AI Advocates

S2 E7: Literacy Lift-Off: AI Storytelling & Language Learning

• Lisa Dieker • Season 2 • Episode 7

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In this episode of AI Advocates, Lisa Dieker and Maggie Mosher explore the intersection of artificial intelligence, storytelling, and language learning in a theme they call “Literacy Lift-Off.” Speaking from the FLITE Center, they share imaginative examples like using AI to help a student create fantasy story characters based on a simple prompt, and demonstrate how these tools can spark creativity, expand vocabulary, and support writing instruction. The conversation highlights how AI can elevate literacy experiences by encouraging student choice, enhancing engagement, and serving as a scaffold for both language development and storytelling.

Tune in and discover how AI can support your students' voices, creativity, and confidence

AI Tools:
Canva Write - https://www.canva.com/magic-write/
Duolingo - https://www.duolingo.com/
SchoolAI - https://schoolai.com/

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.

Maggie Mosher:

Welcome to week eight. Literacy Lift-Off AI storytelling and language learning, words, wisdom and world changing technology. I'm Maggie Mosher, and.

Lisa Dieker:

Hi, I'm Lisa deeker, and we are so excited to talk to you from the FLITE Center today, taking flight and literacy. Gotta love it.

Maggie Mosher:

Yay. Imagine a student who wants to write a fantasy story. They can give an AI tool a simple prompt, like, give me five characters for a hero who's afraid of heights but has to retrieve a magical item at the top of a mountain. The AI can generate character sketches, plot twists, even dialog snippets. And today, no matter what AI I'm using, I can even have it generate four images of that character for me. This isn't about the AI writing the story. For me, it's about igniting students imagination. The student is still the author, the director of the tale. The AI is simply the muse, providing the spark that overcomes that initial writer's block. Tools like Canva Magic Write, or even a simple chatbot can help me generate a story, or the student generates story, craft a poem, rewrite a sentence in five different ways, change my tone, my syntax. I just love it all. Lisa, what do you like about it?

Lisa Dieker:

so you know what I love too, is that we're talking about not just literacy as like reading, but we're talking about reading, writing, speaking, thinking. And I know that's that's the celebratory part of this. And we know AI can think, I can think whatever it's been programmed into. You and I, both I know are very personally worried about how much bias in the dominant culture is leading that AI work right now. And so I think you'll also always have to think about where, what is the purpose? That's the biggest thing with AI and literacy, is the purpose to help me get started, is the purpose to write the story let me critique it. Is the purpose, one of my favorites is the kid who's gifted, which we know many of our students with disabilities are gifted in so many areas of literacy, when they finish writing it, we have AI write and they compare and craft it, add new words, or have AI re-evaluate this. If I were going up for the Pulitzer Prize, or I was going to publish this in the New York Times or Fortune magazine or or this school newspaper, how would you improve it for me? So again, even the best of the best in your classroom. Can use this at different levels, and I think that's what I love the most, is the leveling and the purpose behind AI for use in literacy.

Maggie Mosher:

Yeah, and I love what you said about the leveling, too, and the purpose, because I can put in a story I really like and say, hey, I love this story. I love this author. Can you find some similar books that are at this reading level, or a lot of teachers have been doing this lately that I've been working with, they say I love this book. Suggest other books and other authors I might love, because I really love this book. If teachers are doing it, why not let our students do the same thing? I love Harry Potter. Find me some other authors and stories that really would be eye opening for me to read next. So I think that's huge. And then there are AI powered apps like Duolingo that use really sophisticated algorithms to create that personalized learning paths, reviewing words right before you're likely to forget them. The real magic is in the conversational practice that we were talking about this. There's things like Google Stream, where I can talk back and forth to the AI, and there's no stopping. There's no pause. It's not like a chatbot where I ask a question, even if I say it verbally, I have to stop and get an answer. It's a conversation with an AI agent in real time. What do you think about some of these that are coming up, Lisa?

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, and you know, for those you work in the area of speech language, I know of a couple of wonderful speech therapists that are really using Alexa when kids are working on articulation, and not to frustrate them, but to say, you know, hey, you really like knock knock jokes about peanut butter. You need to go and ask a I'm going to say it or otherwise, it'll pike off in my house here as we're podcasting knock knock joke and peanut butter. But if I can't articulate that it's a perfect opportunity for the speech therapist. I think we've always talked about that in using text-to-speech, and we've had a lot of personalizations with like Dragon Dictate that will learn your dialect. But unfortunately, AI is moving so fast, not having the dialect or the ability to type or use eye tracking or a Bluetooth or something to put text in is going to limit kids, and so I really love that they're focusing on how do I articulate well enough, because our because the beauty of AI is it's fairly forgiving in its realm, and it will let you correct itself. And that's also what one of my friends is speech therapist is working on it's like, well, if you got it wrong, remember an AI, you can correct it, just like when somebody doesn't understand you the first time, no, I didn't say I wanted a hamburger. I wanted a hot dog, you know? And so you need to keep thinking, what do you need to show it a picture. Well, could we add a picture into AI and say, No, I'm talking about this. So really, using that? Again, as a leveled way depending on a kid's speech need, which I think we often think about it in reading and writing, but I think in language production, it's also got lots of possibilities.

Maggie Mosher:

Yeah, and one specific platform SchoolAI has created this chatbot where a teacher can put in for themselves things like I want it to provide gentle correct correction in pronunciation to the student, the teacher can also have the chatbots pretty much what they call like linked one on top of the other. So essentially, I don't have to leave this chatbot. Maybe I'm an English language learner and I want it all to be in Spanish, but I also want to create images right after I don't have to leave this chatbot that's great at languages, and move on to a different chatbot that's good at images in schoolAI, you can have the first one go directly to the second one, and I'm still on the same page, so I don't have to leave and go back and find a different resource. So that's a free new option that just came out, I think a week or two ago in schoolAI, that if you haven't tried you should definitely check it out. But essentially, it'll help English language learners real really learn in real-time translation, text-to-speech, their functions are really powerful. A student can listen to a lesson in English, read the subtitles in Spanish or native language. It'll help with that comprehension building in real time and give feedback. If they don't understand the feedback in English, they can ask in real time to say, can you give that feedback to me again in Spanish? It just gives some real options that we didn't have available before. It's like having my own translator in the room.

Lisa Dieker:

I love it well, and I'm gonna, my last thought is gonna be kind of to take us back to week seven and tie it to week eight. And one of the things I know we both like is that it can create stories. Specifically. There's lots of things out there for social stories, but now I can have if I need peer. You know, we used to talk about video modeling. I believe there's a whole new realm of AI modeling. You know, can we have an AI avatar created that reminds me of things when I asked, like, should I, you know, yell at my friend? Or, What name should I call my friend today? Maybe you should call them they're by their name and not anything mean, you know, again, asking those questions. I have a friend who's now her students with emotional needs are typing in to, what should I say next? What should I write in this note to that my friend that I'm upset about bullying and again, giving that as a way to help both the social, emotional side and the reading, writing and speaking side simultaneously, I think, is a bridge that we're just starting to realize in the field.

Maggie Mosher:

Yeah, and fostering that love for reading and writing is important throughout life. And so I will give one last thing before you give your last I will recommend something to do with a class. For example, you could do a story sprint where you give your class, you give them a compelling opening sentence generator, and you say, for example, I'm going to set 10 minutes and have you write the next part of the story, then I'm going to have them share those out loud to each other. It's a creative way, especially for people with dysgraphia and dyscalculia or dyslexia, who struggle with sometimes getting their ideas immediately out quickly, but they have such creative minds to kind of get that prompt to start going. It was one of my favorite things when we were little, used to do those squiggle prompts where a teacher would just write a squiggle in a notebook, and you turn it into a picture and then write about it. It's kind of a I can do that in much more amazing ways. I can put in a picture and it can create that picture into something else, and then I can write about that specific thing. So remembering things like, yes, AI can adapt these texts to different levels, so that no matter what level I read on or what level I'm writing on, it's adapted in real time. But it can also do these really cool, imaginative, creative pieces as well. One last thing for you, Lisa?

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, and so again, remember purpose and personalization. I think that's where we started. And, you know, go back to the research. So like, if you're in writing and you're not familiar with self-regulated, self-directed writing strategies, they're proven to work for kids with disabilities. But guess what? They're good for everybody. But now AI can help me with self-regulation and self-direction and getting started in writing. And I think it's building on the research of we know what works in reading, kids working on decoding, comprehension, leveling the questions. But why does a teacher need to do it all? We really think AI can help you save that time so you can build those relationships with kids. So thanks for joining us today.