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.
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. .
From DSC: Whenever we’ve had a flat tire over the years, a tricky part of the repair process is jacking up the car so that no harm is done to the car (or to me!). There are some grooves underneath the Toyota Camry where one is supposed to put the jack. But as the car is very low to the ground, these grooves are very hard to find (even in good weather and light).
What’s needed is a robotic jack with vision.
If the jack had “vision” and had wheels on it, the device could locate the exact location of the grooves, move there, and then ask the owner whether they are ready for the car to be lifted up. The owner could execute that order when they are ready and the robotic jack could safely hoist the car up.
This type of robotic device is already out there in other areas. But this idea for assistance with replacing a flat tire represents an AI and robotic-based, consumer-oriented application that we’ll likely be seeing much more of in the future. Carmakers and suppliers, please add this one to your list!
Accessibility and AI— from teaching.virginia.edu; via Derek Bruff This collection explores the intersection of AI and accessibility, highlighting how AI can both support and pose challenges to students with disabilities. It offers practical insights, strategies, and tools for fostering inclusive, accessible learning environments.
AI is welcomed by those with dyslexia, and other learning issues, helping to mitigate some of the challenges associated with reading, writing, and processing information. Those who want to ban AI want to destroy the very thing that has helped most on accessibility. Here are 10 ways dyslexics, and others with issues around text-based learning, can use AI to support their daily activities and learning.
Are U.S. public schools lagging behind other countries like Singapore and South Korea in preparing teachers and students for the boom of generative artificial intelligence? Or are our educators bumbling into AI half-blind, putting students’ learning at risk?
Or is it, perhaps, both?
Two new reports, coincidentally released on the same day last week, offer markedly different visions of the emerging field: One argues that schools need forward-thinking policies for equitable distribution of AI across urban, suburban and rural communities. The other suggests they need something more basic: a bracing primer on what AI is and isn’t, what it’s good for and how it can all go horribly wrong.
Bite-Size AI Content for Faculty and Staff— from aiedusimplified.substack.com by Lance Eaton Another two 5-tips videos for faculty and my latest use case: creating FAQs!
Despite possible drawbacks, an exciting wondering has been—What if AI was a tipping point helping us finally move away from a standardized, grade-locked, ranking-forced, batched-processing learning model based on the make believe idea of “the average man” to a learning model that meets every child where they are at and helps them grow from there?
I get that change is indescribably hard and there are risks. But the integration of AI in education isn’t a trend. It’s a paradigm shift that requires careful consideration, ongoing reflection, and a commitment to one’s core values. AI presents us with an opportunity—possibly an unprecedented one—to transform teaching and learning, making it more personalized, efficient, and impactful. How might we seize the opportunity boldly?
California and NVIDIA Partner to Bring AI to Schools, Workplaces — from govtech.com by Abby Sourwine The latest step in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s plans to integrate AI into public operations across California is a partnership with NVIDIA intended to tailor college courses and professional development to industry needs.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and tech company NVIDIA joined forces last week to bring generative AI (GenAI) to community colleges and public agencies across the state. The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO), NVIDIA and the governor all signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) outlining how each partner can contribute to education and workforce development, with the goal of driving innovation across industries and boosting their economic growth.
Listen to anything on the go with the highest-quality voices — from elevenlabs.io; via The Neuron
The ElevenLabs Reader App narrates articles, PDFs, ePubs, newsletters, or any other text content. Simply choose a voice from our expansive library, upload your content, and listen on the go.
Per The Neuron
Some cool use cases:
Judy Garland can teach you biology while walking to class.
James Dean can narrate your steamy romance novel.
Sir Laurence Olivier can read you today’s newsletter—just paste the web link and enjoy!
Why it’s important: ElevenLabs shared how major Youtubers are using its dubbing services to expand their content into new regions with voices that actually sound like them (thanks to ElevenLabs’ ability to clone voices).
Oh, and BTW, it’s estimated that up to 20% of the population may have dyslexia. So providing people an option to listen to (instead of read) content, in their own language, wherever they go online can only help increase engagement and communication.
How Generative AI Improves Parent Engagement in K–12 Schools — from edtechmagazine.com by Alexadner Slagg With its ability to automate and personalize communication, generative artificial intelligence is the ideal technological fix for strengthening parent involvement in students’ education.
As generative AI tools populate the education marketplace, the technology’s ability to automate complex, labor-intensive tasks and efficiently personalize communication may finally offer overwhelmed teachers a way to effectively improve parent engagement.
… These personalized engagement activities for students and their families can include local events, certification classes and recommendations for books and videos. “Family Feed might suggest courses, such as an Adobe certification,” explains Jackson. “We have over 14,000 courses that we have vetted and can recommend. And we have books and video recommendations for students as well.”
Including personalized student information and an engagement opportunity makes it much easier for parents to directly participate in their children’s education.
Will AI Shrink Disparities in Schools, or Widen Them? — edsurge.com by Daniel Mollenkamp Experts predict new tools could boost teaching efficiency — or create an “underclass of students” taught largely through screens.
Using generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or CoPilot as intelligent assistants in instructional design can significantly enhance the scalability of course development. GenAI can significantly improve the efficiency with which institutions develop content that is closely aligned with the curriculum and course objectives. As a result, institutions can more effectively meet the rising demand for flexible and high-quality education, preparing a new generation of future professionals equipped with the knowledge and skills to excel in their chosen fields.1 In this article, we illustrate the uses of AI in instructional design in terms of content creation, media development, and faculty support. We also provide some suggestions on the effective and ethical uses of AI in course design and development. Our perspectives are rooted in medical education, but the principles can be applied to any learning context.
… Table 1 summarizes a few low-hanging fruits in AI usage in course development. .
Table 1. Types of Use of GenAI in Course Development
Practical Use of AI
Use Scenarios and Examples
Inspiration
Exploring ideas for instructional strategies
Exploring ideas for assessment
Course mapping
Lesson or unit content planning
Supplementation
Text to audio
Transcription for audio
Alt text auto-generation
Design optimization (e.g., using Microsoft PPT Design)
10 Ways Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Instructional Design — from er.educause.edu by Rob Gibson Artificial intelligence (AI) is providing instructors and course designers with an incredible array of new tools and techniques to improve the course design and development process. However, the intersection of AI and content creation is not new.
I have been telling my graduate instructional design students that AI technology is not likely to replace them any time soon because learning and instruction are still highly personalized and humanistic experiences. However, as these students embark on their careers, they will need to understand how to appropriately identify, select, and utilize AI when developing course content. Examples abound of how instructional designers are experimenting with AI to generate and align student learning outcomes with highly individualized course activities and assessments. Instructional designers are also using AI technology to create and continuously adapt the custom code and power scripts embedded into the learning management system to execute specific learning activities.Footnote1 Other useful examples include scripting and editing videos and podcasts.
Here are a few interesting examples of how AI is shaping and influencing instructional design. Some of the tools and resources can be used to satisfy a variety of course design activities, while others are very specific.
The world of a medieval stone cutter and a modern instructional designer (ID) may seem separated by a great distance, but I wager any ID who upon hearing the story I just shared would experience an uneasy sense of déjà vu. Take away the outward details, and the ID would recognize many elements of the situation: the days spent in projects that fail to realize the full potential of their craft, the painful awareness that greater things can be built, but are unlikely to occur due to a poverty of imagination and lack of vision among those empowered to make decisions.
Finally, there is the issue of resources. No stone cutter could ever hope to undertake a large-scale enterprise without a multitude of skilled collaborators and abundant materials. Similarly, instructional designers are often departments of one, working in scarcity environments, with limited ability to acquire resources for ambitious projects and — just as importantly — lacking the authority or political capital needed to launch significant initiatives. For these reasons, instructional design has long been a profession caught in an uncomfortable stasis, unable to grow, evolve and achieve its full potential.
That is until generative AI appeared on the scene. While the discourse around AI in education has been almost entirely about its impact on teaching and assessment, there has been a dearth of critical analysis regarding AI’s potential for impacting instructional design.
We are at a critical juncture for AI-augmented learning. We can either stagnate, missing opportunities to support learners while educators continue to debate whether the use of generative AI tools is a good thing, or we can move forward, building a transformative model for learning akin to the industrial revolution’s impact.
Too many professional educators remain bound by traditional methods. The past two years suggest that leaders of this new learning paradigm will not emerge from conventional educational circles. This vacuum of leadership can be filled, in part, by instructional designers, who are prepared by training and experience to begin building in this new learning space.
From DSC: The above item is simply excellent!!! I love it!
We’re going to see a lot more of the Square, Stripe, Shopify-type startups pop up for agentic AI.
This one is like an AI-human broker.
1) Prompt an AI with a need
2) Give the AI a budget (real money)
3) AI turns need into plan with tasks
4) AI finds humans to complete the… https://t.co/UXf1bNZ4AK
3 new Chrome AI features for even more helpful browsing — from blog.google from Parisa Tabriz See how Chrome’s new AI features, including Google Lens for desktop and Tab compare, can help you get things done more easily on the web.
On speaking to AI — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick Voice changes a lot of things
So, let’s talk about ChatGPT’s new Advanced Voice mode and the new AI-powered Siri. They are not just different approaches to talking to AI. In many ways, they represent the divide between two philosophies of AI – Copilots versus Agents, small models versus large ones, specialists versus generalists.
1. Flux, an open-source text-to-image creator that is comparable to industry leaders like Midjourney, was released by Black Forest Labs (the “original team” behind Stable Diffusion). It is capable of generating high quality text in images (there are tons of educational use cases). You can play with it on their demo page, on Poe, or by running it on your own computer (tutorial here).
Other items re: Flux:
How to FLUX — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper Where to use FLUX online & full tutorial to create a sleek ad in minutes
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Also from Heather Cooper:
Introducing FLUX: Open-Source text to image model
FLUX… has been EVERYWHERE this week, as I’m sure you have seen. Developed by Black Forest Labs, is an open-source image generation model that’s gaining attention for its ability to rival leading models like Midjourney, DALL·E 3, and SDXL.
What sets FLUX apart is its blend of creative freedom, precision, and accessibility—it’s available across multiple platforms and can be run locally.
Why FLUX Matters
FLUX’s open-source nature makes it accessible to a broad audience, from hobbyists to professionals.
It offers advanced multimodal and parallel diffusion transformer technology, delivering high visual quality, strong prompt adherence, and diverse outputs.
It’s available in 3 models:
FLUX.1 [pro]: A high-performance, commercial image synthesis model.
FLUX.1 [dev]: An open-weight, non-commercial variant of FLUX.1 [pro]
FLUX.1 [schnell]: A faster, distilled version of FLUX.1, operating up to 10x quicker.
During the weekend, image models made a comeback. Recently released Flux models can create realistic images with near-perfect text—straight from the model, without much patchwork. To get the party going, people are putting these images into video generation models to create pretty–trippy–videos. I can’t identify half of them as AI, and they’ll only get better. See this tutorial on how to create a video ad for your product..
Advanced Voice Mode on ChatGPT features more natural, real-time conversations that pick up on and respond with emotion and non-verbal cues.
Advanced Voice Mode on ChatGPT is currently in a limited alpha. Please note that it may make mistakes, and access and rate limits are subject to change.
From DSC: Think about the impacts/ramifications of global, virtual, real-time language translations!!! This type of technology will create very powerful, new affordances in our learning ecosystems — as well as in business communications, with the various governments across the globe, and more!
Hello GPT-4o — from openai.com We’re announcing GPT-4o, our new flagship model that can reason across audio, vision, and text in real time.
GPT-4o (“o” for “omni”) is a step towards much more natural human-computer interaction—it accepts as input any combination of text, audio, image, and video and generates any combination of text, audio, and image outputs. It can respond to audio inputs in as little as 232 milliseconds, with an average of 320 milliseconds, which is similar to human response time in a conversation. It matches GPT-4 Turbo performance on text in English and code, with significant improvement on text in non-English languages, while also being much faster and 50% cheaper in the API. GPT-4o is especially better at vision and audio understanding compared to existing models.
Providing inflection, emotions, and a human-like voice
Understanding what the camera is looking at and integrating it into the AI’s responses
Providing customer service
With GPT-4o, we trained a single new model end-to-end across text, vision, and audio, meaning that all inputs and outputs are processed by the same neural network. Because GPT-4o is our first model combining all of these modalities, we are still just scratching the surface of exploring what the model can do and its limitations.
This demo is insane.
A student shares their iPad screen with the new ChatGPT + GPT-4o, and the AI speaks with them and helps them learn in *realtime*.
Imagine giving this to every student in the world.
A new study from the University of Tokyo has highlighted the positive effect that immersive virtual reality experiences have for depression anti-stigma and knowledge interventions compared to traditional video.
…
The study found that depression knowledge improved for both interventions, however, only the immersive VR intervention reduced stigma. The VR-powered intervention saw depression knowledge score positively associated with a neural response in the brain that is indicative of empathetic concern. The traditional video intervention saw the inverse, with participants demonstrating a brain-response which suggests a distress-related response.
From DSC: This study makes me wonder why we haven’t heard of more VR-based uses in diversity training. I’m surprised we haven’t heard of situations where we are put in someone else’s mocassins so to speak. We could have a lot more empathy for someone — and better understand their situation — if we were to experience life as others might experience it. In the process, we would likely uncover some hidden biases that we have.
Last month, business leaders and child care advocates from a handful of states convened on Zoom. Representing Michigan, Kentucky, North Carolina and Virginia, they had come together to discuss a new child care model, called “Tri-Share,” that has gained traction across the country, including in their respective regions.
The cost-sharing model, in which the state government, the employer and the employee each pay for one-third of the cost of child care, first launched in 2021 in Michigan, where it is furthest along. But it has become so popular that other states, including New York, North Carolina and Kentucky, have already secured funding for their own adaptations of the program.
But this is the first time the department has released guidance on how assistive technology relates to the special education law. That’s partly because schools have come to rely so much more on technology for teaching and learning, Wright-Gallo said.
The guidance, released last month, is aimed at parents, specialists who provide services to babies and toddlers at risk of developmental delays, special educators, general educators, school and district leaders, technology specialists and directors, and state education officials, Wright-Gallo said.
More and more parents are taking charge of their children’s education through homeschooling. Manisha Snoyer’s podcast and online homeschooling community, Teach Your Kids, is seeking to empower parents with the guidance, tools, and network they need to thrive as educators for their children. She joined the Future of Education to discuss her work, dispel misconceptions about homeschooling, and consider the future of this growing trend. I was intrigued to explore her observations that, through modularity, families can pull apart socialization, childcare, and the learning itself to make the benefits of homeschooling much more accessible. As always, subscribers can listen to the audio, watch the video, or read the transcript.
School absenteeism sky-rocketed post-pandemic: 6.5 million more students missed at least 10% or more of the 2021-22 school year than in 2017-18. This means 14.7 million students were chronically absent even after schools reopened from the pandemic. While preliminary data shows that absentee rates slightly decreased in the 2022-23 school year, truancy remains a serious concern for our nation’s K-12 system.
…
If we want to get students back in the classroom and avoid poor outcomes for our nation’s young people, U.S. leaders must rethink how we operate K-12 education. One potential solution is reinventing high school to ensure every young person is exposed to the world of work through career-oriented education and learning. An analysis of international cross-section data found that nations enrolling a large proportion of students in vocational or career-focused programs have significantly higher school attendance rates and higher completion rates than those that don’t.
What can I do if my child’s teacher takes recess away? — from understood.org By Kristin J. Carothers, PhD School can be extra hard for kids with ADHD when teachers take recess away. An expert weighs in on how you can work with teachers to find a solution.
For teachers: What to expect in an IEP meeting — from understood.org by Amanda Morin
You’re not alone in having questions about IEP meetings. If you’re not a special education teacher, you may not have a lot of training around the IEP process. Here are some of the basics:
Galaxy AI introduces meaningful intelligence aimed at enhancing every part of life, especially the phone’s most fundamental role: communication. When you need to defy language barriers, Galaxy S24 makes it easier than ever. Chat with another student or colleague from abroad. Book a reservation while on vacation in another country. It’s all possible with Live Translate,2 two-way, real-time voice and text translations of phone calls within the native app. No third-party apps are required, and on-device AI keeps conversations completely private.
With Interpreter, live conversations can be instantly translated on a split-screen view so people standing opposite each other can read a text transcription of what the other person has said. It even works without cellular data or Wi-Fi.
Galaxy S24 — from theneurondaily.com by Noah Edelman & Pete Huang
Samsung just announced the first truly AI-powered smartphone: the Galaxy S24.
For us AI power users, the features aren’t exactly new, but it’s the first time we’ve seen them packaged up into a smartphone (Siri doesn’t count, sorry).
But a few applications of machine learning stood out as genuinely helpful or surprising — here are a few examples of AI that might actually do some good.
The whole idea that AI might not be a total red flag occurred to me when I chatted with Whispp at a press event. This small team is working on voicing the voiceless, meaning people who have trouble speaking normally due to a condition or illness.
DC: I don’t think Microsoft’s announcement 2build their own chips changes much in the short term.*Possibly* 4the long term. If chip production & expertise were easy 2build — i.e, low entry barriers — then Nvidia wouldn’t be in such a driver’s seat. It will take yrs to get there.
