AI Advocates

S2 E3: Digital Shield: Protecting Learners in the AI Landscape

• Lisa Dieker • Season 2 • Episode 3

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In this episode of AI Advocates, Lisa Dieker and Maggie Mosher discuss how artificial intelligence can help teachers tailor lessons to better support a variety of student needs. They explore tools like Diffit, Brisk, Twee, and Project Raise, along with built-in features such as phone attention settings. Lisa also introduces accessiBE, a website that helps make online content more accessible for people with disabilities. Together, they share practical ways educators can use AI to create more effective and personalized learning experiences in the classroom.

AI Tools:
accessiBE - https://accessibe.com/
Diffit - https://web.diffit.me/
Brisk - https://www.briskteaching.com/
Twee - https://twee.com/
Project Raise - https://www.ucpcfl.org/projectraise

Social Media:
X - https://x.com/KUFLITECenter
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/Center-for-Flexible-Learning-through-Innovations-in-Technology-Education/61563791019174/
LinkedIn - linkedin.com/company/aai-flite-center

Music:

Reclaim your time….., time…., time.

Lisa Dieker:

Welcome to AI advocates. I'm Lisa Dieker.

Maggie Mosher:

And I'm Maggie Mosier.

Lisa Dieker:

And Maggie today, I'm really excited because we're going to talk about differentiation, and kind of using differentiation for student learning. And I think Rita mentioned several platforms like Diffit, really all platforms differentiate. We're gonna talk a little bit about bots, Brisk, Twee, Project Raise, which is something I've done, and actually the attention feature on your cell phone, and then a website you're really excited about called accessiBE. So do you want to kick us off with, what are some of your thoughts about differentiating and accessibility, because we're in week three of school. We got our lesson plans. We got our kids using AI. Now we want to differentiate because we know them.

Maggie Mosher:

So what I like about accessiBE is that essentially is a toolkit of all accessible things for web pages or apps, and it has things like stop all animation on the page if it's too much going on on the page, it has a reading mask. It has a highlighter. So it's not just the accessible tools that you typically get. It has a reading guide that'll come up on this side. I can mute certain sounds. I can make certain saturation. So essentially, and have a lot of those in my accessible features on a computer, what I don't have in those accessible features on a computer is I can immediately adjust the font type and letter spacing per every single website, so that if I just need it to change for this one website, I can just change it for that website. For educators, it's also really nice, because once you know what a student likes, there are specific categories, like vision impaired, you can turn it on for that specific category, or ADHD friendly, where they have more focused areas and less distractions. I like having those pieces available because I can turn it on and off constantly, and it's always in this little person at the bottom of my screen, which is kind of nice. I don't have to keep going back and forth between my accessibility features, turning them on and off and then forgetting I have them on. So I like that feature a lot within specific websites.

Lisa Dieker:

Well, and I know we both really like Diffit. And if you haven't tried Diffit as a teacher, take your lesson plan, put a concept in there. It'll give you an image instantly, a modified reading passage, vocabulary, exit tickets, multiple choice worksheets. And you know, again, what does it save you? Oh, yeah, time. I mean, I think that's really the focus here. And another one similar to Dwifit that Diffit, Dwifit. There we go. I blended two websites there Maggie. Diffit that I like is called Twee that Maggie introduced me to, and that's for our second-language learners. And it does similar things, but really kind of hones in, like Maggie said, for accessibility, for those students who might be struggling with, you know, the the English language at this point in time. We know they're brilliant because they're they're working on two languages, but giving them that opportunity. And then I also like just in general, all platforms to do some gifted enrichment. And I think we often go low. I recommend we go low and high and call it book and planning. But thinking about, you know, how can I make this lesson harder for that student who already answered what they're doing. But Maggie, what are some other things you can think of? And I have a couple for attention I want to mention.

Maggie Mosher:

Language wise, I also like Brisk AI, because it has all, I think, 40, some different languages, and they're pretty accurate, like I had it make a presentation for me, because my students were just challenging me, and one of them speaks German in my classroom, and she said, I wanted to make a presentation with hairless dogs, 20 slides, and in German for kindergarten. I was like, okay, that's challenging something in an odd way, but we did it. And she was like, it was perfect. The reading level in German was perfect. All the words were accurate. So what's nice about brisk AI is it's in your Google Docs, it's in your Google Slides, and you can have it change it right there in it to a different language, and have it checked by Gemini or something else. What does this say? Then you can check it and it'll tell you, oh, yep, that accurately says this. This is what it says with that piece. I also like Magic School now has a chatbot you can create for your classroom, and that chatbot for our students who get bored really easily. I can go in and change that chatbot every week, every month, but specifically it's kind of like Raina in Magic School. We did a session on Magic School Raina, and that was that little chatbot that talks to you. But what this does is it lets you talk as a pirate this week to them, so everything will be "Arrr Matey" I you know it, or it can talk as a clown, or it can talk as Taylor Swift, and it will really start to hone in on what they say and how they say it. And students can choose your student of the week. Could choose how that sounds.

Lisa Dieker:

I've used part of it, yeah. Oh.

Maggie Mosher:

What about you?

Lisa Dieker:

I love it. Well, so I'm going to talk a little bit about attention, because I think that's another differentiation strategy that's hard. Like in your lesson plans, you're like, I didn't write in a differentiation strategy. A couple of things to know. If you're using iPads or iPhones, those features are already built in. There's, like, an attention focus that can kind of help you bring back to attention. I love any kind of biometric watches or anything like that that you can put on students. But one you might be interested in that is. Being launched this fall. That's for free, is called Project RAISE. It's out of UCPO, Central Florida, and there's an AI agent there. His name is ZB. That is a five-year study that is open source, free for you to use your students can learn to code. But more importantly, in Project RAISE, you can have ZB as a friend who kind of reinforces and gives you kind of those self affirmation kinds of statements like I believe in you. You've got this so thinking about AI agents going beyond just being bots, but actually being a way to help you self regulate. I have another teacher who has her Google Home, believe it or not, that's AI in her classroom every 15 minutes. Say self-check, and the students do a self check, on a check plus minus on their desk on how well they're attending to what they're supposed to be doing. If the kid gives himself a minus, she goes over and does some coaching. But those simple things, I think are there. And then one last one for differentiation, I'm going to just mention to kind of wrap up my end today, Maggie. Is ThatNeedle Gist I think again, is another example of differentiation. We often show YouTube videos, and you may have heard of Edpuzzle before and watching videos, but to differentiate it even further, ThatNeedle Gist we know there's some privacy issues with it, so be careful when you use it. But now a student can see a narrative of that text, or they can watch the video, or they could just look up the vocabulary words if they really are poured by videos, or they've seen the video before, so you can really differentiate using something that simple too.

Maggie Mosher:

Yeah, and I would add also, we've talked about Goblin Tools earlier in one of our podcasts, but with that specific tool, it's on web-based, and so again, don't put any personal information because it's web-based, it doesn't have proper privacies. But I would say in that I can a lot of my students who specifically struggle with dysgraphia, they struggle with starting an idea. So starting a reply, that's all I needed to start. And what I like about it is I could put an email message, I could put something someone sent me, the words they sent me, and just click respond, and it'll give me a response. I would never use that as my final output response, but it gets me started on how could I respond to this specific person, especially if I'm struggling with someone who's combative or who doesn't share my same ideas, I get some input on how I could say that in a very polite way, respectable to a different person, and they kind of like that.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, and I knew that we could go on and on differentiation, because we are both special educators at heart, and really love differentiating at all ends, both at the gifted and at the area of reading we issued, so we hopefully gave you some tools to help you save time in week three and get ready for week four, because we're going to start talking about prompting and bots in your classroom. Thanks for joining us.