Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I)

Reflections on “Special Education Myth Busting” [Phillips-Krivicka]

On 07/11/2025, in Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), Daniel S. Christian, education, education reform, instructional design, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, neurodivergent/special needs, parents/guardians, participation, personalized/customized learning, student-related, teachers, traditional / tradition, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

Special Education Myth Busting — from gettingsmart.com by Karla Phillips-Krivicka

Key Points

At least 85% of students with disabilities can learn and achieve on grade level.
14% of all U.S. students have a disability.

No belief is more damaging in education than the misperception that children with disabilities cannot really succeed and shouldn’t be challenged to reach the same high standards as all children.

Arne Duncan, former U.S. Secretary of Education

From DSC:
One of our kids — actually, who is no longer a kid anymore — was born with Mosaic Down Syndrome. Looking back on her K-12 years, first through fifth grade went very well — which my wife and I were very grateful for. (We didn’t know what each year would bring and whether she would be able to move on to the next grade.)

But sixth and seventh grades were very rough. At the end of seventh grade, we decided to homeschool our daughter. The system she was in — like so many school systems across the nation — was meant to address the 80% of students who are neither gifted nor have special needs. The quickly-moving trains leave at such and such a time and then stop at such and such a time. One better keep up. This traditional system is a one-size-fits-all approach, and it’s something we do for administrative purposes — it’s not for the benefit of the kids within K-12 schools.

K-12 education in America is a like a quickly moving train that stops for no one.

After a few years of both homeschooling and Christian education, it turned out that our daughter was able to learn almost all of the subjects in high school. But she needed to learn ON HER TIMELINE…AT HER OWN PACE of learning.

We’re proud of her. She has had a couple of jobs already and is doing quite well overall. Her motivation has been very low at times, which made homeschooling very tough. But, overall, I would agree with Karla Phillips-Krivicka’s key point that at least 85% of students with disabilities can learn and achieve at grade level. That’s been true for our daughter who has some special needs.

So much for saving the planet. Climate careers, and many others, evaporate for class of 2025 [Lanahan]

On 06/09/2025, in Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), career development, change, colleges, community colleges, parents/guardians, research, society, student-related, surviving, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

So much for saving the planet. Climate careers, and many others, evaporate for class of 2025 — from hechingerreport.org by Lawrence Lanahan
The Trump administration is disrupting career paths for new graduates hoping to work in climate and sustainability, international aid, public service and the sciences

As the class of 2025 enters the workforce, the Trump administration has dismantled career pathways for graduates interested in climate and sustainability work, international aid, public service and research across the natural, behavioral and social sciences. Federal jobs are disappearing, and the administration is eliminating grants and agency divisions that sustain university research programs and nonprofits that are crucial to launching careers.

The National Science Foundation, for example, halved graduate research fellowships, canceled some undergraduate research grants, stopped awarding new grants, froze funding for existing ones, and eliminated several hundred grants for focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion. In March, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced 10,000 layoffs at his agency, the Department of Health and Human Services; earlier buyouts and firings had already cut another 10,000 jobs.

Opinions | This Baltimore program shows how to fight generational poverty – from washingtonpost.com by Leana S. Wen; this is a gifted article
How one grassroots organization is teaching young people leadership skills and giving them hope.

She recognized their desperation and felt called to return and use what she had learned to help them realize a different future. So she set up an organization, HeartSmiles, to do just that — one young person at a time.

Holifield’s experience is one that city officials and public health workers can learn from. If they want to disrupt the generational cycle of poverty, trauma and hopelessness that afflicts so many communities, a good place to focus their efforts is children.
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How can communities overcome inertia and resignation? Holifield’s organization starts with two core interventions. The first is career and leadership development. Children as young as 8 go to the HeartSmiles center to participate in facilitated sessions on youth entrepreneurship, budgeting and conflict resolution. Those who want to explore certain career paths are matched with professionals in these fields.
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The second part of her vision is youth-led mentorship, which involves pairing young people with those not much older than they are.

Also relevant/see:

Lost boys, trapped men, and the role of lifers in prison education — from college-inside.beehiiv.com by Charlotte West

This week, we’re publishing Part 2 of a Q&A with Erik Maloney, a lifer in Arizona, and Kevin Wright, a criminal justice professor at Arizona State University. They co-authored Imprisoned Minds, a book about trauma and healing published in December 2024, over the course of seven years. Check out Part 1 of the Q&A.

West: The fact that you created your own curriculum to accompany the book makes me think about the role of lifers in creating educational opportunities in prisons. What do you see as the role of lifers in filling some of these gaps?

Maloney: I’ve said for years that lifers are so underutilized in prison. It’s all about punishment for what you’re in for, and [the prison system] overlooks us as a resource. We are people who, if allowed to be educated properly, can teach courses indefinitely while also being a role model for those with shorter sentences. This gives the lifer meaning and purpose to do good again. He serves as a mentor, whether he likes it or not, to [those] people coming into the prisons. When they see him doing well, it inspires others to want to do well.

But if it’s all about punishment, and a person has no meaning and no purpose in life, then all they have is hopelessness. With hopelessness comes despair, and with despair, you have rampant drug and alcohol abuse in prison, and violence stems from that.

2025 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report | Teaching and Learning Edition

On 05/12/2025, in 21st century, accessibility / UDL, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), colleges, community colleges, credentialing, digital audio, disruption, economics, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, immersion, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, neurodivergent/special needs, pedagogy, privacy, skills, social learning / networks, society, student-related, teaching & learning, technology (general), trends, United States, universities, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, workplace, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

2025 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report | Teaching and Learning Edition — from library.educause.edu

Higher education is in a period of massive transformation and uncertainty. Not only are current events impacting how institutions operate, but technological advancement—particularly in AI and virtual reality—are reshaping how students engage with content, how cognition is understood, and how learning itself is documented and valued.

Our newly released 2025 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report | Teaching and Learning Edition captures the spirit of this transformation and how you can respond with confidence through the lens of emerging trends, key technologies and practices, and scenario-based foresight.

#teachingandlearning #highereducation #learningecosystems #learning #futurism #foresight #trends #emergingtechnologies #AI #VR #gamechangingenvironment #colleges #universities #communitycolleges #faculty #staff #IT

Reflections on “DOGE abruptly cut a program for teens with disabilities. This student is ‘devastated'” [Turner]

On 05/04/2025, in Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), Daniel S. Christian, funding / grants, K-12 related, legislatures / government / legal, neurodivergent/special needs, parents/guardians, participation, pathways, youth, by Daniel Christian

DOGE abruptly cut a program for teens with disabilities. This student is ‘devastated’ — from npr.org by Cory Turner

If you visit the website for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), you’ll find a “Wall of Receipts” listing more than 7,000 federal contracts it has terminated.
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One of these programs, cancelled on Feb. 10, was called Charting My Path for Future Success. It was a research-based effort to help students with disabilities make the sometimes difficult transition from high school into college or the world of work and self-sufficiency.
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Stepping stones to post-school independence
Charting My Path was built on research that shows students with disabilities who get quality transition services “are more likely to be employed after high school. They’re more likely to be enrolled in post-secondary education, and they’re more likely to identify that they have a higher quality of life,” says Catherine Fowler, a special education researcher at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who has been involved with Charting My Path since 2019, when the contract began.

At the heart of Charting My Path was one of the most promising, research-based services: building students’ self-determination skills by working with them to set goals, then helping create concrete plans to achieve them.

Based on the early results he saw in Newton, John Curley says he was hopeful and calls the decision to cut Charting My Path “a huge mistake. I think investing in students with disabilities is investing in all of us because they’re part of our community, right? They’re our brothers and sisters, our kids, our neighbors, our coworkers.“

From DSC:
If you don’t have a child with special needs, you probably don’t care about this article. But, as with so many things with us human beings, if we know of someone special to us who has disabilities, we suddenly care a lot more. Our youngest daughter fits right into this story. It could have been her pictured in this article. Such programs are needed and it sounded like this study was doing solid work.

How does cutting this program make America great again? It doesn’t. It just makes life more difficult for the 1,600 high school juniors with disabilities that this study was helping (not to mention future students). Their pathways to a productive life just got harder, once again. I dare you to try and go figure out the spaghetti mess of how to get funding and assistance for a special needs youth graduating from high school — and all of the restrictions mentioned therein. And good luck to you if you are that individual and your parents are no longer alive.

How to Use AI and Universal Design to Empower Diverse Thinkers with Susan Tanner — from legaltalknetwork.com by Zack Glaser, Stephanie Everett, and Susan Tanner

What if the key to better legal work isn’t just smarter tools but more inclusive ones? Susan Tanner, Associate Professor at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law, joins Zack Glaser to explore how AI and universal design can improve legal education and law firm operations. Susan shares how tools like generative AI can support neurodiverse thinkers, enhance client communication, and reduce anxiety for students and professionals alike. They also discuss the importance of inclusive design in legal tech and how law firms can better support their teams by embracing different ways of thinking to build a more accessible, future-ready practice. The conversation emphasizes the need for educators and legal professionals to adapt to the evolving landscape of AI, ensuring that they leverage its capabilities to better serve their clients and students.

Maximizing Microsoft Copilot in Your Legal Practice — from legaltalknetwork.com by Tom Mighell, Dennis Kennedy, and Ben Schorr

Copilot is a powerful tool for lawyers, but are you making the most of it within your Microsoft apps? Tom Mighell is flying solo at ABA TECHSHOW 2025 and welcomes Microsoft’s own Ben Schorr to the podcast. Ben shares expert insights into how lawyers can implement Copilot’s AI-assistance to work smarter, not harder. From drafting documents to analyzing spreadsheets to streamlining communication, Copilot can handle the tedious tasks so you can focus on what really matters. Ben shares numerous use-cases and capabilities for attorneys and later gives a sneak peek at Copilot’s coming enhancements.

What’s Happening at the Social Security Administration? Here’s What People With Disabilities Need to Know. [Dilworth]

On 04/17/2025, in Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), funding / grants, legislatures / government / legal, neurodivergent/special needs, parents/guardians, society, United States, by Daniel Christian

What’s Happening at the Social Security Administration? Here’s What People With Disabilities Need to Know. — from thearc.org by Jackie Dilworth
Millions of people with disabilities rely on Social Security benefits to survive. Recent changes at the Social Security Administration (SSA) may make accessing these benefits harder than ever. Long wait times, office closures and staff cuts, and policy rollbacks are already raising concerns and exacerbating customer service issues. Here’s what you need to know.

Staffing Cuts and Office Closures

In 2025, SSA has announced a dramatic reduction in staff and offices, including:

Plans to cut 7,000 employees (over 12% of the agency’s workforce).
Closure of 60% of SSA’s 10 regional offices, reducing key staff that help resolve problems with peoples’ benefits.
Closure of SSA’s Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, which handled reasonable accommodation requests and managed the agency’s civil rights complaints, including public complaints of discrimination on the basis of disability. This office’s statutory responsibilities have reportedly been divided and moved to other divisions within SSA.

Why does this matter? SSA workers process disability applications, answer calls, and help people navigate complex benefit rules. With fewer staff and the consolidations of regional offices, wait times could get even worse. The loss of key staff also raises concerns about SSA’s ability to modernize, maintain, and improve essential services, further limiting accessibility for beneficiaries. Modernizing SSA’s operations requires long-term investments in systems and processes that are being undercut by these changes.

Reflections on “2025 EDUCAUSE Students and Technology Report” [Christian]

On 04/14/2025, in accessibility / UDL, adjunct faculty, Alternatives, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), blended learning, career development, CMS/LMS, colleges, communications, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning preferences, neurodivergent/special needs, online learning, student-related, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, technology (general), United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

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2025 EDUCAUSE Students and Technology Report: Shaping the Future of Higher Education Through Technology, Flexibility, and Well-Being — from library.educause.edu

The student experience in higher education is continually evolving, influenced by technological advancements, shifting student needs and expectations, evolving workforce demands, and broadening sociocultural forces. In this year’s report, we examine six critical aspects of student experiences in higher education, providing insights into how institutions can adapt to meet student needs and enhance their learning experience and preparation for the workforce:

Satisfaction with Technology-Related Services and Supports
Modality Preferences
Hybrid Learning Experiences
Generative AI in the Classroom
Workforce Preparation
Accessibility and Mental Health

DSC: Shame on higher ed for not preparing students for the workplace (see below). You’re doing your students wrong…again. Not only do you continue to heap a load of debt on their backs, but you’re also continuing to not get them ready for the workplace. So don’t be surprised if eventually you’re replaced by a variety of alternatives that students will flock towards.
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DSC: And students don’t have a clue as to what awaits them in the workplace — they see AI-powered tools and technologies at an incredibly low score of only 3%. Yeh, right. You’ll find out. Here’s but one example from one discipline/field of work –> Thomson Reuters Survey: Over 95% of Legal Professionals Expect Gen AI to Become Central to Workflow Within Five Years

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Figure 15. Competency Areas Expected to Be Important for Career

Is collaboration the key to digital accessibility? [Jarvis & Rhodes]

On 04/08/2025, in accessibility / UDL, assistive technologies, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), collaboration, communications, consortiums, neurodivergent/special needs, UK, universities, web design and production, by Daniel Christian

Is collaboration the key to digital accessibility? — from timeshighereducation.com by Sal Jarvis and George Rhodes
Digital accessibility is ethically important, and a legal requirement, but it’s also a lot of work. Here’s how universities can collaborate and pool their expertise to make higher education accessible for all

How easy do you find it to navigate your way around your university’s virtual estate – its websites, virtual learning environment and other digital aspects? If the answer is “not very”, we suspect you may not be alone. And for those of us who might access it differently – without a mouse, for example, or through a screen reader or keyboard emulator – the challenge is multiplied. Digital accessibility is the wide-ranging work to make these challenges a thing of the past for everyone. It is a legal requirement and a moral imperative.

Make Things Accessible is the outcome of a collaboration, initially between the University of Westminster and UCL, but now incorporating many other universities. It is a community of practice, a website and an archive of resources. It aims to make things accessible for all.

Several Hundred Law Professors File Amicus Brief Defending Biglaw Firms Against Trump’s Executive Order Attacks [Lenin Laus]

On 04/07/2025, in Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), Canada, Daniel S. Christian, ethics, faculty/staff, future, game-changing environment, law schools, Legal operations, legislatures / government / legal, morals/values, society, United States, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I value our constitutional democracy and I want to help preserve it. If you are an American, I encourage you to do the same. I’m not interested in living under an authoritarian government. The founders of this great nation developed an important document that integrated a system of checks and balances between the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government. The rule of law was important then, and it should still be important now. That’s why I’m posting the following two items.

Several Hundred Law Professors File Amicus Brief Defending Biglaw Firms Against Trump’s Executive Order Attacks — from jdjournal.com by Maria Lenin Laus

In an unprecedented show of solidarity, over 300 law professors from leading American law schools have filed an amicus brief condemning former President Donald Trump’s executive orders targeting major law firms. The professors argue that the orders—issued in retaliation for the firms’ clients, diversity initiatives, and legal work opposing Trump policies—represent a dangerous abuse of executive power and a direct violation of constitutional protections.
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The amicus brief, filed in support of the law firms’ challenge, was signed by professors from nearly every top-tier U.S. law school, including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, NYU, and the University of Chicago. The professors argue that Trump’s orders:

Violate the First Amendment by penalizing firms for the viewpoints they express through advocacy and representation;
Undermine the rule of law by discouraging legal professionals from taking on controversial or unpopular clients;
Set a dangerous precedent for political retaliation against attorneys and the institutions of justice.

Law school deans around the country react to Trump’s undercutting the legal foundations/principles of our nation — from linkedin.com by Georgetown University Law Center

“We write to reaffirm basic principles: The government should not punish lawyers and law firms for the clients they represent, absent specific findings that such representation was illegal or unethical. Punishing lawyers for their representation and advocacy violates the First Amendment and undermines the Sixth Amendment.

We thus speak as legal educators, responsible for training the next generation of lawyers, in condemning any government efforts to punish lawyers or their firms based on the identity of their clients or for their zealous lawful and ethical advocacy.”

For related postings, also see:

President’s Third Term Talk Defies Constitution and Tests Democracy — from nytimes.com by Peter Baker (DSC: This is a free/gifted article for you.)
The 22nd Amendment is clear: President Trump has to give up his office after his second term. But his refusal to accept that underscores how far he is willing to consider going to consolidate power.

“This is in my mind a culmination of what he has already started, which is a methodical effort to destabilize and undermine our democracy so that he can assume much greater power,” Representative Daniel Goldman, Democrat of New York and lead counsel during Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, said in an interview.

“A lot of people are not talking about it because it’s not the most pressing issue of that particular day,” he said on Friday as stock markets were plunging in reaction to Mr. Trump’s newly declared trade war. But an attack on democracy, he added, “is actually in motion and people need to recognize that it is not hypothetical or speculative anymore.”
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Mr. Trump’s autocratic tendencies and disregard for constitutional norms are well documented. In this second term alone, he has already sought to overrule birthright citizenship embedded in the 14th Amendment, effectively co-opted the power of Congress to determine what money will be spent or agencies closed, purged the uniformed leadership of the armed forces to enforce greater personal loyalty and punished dissent in academia, the news media, the legal profession and the federal bureaucracy.

BigLaw gives up on its future — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
By putting business ahead of the rule of law when faced with assaults on their independence, many large US law firms have tarnished their reputations. Tomorrow’s lawyers could make them pay the price.

Two young Skadden associates, Rachel Cohen and Brenna Trout Frey, resigned from the firm, the former before its deal with Trump and the latter afterwards. “If my employer cannot stand up for the rule of law,” wrote Ms. Frey, “then I cannot ethically continue to work for them.” There might’ve been other public resignations I haven’t seen, but I’m confident there have been private ones from both firms, as well as intense efforts by other associates to find positions elsewhere.

This is the risk these firms are taking: It matters to young lawyers when their law firms fail to defend the rule of law. And it matters especially to young lawyers who are women and members of visible minorities when law firms jettison their vaunted diversity, equity, and inclusion programs under pressure from the government.

What trauma-informed practice is not — from timeshighereducation.com by Kate Cantrell, India Bryce, and Jessica Gildersleeve from The University of Southern Queensland
Before trauma-informed care can be the norm across all areas of the university, academic and professional staff need to understand what it is. Here, three academics debunk myths and demystify best practice

Recently, we conducted focus groups at our university to better ascertain how academics, administrators and student support staff perceive the purpose and value of trauma-informed practice, and how they perceive their capacity to contribute to organisational change.

We discovered that while most staff were united on the importance of trauma-informed care, several myths persist about what trauma-informed practice is (and is not). Some academic staff, for example, conflated teaching about trauma with trauma-informed teaching, confused trigger warnings with trigger points and, perhaps most alarmingly – given the prevalence of trauma exposure and risk among university students – misjudged trauma-informed practice as “the business of psychologists” rather than educators.

“AI Resources for District Leaders” [Baule] + several other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 02/26/2025, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), content development, aggregation, repositories, education, education technology, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, hearts -- matters of the heart, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, K-12 related, languages and translation, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, NVIDIA, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, project-based learning, society, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, trends, UK, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Nvidia helps launch AI platform for teaching American Sign Language — from venturebeat.com by Dean Takahashi; via Claire Zau

Nvidia has unveiled a new AI platform for teaching people how to use American Sign Language to help bridge communication gaps.

The Signs platform is creating a validated dataset for sign language learners and developers of ASL-based AI applications.
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Nvidia, the American Society for Deaf Children and creative agency Hello Monday are helping close this gap with Signs, an interactive web platform built to support ASL learning and the development of accessible AI applications.

Using Gen AI to Design, Implement, and Assess PBL — from gettingsmart.com by David Ross

Key Points

Generative AI can significantly reduce the time and effort required in designing PBL by providing tools for research, brainstorming, and organization.
AI tools can assist educators in managing project implementation and assessment, providing formative feedback and organizing resources efficiently.

I usually conclude blogs with some pithy words, but this time I’ll turn the microphone over to Rachel Harcrow, a high school English/Language Arts teacher at Young Women’s College Prep Charter School of Rochester, NY: “After years of struggling to call myself a PBL practitioner, I finally feel comfortable saying I am, thanks to the power of Gen AI,” Harcrow told me. “Initial ideas now turn into fully fledged high-quality project plans in minutes that I can refine, giving me the space and energy to focus on what truly matters: My students.”

AI Resources for District Leaders — from techlearning.com by Steve Baule
Educational leaders aiming to effectively integrate generative AI into their schools should consider several key resources

To truly harness the transformative power of generative AI in education, district leaders must navigate a landscape rich with resources and opportunities. By delving into state and national guidelines, exploring successful case studies, utilizing innovative planning tools, and engaging in professional development, educational leaders can craft robust implementation plans. These plans can then assist in integrating AI seamlessly into their schools and elevate the learning experience to new heights.

Anthropic brings ‘extended thinking’ to Claude, which can solves complex physics problems with 96.5% accuracy — from rdworldonline.com by Brian Buntz

Anthropic, a favorite frontier AI lab among many coders and genAI power users has unveiled Claude 3.7 Sonnet, its first “hybrid reasoning” AI model. It is capable of both near-instant answers and in-depth, step-by-step reasoning within a single system.

Users can toggle an extended thinking mode where the model self-reflects before answering, considerably improving performance on complex tasks like math, physics and coding. In early testing by the author, the model largely succeeded in creating lines of Python (related to unsupervised learning) that were close to 1,000 lines long that ran without error on the first or second try, including the unsupervised machine learning task shown below:

New Tools. Old Complaints. Why AI Won’t Kill Education or Fix it — from coolcatteacher.com by Vicki Davis; via Stephen Downes

AI won’t kill education. But will it kill learning? The challenge isn’t AI itself—it’s whether students can still think for themselves when the answers are always one click away.
…

Wait. Before you go, let me ask you one thing.
AI has opportunities to help learning. But it also won’t fix it. The real question isn’t whether students can use AI—but whether they’re still learning without it.

Whether the learning is happening between the ears.

And so much of what we teach in schools isn’t the answers on a test. It answers questions like “What is my purpose in life?” “How do I make friends?” and “How can I help my team be stronger.” Questions that aren’t asked on a test but are essential to living a good life. These questions aren’t answered between the ears but within the heart.

That, my friends, is what teaching has always been about.

The heart.

And the heart of the matter is we have new challenges, but these are old complaints. Complaints since the beginning of time and teaching. And in those days, you didn’t need kids just to be able to talk about how to build a fire, they had to make one themselves. Their lives depend on it.

And these days, we need to build another kind of fire. A fire that sparks the joy of learning. The joy of the opportunities that await us sparked by some of the most powerful tools ever invented. Kids need to not be able to just talk about making a difference, they need to know how to build a better world tomorrow. Our lives depend on it.

How Debating Skills Can Help Us In The Fight Against AI — from adigaskell.org by Adi Gaskell

Debating skills have a range of benefits in the workplace, from helping to improve our communication to bolstering our critical thinking skills. Research from the University of Mississippi suggests it might also help us in the battle with AI in the workplace.

We can often assume that debate teaches us nothing more than how to argue our point, but in order to do this, we have to understand both our own take on a subject and that of our opponent. This allows us to see both sides of any issue we happen to be debating.

“Even though AI has offered a shortcut through the writing process, it actually still is important to be able to write and speak and think on your own,” the researchers explain. “That’s what the focus of this research is: how debate engenders those aspects of being able to write and speak and study and research on your own.”

Assistive tech in your classroom: A practical guide — from understood.org by Andrew M.I. Lee, JD
Assistive technology (AT) are tools that let people with differences work around challenges. They make tasks and activities accessible at school, work, and home. Learn how AT apps and software can help with reading, writing, math, and more.

People who learn and think differently can use technology to help work around their challenges. This is called assistive technology (AT). AT helps people with disabilities learn, communicate, or function better. It can be as high-tech as a computer, or as low-tech as a pencil grip. It’s a type of accommodation that involves tools.

Assistive technology has two parts: devices (the actual tools people use) and services (the support to choose and use the tools).

Students who struggle with learning can use AT to help with subjects like reading, writing, and math. AT can also help kids and adults with the tasks of daily life. And many adults use these tools on the job, too.
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“Book Review: Designing Accessible Learning Content” [Bozarth] + other items from The Learning Guild

On 02/05/2025, in accessibility / UDL, adult learning, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, training / L&D, by Daniel Christian

Book Review: Designing Accessible Learning Content — from learningguild.com by Jane Bozarth

What a great treat to receive a review copy of Susi Miller’s new book! This updated edition of her wonderful Designing Accessible Learning Content: A Practical Guide to Applying Best Practice Accessibility Standards to L&D Resources (2nd edition) is a must-have for anyone trying to make sense of accessibility standards. Updates in this new version include a deep dive into the revised WCAG 2.2 standards, affordances of and concerns about the evolution of AI, and information about the new European Accessibility Act, which puts pressure on commercial endeavors as well as public sector entities to ensure good accessibility practices.

Not All Learners Love Tech: 4 Ways to Create More Inclusive eLearning — from learningguild.com by Katie Belle (Curry) Nelson
5 Reasons to Make Professional Development a Priority. — from learningguild.com by Dr. Barb Lesniak

Learning Ecosystems

This Baltimore program shows how to fight generational poverty [Wen] + Lost boys, trapped men, and the role of lifers in prison education [West]

What’s Happening at the Social Security Administration? Here’s What People With Disabilities Need to Know. [Dilworth]

Is collaboration the key to digital accessibility? [Jarvis & Rhodes]

Several Hundred Law Professors File Amicus Brief Defending Biglaw Firms Against Trump’s Executive Order Attacks [Lenin Laus]

“Book Review: Designing Accessible Learning Content” [Bozarth] + other items from The Learning Guild

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