- 28:01for all kids at the ad hoc, racy sort of perspective? Like, what if we
- 28:05took that notion and said we have a very fluid, sort of flexible system that's
- 28:09designed for all kids from the very beginning? And I think that's the conversation we
- 28:13need to have. The idea that,
- 28:17that we, that that there, there should be a line between the two is kind
- 28:21of crazy. Yeah, well, I mean, I always, always teach my future
- 28:25special ed teachers in our special ed program that idea
- 28:30or special education, if you want to treat them as Equal,
- 28:33it was a solution to exclusion, like you say, but it was a very particular
- 28:37solution to that. It was, we're excluding all these kids.
- 28:41We're going to create this different system that's going to help to include. Right.
- 28:44To not exclude and provide services rather than dealing with the
- 28:48place that was excluding them in the first place. Right, yeah. And we
- 28:53have, I would say, remain completely attached to the general education classroom.
- 28:57I don't think our general education classrooms looks dramatically
- 29:01different as they look in the 1970s. Maybe with some use
- 29:04of technology, maybe you refute me on this, but maybe using some fast technology or
- 29:09something else. But in general, our classrooms may look very
- 29:13similar to what it looked 1970. So we haven't dealt with that. So it would
- 29:17be interesting to see how special education actually can become part of
- 29:20a movement that actually can transform the general education classroom. Other schools
- 29:25have absolutely no hope on it. And that's kind of one of the henchmen getting
- 29:28from people that are not very pro inclusion in the sense that there
- 29:33is no way the general education classroom can do this. That's kind of the
- 29:37mood. It's like they have seen for decades. They're right in the sense that they
- 29:41have seen for decades of the general education classroom failing students with disabilities,
- 29:44and they have no hope that that's going to change. Well, and the
- 29:49concern with that is, and we've built the system, I mean,
- 29:53again, citing some of Skerrik's work,
- 29:56we have built institutions on the fact that there
- 30:01is a difference between general education and special education.
- 30:04We have developed certification structures and licensure structures
- 30:09on those differences. Right. And so if
- 30:13we prepare general educators to not support meaningful
- 30:18and beneficial learning for all students from the very beginning, and we
- 30:22say to special educators, hey, only worry about these categories
- 30:26and kids on IEPs, not even
- 30:30504 plans for the most part, then if that's
- 30:34the system we have built and that's the system we reinforce, then yes, we're continuing
- 30:38to reinforce a broken system from the very beginning.
- 30:41Now, if we say to all educators, all educators,
- 30:46human variability, human variability as a
- 30:50whole is part of the human experience and
- 30:54the designed environment and the design curricula and the
- 30:58experiences within that environment directly relate to the
- 31:03outcomes of what we're seeing in the environment.
- 31:08And you as a educator should be trained
- 31:13more as, rather than a fact, a line based factory worker where go do
- 31:17these 12 things, or go do these 20 things, or go do these 30 things
- 31:20and you're going to see meaningful benefit and outcomes. What if
- 31:24we designed. What if we prepared educators as designers.
- 31:28What if we prepared educators to look at the environment, look at the
- 31:32design variables going on within their environment to say,
- 31:36oh, the kids didn't do that well, the students didn't do that well last week
- 31:39on that unit, or at least, you know, some portion of them, or I've
- 31:43had X portion of people out last week due to illness or
- 31:47you know, all these different. Or I have X number of multilingual
- 31:52learners or I have, we can go into the different variables or I
- 31:56have students with X disabilities. Right. But we're
- 32:01really looking at what types of variability we're dealing with. Then we
- 32:05can then if we teach them to think more like designers and design better
- 32:10environments from the very beginning, no matter who they are as
- 32:14educators, I think we're going to have better outcomes. Right. And it's going to.
- 32:17And it's going to provide a system that's not as exclusionary and segregated.
- 32:22Yeah, yeah. So do you see possible to
- 32:26embed this kind of specialized intensive instruction,
- 32:31you know, what scholars call evidence based practice,
- 32:34that being tested as an intervention within a UDL framework?
- 32:38I have seen very little of that. Are they totally incompatible?
- 32:43Can that be part of UDL idea of providing multiple
- 32:48means of support for some students to embed those intensive interventions
- 32:52within the design of instruction? Yeah,
- 32:55I think it can. But again the question,
- 32:59if we're looking at location, if we're looking at, we're defining inclusion
- 33:04just purely in like one classroom, you know,
- 33:08I think it becomes a hard sort of thing, right. If we're design, if inclusion
- 33:13is just one classroom at 20, you know, full time,
- 33:16then it may becomes a more difficult sort of thing. But are there ways to
- 33:20do co teaching, Are there ways to do like look,
- 33:24we have this, we are the fourth grade pod, for instance,
- 33:28you know, we have fourth grade classes and there's a POD that's sort of interactive
- 33:32and there's lots of more dynamic sort of system that's kind of going on again
- 33:37and it's not. And again, I want to not put forth the notion that kids
- 33:42with disabilities are being pulled out to get specialized
- 33:46instruction. Can specialized instruction be provided in a general.
- 33:51Yes, it can be provided in general education classroom.
- 33:55And can it be provided with various groups of
- 33:59students also in the POD that can interconnects. Right.
- 34:02And that we have this very fluid sort of thing. You know, if we look
- 34:06at I think I 2016, one of the pieces on personalized
- 34:10learning, if we look at in Journal of Special Education Technology, again,
- 34:13if we look at that. So this, this school system that
- 34:17I was working in, Skip Stahl, myself and others were working in at
- 34:22that point in time they were redefining like so they were,
- 34:26you know, under, under about
- 34:30to be shut down through NCLB and others. And so they rewent
- 34:34and revision this whole school system. And the idea being that, that what
- 34:39they put forth was that if we personalize learning for each and every kid,
- 34:43and some kids had IEPs, but all kids had personalized learning
- 34:47plans and that we put forth the notion with all of our educators that human
- 34:52variability is part of the human experience. It's interesting to
- 34:56see what happens because when they put that forth to not only the teachers,
- 35:00the teachers carry that forward to the students and you'd walk into
- 35:03a classroom in one of these environments and there were like
- 35:07this, the school system had, you know, specific schools we were working with had
- 35:117,000 school, 7,000 or so kids.
- 35:14And from, from first grade, what we would consider first
- 35:18graders on up because they didn't have grade, they didn't
- 35:23have grade levels as we particularly called them. They would kind of put,
- 35:27you know, five year olds with five year olds and such, but each
- 35:32kid would say, this kid's at this area and this kid's
- 35:36functioning, doing this and I'm doing this and he's doing that and she's doing that,
- 35:40et cetera, or they're doing this and that's okay because we're all
- 35:45different. And a first grader would say that to you what we would consider as
- 35:48a first grader. And you get to high school when the same conversation would happen,
- 35:51like kids were working with one another cooperatively,
- 35:54collaboratively on project based learning experiences and they
- 35:59were all contributing in different ways, just like we as adults do in projects.
- 36:02Right. And that variability was built into how they thought about each
- 36:07other as students. And to me that's part of designing that inclusive
- 36:11environment. To me it's part of like ensuring that we as
- 36:15a whole are doing that. But the teachers have to be educated to do that.
- 36:18And that's kind of part of that process. And teachers would then
- 36:22take in, oh, I need to provide more intensive instruction to these kids or
- 36:26this kid or whatever to support growth.
- 36:30And it's just part of how we design. But it's, it's, we have to
- 36:33support educators as designers. Yeah, absolutely.
- 36:38The training piece, the professional learning piece, the teacher
- 36:42learning piece. This is essential. So I want to talk a little bit about AI
- 36:46too, because I know you've been doing a lot of work with that. But before
- 36:48that, before we move into that, I Want to
- 36:52talk about the UDI gallons 3.0?
- 36:56Yeah, I know you have your critiques on it. I mean, full disclosure, I was
- 37:00on the board that helped to develop the guidelines. So what
- 37:06is your take on the new guidelines? You know,
- 37:10so it's interesting. So for people that are not
- 37:13inside the UDL world, you probably don't know the role of the guidelines. The guidelines
- 37:17are a document. They're generally relegated
- 37:22to one page now. But the initial guidelines were kind of a larger document
- 37:27that talked about the types of variability that may exist in an environment.
- 37:30They were mapped back to research that's
- 37:35been going on for decades in the field of education and learning sciences and even
- 37:38neuroscience. And the idea was that as
- 37:44an educator that was implementing UDL or system that was implementing udl,
- 37:48you would look at the guidelines to kind of identify. Help identify
- 37:52variability and help identify learning barriers within the. Within the.
- 37:56Within the classroom or within the learning environment or even system
- 38:01as a whole. So it could be an LEA or even a local education agency
- 38:05or even a state education agency. And I've actually worked with, you know,
- 38:09national governments and such ministries of education that
- 38:13were doing the same thing. So. So the guidelines.
- 38:18My belief is the guidelines should always be updated,
- 38:21that we should always be like, we should have a
- 38:26group of researchers from across the globe that
- 38:31are following a process, a rigorous process for continually
- 38:35updating and supporting understanding for the things that need to be built into
- 38:39the guidelines. The. And the most recent
- 38:43update of guidelines. And I know you were on the.
- 38:46On the group. I was at that point. And to be full disclosure.
- 38:50So the nonprofit that. That I started went through M
- 38:54and A, so went through merger and acquisition and became part of
- 38:58cast in 2019. And from 2019 through
- 39:022023ish. I think I'd have to look at the dates.
- 39:06CAST bought out half my time from the University of Kansas. So I
- 39:10was on the leadership team and helped lead CAST during that period, which if
- 39:14most people recall that period, obviously Covid was a large part of the conversation
- 39:18during that time. And at that point, I did end up
- 39:22stepping away from casting and coming back to KU full time around
- 39:262023 for various reasons. But one of the reasons was
- 39:30the undertaking of the way the guidelines were being updated.
- 39:35And it wasn't. I think the work going on
- 39:39was important. Right. The idea that we were updating the guidelines and I think
- 39:42the group that was doing it was important to bring together. I think
- 39:46the process for updating. We. I think. I think it wasn't
- 39:50taking. Taking place in such a It wasn't taking place in a rigorous sort
- 39:54of format. And I think there needed to be a lot and I thought there
- 39:57needed to be a larger, more inclusive group that was globally
- 40:02inclusive of researchers from across the globe that
- 40:06were doing this work. And I was advocating, and I had been advocating with
- 40:10cast for you know, the last 10 to 12 years that,
- 40:14that, that they undertake an ongoing sort of mission to
- 40:18update the guidelines that was, that was taking into consideration
- 40:22kind of what we're, what we know about human variability and, and the, and its
- 40:26associated process with learning. And then
- 40:30so I do think does 3.0.
- 40:33So where I'm at with it is I think 3.0 was
- 40:38of its time and my concern with it is it became
- 40:42somewhat political in notion of the things that were kind of going
- 40:46on. And I think it was a critical conversation that
- 40:50needed to take place. I don't necessarily believe
- 40:54that the 3.0 guidelines necessarily support
- 40:59more measurable outcomes associated with UDL.
- 41:03I, but I think it talks to some
- 41:08parts of the population, globally in fact, that see it now as
- 41:13more inclusive. For sure, I definitely think that.
- 41:16But I don't think it maps back to what we know is scientific
- 41:21in, in its underpinnings.
- 41:24And, and, and I think that's a,
- 41:27I think that's, there's a number of reasons as to why that is,
- 41:31to, to why that exists the way it is. But I,
- 41:35but the way I kind of talk about it now as I give talks,
- 41:39et cetera, is that you can look at guidelines 2
- 41:44point, what are we, 2.2 or something like that, the last, the Last one before
- 41:473.0 or you can look at guidelines 3.0.
- 41:51Whatever gets you to the table is important. Let's have the
- 41:55conversation of the variability that exists within the environment we
- 41:59know as a UDL community. And Elisa Lowry and I, again we wrote
- 42:02about this most recently in a piece in journal Special Education
- 42:06Technology. We also have a handbook
- 42:10that came out by Edward Elgar Publishing that
- 42:14talks not only about the future of UDL
- 42:18and kind of gets into a little bit of the discussion of the
- 42:22guidelines, also gets into the critique of research.
- 42:25So if people are looking for the Handbook of Universal Design
- 42:29for Learning, Research and Practice, Elgar Handbooks
- 42:32and Education, I think you can find it there. But we get into
- 42:37this very notion of what needs to take place with the guidelines on a
- 42:40continual basis and they need to be continually updated and there needs to almost be
- 42:44like a, a UDL Congress, if you will, or some sort of mechanism that
- 42:50globally looks at these issues around this piece.
- 42:55The critique I have of them is when the group kind of came together to
- 42:59update them, which you were part of the critique internal.
- 43:03And what we knew was that while UDL wasn't meeting the needs of all students
- 43:06in for instance, Baltimore County. And my
- 43:10question internal to cast was, well, how do we know UDL is being implemented?
- 43:15You know, how do we know it's udl? How do we know UDL is being
- 43:18implemented? Because if we can't measure it, if we can't say, yes, 80% of
- 43:23the classrooms are showing UDL integration
- 43:27demonstrating, then you can't blame it on udl. And this goes back to
- 43:31the question around science and the rigor of what
- 43:35we're actually doing here. If we can't measure it, then you can't
- 43:39say that UDL's not, is to blame for not meeting the needs of
- 43:43all learners. And that was my critique. And, and, and it
- 43:47still is my critique that if, if we know UDL wasn't
- 43:51being, if we know that if UDL wasn't
- 43:55meeting the quote unquote needs of all learners, do we know UDL was being implemented?
- 43:59And that's, that's the very essence of, of the question.
- 44:03Now again, we knew the guidelines needed
- 44:06to be updated and the guidelines need to be updated continually,
- 44:10but that's a hard undertaking to, you know, and I think
- 44:14it relates this. And the guidelines should actually be related to not only what
- 44:18we know is evidentiary research in practice,
- 44:23but there needs to be basic research. I mean, UDL deals with basic
- 44:27research and that needs to be at the driving force of some of this.
- 44:30And unfortunately there's not a lot of funding for that sort of work to go
- 44:33on, especially at the global level. And that's, and that's what's stopping it,
- 44:37I think. And I think CAST is in a tough way to try and figure
- 44:40out how to do that at a global level. Yeah, let me push a little
- 44:44bit back because I think some of the points that we brought are,
- 44:48had a, had a research base. All the idea of like language, culture and
- 44:52identity as mediators for learning. I mean, that's been research on the learning sciences
- 44:56for decades now. You know, that who a student is who comes
- 45:00to the classroom, their identity mediates and regulates the ways that engage with
- 45:04instruction to encompass that within that wide race on diversity.
- 45:08I thought it was important the language part. And looking at issues
- 45:12of bias too, from teachers in terms of
- 45:17teachers trying to inspect their own bias towards certain race,
- 45:21class, disability, language, et cetera, be able to be acknowledged
- 45:26at the time to instructional sign. I think those are
- 45:30research supported notions.
- 45:33Yeah, I would agree. I agree with, I agree with the notion that there are
- 45:37some research supported notions in there. I'm not disagreeing with that.
- 45:40And you hit on quite a few of them.
- 45:45The issue is, to me was at
- 45:49the time, it still is. One is,
- 45:52was why it came forth the way it did.
- 45:55It was, you know, and again, I bring up Baltimore county because that's
- 46:00kind of what was highlighted as a primary. But again, do we know UDL was
- 46:04being implemented? Yes. Having learners, you know, how they're identifying
- 46:08with the environment is critically important. Having, having teachers identify the
- 46:13biases they bring to the table is critically important. That is all. Yeah,
- 46:17that's all well and good. The, the idea, like what, what does,
- 46:20what do the guidelines serve? And so like
- 46:24what I was talking, even back in the day, what I was saying to the
- 46:28team was, look, some of the things you're talking about are
- 46:32actually more implementation sort of issues, not necessarily guideline issues.
- 46:36Right. And so maybe we need a different thing
- 46:39that's separate from the guidelines that talks about that implementation. And since,
- 46:44you know, in that process we had developed and we were working towards. There are
- 46:48now and CAST has them because my nonprofit started them
- 46:52in concert with cast, which is what are the things people need to know to
- 46:55implement udl. And there are actually now holistic sort of
- 46:59environmental measures that move towards what does UDL look like?
- 47:03And at that point in time we were looking at, and I know they've stepped
- 47:06away from it now, but being able to move towards a certified environment.
- 47:10Right. So that you have a bronze, silver, gold sort of environment of
- 47:14udl. And there, and there have been, there's,
- 47:17there was about a decade of work that went into nearly a decade of work
- 47:20that went into that. And so CAST has those things now that, that can get
- 47:24in and it does get into exactly what you're talking about. So. Yeah, I agree,
- 47:28I agree. Well, I want to move you to another hot topic around, you know,
- 47:32inclusive education. And I think there's going to be very impactful.
- 47:36It's been already very impactful with visual AI and you've
- 47:40been working with this, you've been doing, starting some work, dude. What do you see
- 47:44the opportunities of AI to create inclusive classrooms? Where do you
- 47:48see the dangers? So, yeah, and this is probably a whole
- 47:52series within itself. Yeah.
- 47:56You know, UDL is critically important to this conversation as well as we'll
- 48:00talk about, I'm sure. But you know, my work,
- 48:03I think my first publication on cognitive prosthetics was
- 48:07in 2007, 2008, somewhere in there. And at
- 48:12that point in time, we didn't use the word AI because editors would just throw
- 48:15it out and say it doesn't exist. But AI has
- 48:19been around since the 1950s. My work as a grad
- 48:24student at the University of Illinois, we had some work on machine learning and even
- 48:28early forms of AI back then, I think
- 48:32AI is. Without trying to overhype it or
- 48:36sensationalize it, is going to be one of the biggest issues humanity is dealing
- 48:40with from here forward for at least the next 10 to 15 years,
- 48:44you know, and beyond, I think,
- 48:47as a field, and not even
- 48:51special education, as educators, I think, and researchers in this area.
- 48:55If you're not talking about AI, you're not looking
- 48:59at the future. And you need to. I mean, there's a
- 49:03book, like, a pretty general book on it, like the Coming Wave by
- 49:09Solomon, will kind of talk to you about some of the implications of this.
- 49:13I wrote an article, a book chapter on the fourth industrial revolution.
- 49:18I think I wrote it in 2017, thereabouts. I think
- 49:21it came out maybe 2019, maybe 2020 somewhere there. And within
- 49:26that I had written how at
- 49:31that point in time, there were some. There was a Chinese. There was
- 49:35a Chinese geneticist who had used CRISPR to genetically
- 49:39modify some twins, some. Some. Some babies, and he
- 49:43genetically modified them to not have hiv.
- 49:47And I had written this in the intro to the book
- 49:51chapter. And I said, this is the future. This is what we're dealing with.
- 49:54And this is related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution and artificial intelligence and what
- 49:58we're seeing. And the editor got back to me and said, this has nothing to
- 50:02do with education. This has nothing to do with. And I
- 50:06was floored. I was like, oh, my God. This has everything to do
- 50:10with education. And it is directly related
- 50:14to AI, by the way, as an outcome of those
- 50:18babies being modified. A side effect of the babies not being able to
- 50:22catch HIV meant that they were able to learn faster and
- 50:26retain information more. So I think what we're dealing
- 50:30with. And so this is all interlinked to AI. When most people think about AI,
- 50:34they think about ChatGPT, they think about Gemini,
- 50:39or if they're really into it, maybe they think about something like Claude.
- 50:44But AI as a whole is a pretty broad range
- 50:48of technology systems.
- 50:51And at the center for Innovation, Design and Digital Learning, which I lead,
- 50:55which is Funded by the US Department of Education, CIDDLE CIDDDL.org
- 51:00we look at the as AI as the simulation
- 51:04of human Intelligence by machines. And the reality is we've all been using
- 51:07it for decades. It's built in. If you woke up today and looked into your
- 51:11phone and it opened up, you're using AI. So it's
- 51:15integrated into many of the products and product systems we're using today. It's been in
- 51:19the piece that I wrote, the pieces that I did, the research I did on
- 51:22personalized lear. We use machine based algorithms, learning algorithms
- 51:26to support personalized learning in those environments. This is
- 51:29the. When we think about inclusion, when we think
- 51:33about exclusion, when we think about designing environments
- 51:37for learning in the future, we have to have a conversation around AI. This is
- 51:41the largest thing that we are going to be dealing with as humans for
- 51:45decades to come. And it's happened rapidly. You know,
- 51:49so when most people think like, you know, when most people think
- 51:53that, you know, November 30,
- 51:562022 started the AI revolution with the release of,
- 52:00you know, OpenAI's chat GPT 3.5. It was 3.5,
- 52:04it wasn't 1.0. Yeah, you know,
- 52:07you're, this has been going on for a while and
- 52:11you know, you just have to spend a little bit of time in the,
- 52:14in the field of AI to understand the implications of this,
- 52:18that we've created a technology and it's been the goal since the 1950s
- 52:22by the way, that is agentic in nature, that has
- 52:28some autonomous sort of capabilities and
- 52:31can operate in various sort of forms.
- 52:35And so from producing so large language models in
- 52:39the way that it has consumed and can produce language,
- 52:43it's using predictive algorithms to do it. It's mathematics, but it runs,
- 52:48it runs in the same way, the neural networks are running the
- 52:52same way we think the human brain works because we don't quite know how the
- 52:54human brain works. So it's using this business, doing this at massive scale.
- 52:59So I think when we think about accessible environments,
- 53:04when we think about inclusion, AI is the core of how
- 53:08we have to, at the core of this conversation. And there's
- 53:13just tons of conversation going on around, around the ethics of this.
- 53:17What are the guidelines around implementation? You know, from talking,
- 53:21you know, and we spent a lot of our time talking, I spent a lot
- 53:23of my time talking to, you know, state, state boards of education and task
- 53:27force across the globe on this very issue. Yeah,
- 53:31and it seems it's a very controversial debate in the sense like there are
- 53:35partners that do not want anything to do with AI at early ages.
- 53:39So first grade there's been just a big movement I know in LA county you
- 53:44know, Miami's also going pretty forward with pretty aggressive AI agenda.
- 53:48LA caught it, Parents were opposed to it. So there is,
- 53:53there is not a consensus that this needs to be in the classroom.
- 53:56But one. Go ahead. No,
- 54:00yeah, keep going, because I'm there with you. Yeah,
- 54:03no, and I think at some point, you know, we're going to have to.
- 54:06I don't know what's the age when it's appropriate. But there are some dangers.
- 54:10Right. Because if students are using bots all the time to do
- 54:14tasks, they're never going to learn to do tasks. Right. It's like, to me,
- 54:18it's similar to when calculators came about. We did have calculators, but they didn't allow
- 54:23me to have a calculator until my sixth, seventh grade, until I really knew how
- 54:26to multiply, add and subtract. And there are some things with AI
- 54:30that I'm assuming they're going to be similar. It's like critical
- 54:33thinking, analyzing, synthesizing. You got to learn to do it then. Then, okay,
- 54:37you can use the machine. Yeah. So this. So first of all,
- 54:41there's not. AI in itself
- 54:45is a huge controversy, right. Outside of, even outside of education.
- 54:49I think that there are huge implications to
- 54:53the way we educate students. So I have a DOC student,
- 54:58Yaron Song, and I just published a piece on cognitive law floating
- 55:02in the age of Artificial Intelligence in ldq.
- 55:05So if people are looking for conversation around this,
- 55:08it drastically changes the way we have to educate kids.
- 55:13So if we get into. And I know this isn't a podcast on AI,
- 55:17but if we get into containment is an issue.
- 55:21So there's never been a technology that's
- 55:25one had as much growth and adoption across the globe
- 55:29by humans in, across,
- 55:32across the ages of humanity as AI.
- 55:36So AI has been adopted and it shows immense
- 55:40amount of growth. And again, this was, if you go back to the fourth industrial
- 55:44revolution stuff that came out in 2015, 2016, this was
- 55:48all predicted, by the way. It's not like it wasn't like, this is new.
- 55:51Like I wrote about this back then. So.
- 55:55So these are huge, huge issues.
- 55:59And we need to develop a technologically literate society.
- 56:02And we haven't done a real good job at that. Information literacy, digital literacy,
- 56:07AI literacy, they all intermingle. And part of the reason that we're in
- 56:11the spot we're in right now, politically and within the discussions
- 56:15we're having now is because we didn't do our due diligence when we were calling
- 56:19for it 20 years ago. And we need to do a lot of due diligence.
- 56:23Now, AI, the issue that we have with AI, one of the issues is
- 56:27that regardless of what we do in our schools, regardless of whether
- 56:32we're educating people to be literate in this area or not, AI is
- 56:36going to be part of society, part of the workforce going forward.
- 56:40And what people aren't understanding about the
- 56:44growth of AI and the development of AI, it's happening at an
- 56:48exponential level. So we're seeing these AI models double in
- 56:53size and somewhat in ability, depending on how you measure it,
- 56:58every four to seven months. Yeah, it's rapid.
- 57:02It's happening in a way that humans just can't fathom.
- 57:05And so this is a huge conversation that needs to take place. And again,
- 57:10I was just, actually just this week talking to Trey Vasquez
- 57:14and I were talking to a local task force on this very issue.
- 57:18And the. You're right, the task force is split on. Yeah,
- 57:22AI needs to be embedded in everything, and AI doesn't belong in our schools.
- 57:26The problem is, is we spend a lot of time teaching people
- 57:30and I'm going to hold up a pen right now. Right. We spend a lot
- 57:33of time teaching people how to use a pen or a pencil. Right. And how
- 57:36to use it appropriately. From here's how you hold it to here's the type,
- 57:39here's what writing looks like, too. Here's how you take effective notes.
- 57:43And we spend no time. And I'm holding up my iPhone. We spend
- 57:47no time teaching people how to use an iPhone. And so what we're doing right
- 57:50now is we're banning phones in schools. This very powerful technology,
- 57:54we're banning them in schools, which, by the way, if you actually look
- 57:58at the data, not actually react to corollary sort of things,
- 58:03the bans aren't actually producing anything. In fact, it's producing some negative outcomes.
- 58:07And we cover that on CITL's website. But. But if you
- 58:11look at the data telling people to, like teaching
- 58:15people how to use pens and pencils, that's critically important. But avoiding and
- 58:19putting our heads in the sand and taking powerful technology like, like mobile
- 58:22devices or like AI and not preparing them for that is
- 58:26terrifying. Absolutely terrifying.
- 58:29And when I say preparing people, we need to prepare educators, we need to prepare
- 58:33future students, we need to prepare communities, parents need to be educated
- 58:37in this area. And we just keep avoiding it. And to
- 58:42me, it's like running into a
- 58:46brick wall all the time.
- 58:49It's definitely a concern. So I have a final question.
- 58:53But before, I don't know if you can Be brief with it. In what ways
- 58:56do you think AI can be inclusive and in what ways you can see that
- 59:00has the danger to be inclusive, exclusionary. So there's
- 59:05a couple ways. I mean, so inclusive. What we know is AI can
- 59:09provide greater means of accessibility, so we
- 59:12could just look at like little applications and it's not. And I, and I
- 59:16don't like talking about AI and tools, but to be brief. So Be My Eyes
- 59:20is an application that's been around for a long time. Think of it like Zoom
- 59:24for people with visual impairments. That or and combined with Uber.
- 59:28Right. So someone with a visual impairment has their phone and they're
- 59:32at a place they need to be able to see kind of what's going on
- 59:34around them. They use Be My Eyes and historically what they would do is
- 59:38they would call out and someone would get on and kind of interpret kind of
- 59:42what's going on around them. It'd be very human based. Be My Eyes
- 59:47most recently partnered with OpenAI and now has AI
- 59:51based systems. So these AI systems are multimodal, meaning if. Meaning they
- 59:55can interpret multiple things in the environment. Not only the way we type, but obviously
- 59:59human language and the way we talk, but also they can look
- 1:00:03at the visual scene in front of them so they can interact with the world
- 1:00:05visually. So Be My Eyes partnered with them and now
- 1:00:09it has been enabled within their app so
- 1:00:13that people who are blind can actually see the environment, not rely on
- 1:00:17another human to actually go throughout the world.
- 1:00:21Now, is it absolutely perfect? No, but it never was.
- 1:00:25And so we can. That's a different conversation. But that's just one example
- 1:00:29for the way it could be make more accessible, inclusive sort of environments.
- 1:00:32How can it exclude. These models are
- 1:00:36based on the same biases that we were just talking about earlier. These models
- 1:00:40have been trained on human data. So if the biases are embedded in
- 1:00:44human data, they're embedded in these models. And so when we work on,
- 1:00:47when we work in AI literacy, when we educate people on AI
- 1:00:51literacy, we need to educate people on the biases that exist and
- 1:00:55to look out for those biases in these models. And then we need to think
- 1:00:59about how do we proactively design environments going back to UDL for
- 1:01:04how do we embed this into the conversation? So when we work with school
- 1:01:08districts or states or even ministries of education and talk about
- 1:01:11guidelines, guidelines, guardrails for, for AI
- 1:01:15adoption, UDL is part of that conversation. And the idea
- 1:01:19of designing for all people from the very beginning needs to be part
- 1:01:23of that conversation. Because if we do not do that. There are going to be
- 1:01:27huge impacts. There's already, we know there's going to be huge impacts by AI.
- 1:01:30This is a deep dive and I've, you know, and I can go on and
- 1:01:34on about it, but, but, you know, I think this is a major conversation the
- 1:01:38field needs to be having, and unfortunately, not everyone's having it. Yeah,
- 1:01:42absolutely. All right, this is the last question. And we do this to every interviewee
- 1:01:46as well. It's about hoping. It's about dreaming. You know, there's,
- 1:01:50there's not a lot of, there's some, some upsetting stuff going on lately.
- 1:01:55For example, we learned that the Office of Special Education Services,
- 1:01:58we was moved at the Department of Health
- 1:02:03and Human Services. You know, there's all these different things. So help us dream
- 1:02:08and hope for the future. What, looking into 10 to five years, what changes
- 1:02:12would you like to see the most in the educations of students with disabilities?
- 1:02:15You know, I'm going to go back to, I'm going to, you know,
- 1:02:19I'm going to go back to Skirtic's work. You know, my hope,
- 1:02:22my hope and dream is that we move
- 1:02:27out of this, you know, technocratic bureaucracy sort of system that
- 1:02:31is categorizing kids and classifying kids and excluding
- 1:02:36kids and having separate systems. I would like to see five
- 1:02:40to 10 years that we have a system that is not reactionary,
- 1:02:44but that is proactive and is able to then react
- 1:02:49to the needs of kids in a dynamic and
- 1:02:53timely manner. So it's not reactionary in that we
- 1:02:57are creating these separate systems, but then we have one system that's designed for
- 1:03:02all humans, that deals with the variability of all humans.
- 1:03:05Now, can that happen in five to 10 years?
- 1:03:08I don't know. Yeah, maybe with AI. Yeah,
- 1:03:13maybe with AI. And that is the concern is like,
- 1:03:16what's the role of AI in all this and how does it get interpreted?
- 1:03:20And again, we don't have time to deal with that conversation today, but if
- 1:03:25we want to talk about that another time, it's definitely something I spend a lot
- 1:03:28of time talking about these days. Yeah. Well, thank you. So first I'm
- 1:03:32going to say cheers and, and, and I'll say hi to Tom Scary,
- 1:03:35whatever his app or whatever, whatever his soul
- 1:03:40is. Yeah, I send a big cheers to him. Hey, I influenced a
- 1:03:44lot of people, including you and me, so cheers to him.
- 1:03:47And thank you so much, Jamie, for being with us.
- 1:03:50Yeah. And thanks for, thanks for having me and, and good luck with the podcast.
- 1:03:54Thank you.
- 1:03:59Thank you for listening to Dive. I hope you learned
- 1:04:03from this episode as much as I did. Please help us to spread
- 1:04:07the word about the show. See you next time.