Dr. Don McMahon: For those of you just joining us. Welcome to this webinar presented by Iset, Tag and Ted. The title of the Webinar is Teacher education, using AI and designing and delivering courses. I am pleased to turn it over to our wonderful presenters from these divisions. Thanks for joining us.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: So I'd like to just go ahead and start and introduce everybody. My name is Sarah Howard. I am at associate professor at the University of Maine, and I'm an associ. I am associated with the Iset division or the Innovation and Special Ed Technology Division.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: and I am Pi and an inter divisional grant between teacher Education Division, I set and tag the association of the gifted. And so, as part of this inter divisional grant, we will be presenting a series of webinars. This is the first of 3. We are also having an affinity gathering for anybody who will be attending the Council for Exceptional Children National Conference at San Antonio.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: so you can see us in person, not just in our little boxes there. And the 2 presenters that we have for you today are Dr. Don Mcman, from Washington State University, and Dr. Matt Marino from the University of Central Florida.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: and then we have 3. I I'm sorry, and Tani Wilder from the University of Central Florida, who has just graduated with her doctorate. Yes, and we will have Dr. Lisa dicker from Ku Claire Smith from the Association for the Gifted, and Dr. Sean Smith as respondents afterwards.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: just for sort of housekeeping purposes. If you have any questions, please put them in the Webinar chat, and we will try to answer them as we go along. And with that I'm going to hand it over to Don
Dr. Don McMahon: Alright. Well, thanks for having us. And our first bit of information here on artificial intelligence is actually with Matt. So I'm going to hand it off to Matt. That was easy.
Dr. Matt: Thank you, John. I'm Matt Moreno from the University of Central Florida, and I'm a professor of exceptional education
Dr. Matt: down here in the school of teacher education.
Dr. Matt: I'm also affiliate faculty with the Tony Jennings Exceptional Education Institute and a member of leadership team for the Center on Innovation design and digital learning with Shawn Smith. So it's a brief bit about me.
Dr. Matt: I'm gonna talk a little bit about the history of artificial intelligence with you. Just give you a little background information.
Dr. Matt: and I have a couple of slides I'd like to talk through. And then, at the conclusion of my section, we'll take some questions and have a a brief discussion about this. So what is artificial intelligence? Well, Alan Turing, whose picture is right here on the left side of your slide
Dr. Matt: in the 1950 S came up with a test where he was looking to see if a machine could react in a way that was similar to a human being.
Dr. Matt: So there are multiple questions associated with whether something has artificial intelligence or not.
Dr. Matt: I think it's really interesting. When you
Dr. Matt: ask a question, for example, does time fly like an arrow? Or why does time fly like an arrow?
Dr. Matt: And fruit flies like a banana? That's a question. If you asked the computer that it would find very confusing.
Dr. Matt: And so, as we go through, and we think about what artificial intelligence is, I want you to think about a couple different forms of it.
Dr. Matt: The first one is generative, artificial intelligence, and that is intelligence that will create things.
Dr. Matt: And I'm going to talk a little bit about large language models, and where they came from in just a minute. But generative AI will take existing information from a training set, and then it will give you new information
Dr. Matt: based on whatever prompt you give it. Predictive. AI is the second
Dr. Matt: term we're gonna talk about predictive. AI will look to analyze patterns. So for example, you think about facial recognition systems. They're using predictive AI to look at a person's face and determine whether it is, in fact, Lisa Deeker or not.
Dr. Matt: All right, let's go to the next slide. Don
Dr. Don McMahon: got it
Dr. Matt: all right. So the next question we're still dealing with history. Here is how large language models work.
Dr. Matt: Now go back. One more, please.
Dr. Matt: Yeah, right here. No. Right there.
Dr. Matt: What are you doing to me? Don?
Dr. Matt: Sorry. Right there.
Dr. Matt: Okay.
Dr. Matt: so how do large language models work.
Dr. Matt: In 2,017 there was a paper that came out of Toronto, and it was actually written by a group of research scientists that Google brain.
Dr. Matt: It came up with an architectural model
Dr. Matt: that you could use to take vast amounts of data and actually distill it down so that it can respond to prompts.
Dr. Matt: Think about this for a minute. They took.
Dr. Matt: they being the folks at Google. And now the folks at Openai as well have taken all of the information on the web. So they scrape the web. They go to every single website that's out there, and then they go to every Pdf link
Dr. Matt: and every other website that's linked to that. They scrape all of that text, and they put it into a corpus that has over 5 billion words in it.
Dr. Matt: From that they're able to take
Dr. Matt: and established parameters. Now, parameters are like nerves, and the connections between nerves. So if you think about the parameters for the system they developed in 2,017. You can imagine the human brain has 86 million or 1 billion. Excuse me, 86 billion parameters or neurons.
Dr. Matt: whereas Chat GPT. 3 had a hundred 75 billion.
Dr. Matt: That's unfathomable. And it was a tremendous leap forward in
Dr. Matt: computer processing.
Dr. Matt: So by taking this corpus
Dr. Matt: of 500 billion words
Dr. Matt: and establishing it as a mechanism to train the open AI. We really have the power to take what would be
Dr. Matt: if a person was to read that much information. reading a thousand words an hour, it would take them over a thousand years to get all of that information that chat Gp, T, 3.0. Now, we're at 4.0 now, going to 5.
Dr. Matt: So it's getting even faster over the last year, much faster.
Dr. Matt: and it's able to take all of that information and distill it extremely rapidly. And I've gotta say at this point it is much, much smarter than I am.
Dr. Matt: and maybe but it's
Dr. Matt: debated whether it would be smarter than Dr. Deeker as well. Okay, onto the next slide. Please don't.
Dr. Matt: So I want to talk really quickly about Gpts. Now, many folks have heard about Gpts, and the question is, what is it? Right? A Gpt
Dr. Matt: Gbds stands for? Generative, pre-trained transformer. My mind. That's a terrible name. It doesn't really say a lot. So let's think about what it does. If you think about generative and pre-trained, I want you to go back to that 500 billion word corpus that you have of words
Dr. Matt: and what it's doing as one of these GPTS. Goes through. It's actually learning from the information that's there. So it's being trained based on the information that's there.
Dr. Matt: At the bottom of the screen, you're gonna see an image of me.
Dr. Matt: And it it's quite funny, really. The transformation that occurred here. So I use the Gpt called cartoon yourself. and you can see. The first picture there with the button down. Blue shirt that I have on is what I uploaded into cartoon yourself.
Dr. Matt: and when I, when I uploaded it, and asked it to transform me and make me into a cartoon. The second picture came up so the one that's in the middle with the the blue, and I guess those are yellow lines on there it did get my bald head right. Gave me some bushy eyebrows. I feel really good about that
Dr. Matt: but I wasn't feeling super comfortable with the way that it had transformed me, and so I asked it to make me to a super hero, which is the image you see on the right.
Dr. Matt: Now, why am I sharing this with you? Well, the reason is because, as you're working with kids a lot of times, especially for kids who struggle with writing and reading.
Dr. Matt: If you ask them to generate a story, they're very hesitant to do that.
Dr. Matt: but if they can envision themselves as part of the story using cartoons, you can actually encourage them to participate and be engaged in the learning.
Dr. Matt: Okay, Don, thank you next slide, please.
Dr. Matt: Another gpt that I wanted to share with you folks, and I'm getting into the the examples right now and then. Don't dive a little bit deeper.
Dr. Matt: This one's called diagrams. Show me, and what I asked the or what I prompted the Gpt. To do. Here was generate a mind map of instructional strategies that teachers could use in their classroom.
Dr. Matt: So take a minute and look at those. I thought it was really interesting the way it color-coded them.
Dr. Matt: In in a follow up. I asked it to actually provide references using Apa 7,
Dr. Matt: which it it was able to do. But it's very interesting that it has that level of sophistication that it could look at these strategies and then tell me the authors who were using them in their scientific papers.
Dr. Matt: I think I have one more slide. Don.
you do.
Dr. Matt: Okay? And this, this is the last one. So I'm sharing with you this Gbt called data analyst. I find this to be incredibly useful for special education, teachers and administrators. Here's why.
Dr. Matt: for this graph that's depicted on this page. I took a excel spreadsheet that I created with fictitious student data.
Dr. Matt: and I had about 30 students who are on my caseload. I had all of their different disabilities that were coded in their Ips. I also had the services they were receiving on a weekly basis. How long they were in each of those services, etc.
Dr. Matt: I uploaded the excel spreadsheet, and within 10 Si asked it to generalize the data that was in the Excel spreadsheet. It gave me numerous graphics to support what it was saying. I'm just showing you one here, but my point is this will aid you in writing your reports
Dr. Matt: and
Dr. Matt: dramatically decrease the amount of time it takes for you to go through and evaluate what all your students are doing. Okay? So at this point, Don, can I take questions?
Yep.
Dr. Matt: okay. I can't see any. So someone's gonna have to.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Yeah, if you would like to type your question in the chat, I can read it out loud to Dr. Matt.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Even if you ha! Even if any of our respondents have a comment to add, that would be great timing, too.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Alright, I'm not seeing any.
Dr. Matt: Okay, appropriate. Wait. Time has expired.
Dr. Don McMahon: all right. Well, maybe I'll get some more.
Dr. Sean Smith: I think we're moving to you, Don, are we, Matt? Matt? What's what's the name of the Gbt with the bar graph.
Dr. Sean Smith: this one that we're looking at right now, Sean, I believe so. Yes, that's a data analyst is the name of it, and it actually the name
Dr. Matt: and the the name of that Gpt is actually changed 3 times over the last year. Shawn. So but but the current name is data analyst. And I'm I'm
Dr. Matt: told that they're going to stick with that.
Dr. Sean Smith: Another question is, if we create cartoons of our students does the software save the pictures of the kids?
Dr. Matt: Great question, right? Because that gets into our ethics conversation at the end. Does it save it. It's not supposed to, whether it actually does or not. I have no idea.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Okay, another question is, what are the ethical implications of using the software with our students. Data.
Dr. Matt: Another excellent question, Doctor Howard. I would say that what we should do is check in with our school district and see what their
Dr. Matt: what their guidance says, because every school district is going to be different.
Dr. Lisa Dieker: And I will just tell you, too, as far as the pictures go. You don't have to use your students pictures true story. When I applied for the job here at Ku, I said, make a professor dunking a basketball. That is a woman with brown hair in the Allen filled house. And it generated a picture much like me. I kept refining it so you can use Dolly, and do that without having to put the kids pictures. And I think that's a great concern we should address. So thanks for that question.
Hmm.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: somebody said, based on a student's present level at the platform pla F, the present levels of academic and functional performance. Could you use that?
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Could I use what the data? Yeah. And the data. II think it would be very helpful for that, sure. But you're gonna have. You're going to need to enter formative and summit of data on the student throughout the semester. Right? Oh, somebody's following up to generate the IP goals. Could you put in the information from the present levels of performance to generate IP goals.
Dr. Matt: Oh, you absolutely could. The question is whether that would be ethical or not, and whether it would would be going against any of the policies that you have in your school district.
Dr. Don McMahon: And in a little bit we're gonna look at some of the things that are available on the chat. Gtd. Kind of
Dr. Don McMahon: marketplace, and there are over a dozen Iep gold generators.
Dr. Don McMahon: I can't promise that any of them are any good or ethical, but they
Dr. Don McMahon: this marketplace is exploding much faster than we could ever imagine.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Yes.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: somebody else? Asked one. Let me go back. How can a I help us as teachers help kids struggling with reading and writing.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: and I think we're going to get to that a little later in the presentation.
Dr. Don McMahon: Alright. should we?
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Oh, wait! There's one last one that's directly to you that
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: says, hey, Dr. Marino? Oh, how far we have come since we are sitting around your Round Table last spring discussing the potential and ethical considerations related to AI. What have you found most helpful in organizing and evaluating AI tools as we continue to live on the bleeding edge of this tech, and that's from Louis Jessman, Louis Jasmin.
Dr. Matt: Th that's a great question. I would say that as we've gone through the last year, I've participated in so many different writing activities where we're coming up with a blueprint for AI implementation.
Dr. Matt: And we've been working with folks who are in policy in Washington, DC.
Dr. Matt: I would say that the thing that I found most
Dr. Matt: intriguing about this is, first of all, the lack of knowledge at the school level regarding AI.
Dr. Matt: And then, as we move forward and we're trying to improve education for kids.
Dr. Matt: how most or I shouldn't say most. Many teachers immediately went to the notion that this is cheating, and we shouldn't be using it with our students.
Dr. Matt: And I have a fundamental different philosophy in that in because I think that that we should be using this collaboratively with students as a way to enhance critical analysis and critical thinking skills
Dr. Matt: and constructed using constructivist methodologies to actually improve their understanding of the writing process. So I don't know if I answered that. But that's kind of what I wanted to say on my soapbox.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: okay, great. So then the last question is, could data analysts be used for Iep progress reports?
Dr. Matt: Oh, absolutely. It would be perfect for that. But you just shouldn't put student names in. Obviously.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Okay. I think we should
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: make sure we have enough time for everybody. I agree.
Dr. Don McMahon: Alright. So we have a few propositions that I wanted to share. For using any type of emerging technology to support students with disabilities. But
Dr. Don McMahon: and they're from an article that's been shared with you in the resources selection here. but
Dr. Don McMahon: wanted to. Oh, sorry. Wanted to kind of talk you through a few of these. So our first kind of proposition that we'd encourage you to consider is don't techno panic. If you're a fan of Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy on the back of the book. It says, Don't panic
Dr. Don McMahon: also don't techno panic. History is kind of filled with techno panics as a new technology comes around the telephone was going to destroy society. The first major techno panic was the printing press. Actually.
Dr. Don McMahon: And as we're using these new technologies to spread ideas. techno panics happened. They happened at my university when
Dr. Don McMahon: and the Intro, one of the introduction to Kinesiology classes, 25% of the students on 1 one assignment got caught
Dr. Don McMahon: using chat. Gtp to complete the assignment. which is a lot.
Dr. Don McMahon: And yeah, Matt, I know you have a good example at the K. 12 level.
Dr. Matt: I do so. I sit on an Advisory council for a local stem school here in Florida.
Dr. Matt: and last November, when Chad Gpt was just coming out. I guess it wasn't last November. It was no November before that. I went into the Advisory Council meeting on a Thursday afternoon, and and said to them.
Dr. Matt: Hey, here's this thing it's called Chat Gpt, and it's coming. And your students are all going to be using it in in the next month or so.
Dr. Matt: and they didn't know anything about it. But by the end of that meeting they ended up banning it at the district level so that nobody could access. Chat. Gbt.
Dr. Matt: within 24 h.
Yeah.
Dr. Don McMahon: so definitely, some techno panics are happening here. So keep that in mind. There are some ways that we can productively use this technology without engaging in a techno panic against it.
Dr. Don McMahon: Next up, one of the things I'd encourage you to do is don't believe all of the hype. If you kind of think about the history of technology through multiple points, it kind of goes through
Dr. Don McMahon: this huge peak of inflated expectations. We're probably somewhere in that right now with AI, and then I wouldn't be surprised if in 6 months to a year we'll have a slew of horrible stories about
Dr. Don McMahon: AI wasn't as revolutionary as we thought it would be. And then it'll peak towards a plateau of productivity, you know
Dr. Don McMahon: at 1 point in the 2,000 that middle image there is about.
Dr. Don McMahon: you know, just a lot of people are giving up on the Internet. It's probably just going to be a passing fad
Dr. Don McMahon: by 2,006. All of you here on this webinar and all of our panelists were Time Magazine's person of the year because they were doing such a good job of creating stuff on the Internet.
Dr. Don McMahon: So
Dr. Don McMahon: we kind of see these peaks and troughs of technology adoption and how we can effectively use AI, just remember as we're kind of sorting things out.
Dr. Don McMahon: it's still pretty early in this new paradigm shift that we're experiencing.
Dr. Don McMahon: This is my favorite proposition.
Dr. Don McMahon: just like, if we were little students at a school for
Dr. Don McMahon: wizards, we need time to practice and learn new skills.
Dr. Don McMahon: Too often as teachers, we are suddenly expected by our school district, or
Dr. Don McMahon: maybe at our building level to suddenly implement a new technology, we have delivered new software package to you overnight. Begin using it tomorrow in the classroom and realistically, for us to get good at using AI in the classroom.
Dr. Don McMahon: we really need to spend some time adapting and figuring out what it's good at, what it's not good at. There's some great examples of AI. There's also some use cases where it doesn't always do exactly what it needs to do. So it's important that we practice.
Dr. Don McMahon: And finally.
Dr. Don McMahon: my last little fun proposition here from the article. Are you ready for the remix? Just like
Dr. Don McMahon: when you hear a great remix of a song? And it's brand new again. I think one of the easiest ways get using artificial intelligence is to
Dr. Don McMahon: think of ways that you can use it to do things and enhance
Dr. Don McMahon: instructional activities that you're already doing? Are there ways that you could use chat Gtp to create a task analysis for your students, or to create a video model or to provide a structured writing assignment. For one of your classes. There absolutely are. And we're going to talk about some of those here in a few minutes. But the easiest way to get started
Dr. Don McMahon: isn't to think that AI is going to
Dr. Don McMahon: destroy your existing practices and make something entirely new. Think about it as a tool and a partner to help you take these activities.
Dr. Don McMahon: So.
Dr. Don McMahon: And as you can tell, I created my little graphic here with one of those AI generators.
Dr. Don McMahon: as we're talking about some of those limitations the number of times that it took to get this just right
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: was a lot. And frequently when I asked it to change. Just a few elements like make the people look like us. We get further and further away from
Dr. Don McMahon: spelling and everything else. So it would be.
Dr. Don McMahon: We're still very early in this technology. It was a good lesson for me as I was working on that.
Dr. Don McMahon: All right. I think it's Matt and Tony. Now
Tahnee Wilder: that is all we Don, do you mind? Continue? Yeah, thank you. Hi, everyone. My name is Tony Wilder, and I am a speech language pathologist, and a proud alumna of the ph. D. Program in special education from the University of Central Florida. And so, being a speech pathologist and wanting to understand the processes of what was happening in
Tahnee Wilder: education classroom. My research really focused on communication and educational technology.
Tahnee Wilder: And so my dissertation involved measuring self-regulation skills in an online setting. And I used eye tracking galvanic skin responses. But much like everyone in this room, we adapt very quickly. And educational technology wasn't what it was when I started the first program just 3 years ago. I really was eager to incorporate AI.
Tahnee Wilder: And so I utilized AI to rate students communication skills during an interview. And so what was interesting about my results was that we that we saw that our students would rather read the Content on a screen rather than engage with their communication partners. So that helped us.
Tahnee Wilder: That helped us understand
Tahnee Wilder: how to provide better instruction on in high, intense and high pressure conversations like interviewing. And so just like how I use AI to help rate communication skills. I think educators can continue to use AI to help brainstorm activities to increase their creativity and relatability.
Tahnee Wilder: I use Gpt to help break down the steps for any complex tasks.
Tahnee Wilder: and it's not just for for our students, but for us, too. Right? I also, I've also seen educators use chat, Gp and other AI to make assistive technologies.
Tahnee Wilder: assistive technology suggestions for any particular life lesson plan. So ultimately, we can use AI to help brainstorm our lesson plans and think proactively and use it as a thought partner rather than something that a major tool that we rely on
Tahnee Wilder: if you can advance
right? Thank you.
Tahnee Wilder: And so we've created a high, a handout highlighting some of the most powerful AI tools specifically for educators and researchers like yourselves. Those who are present in this webinar, if you scan the QR code, this should take you to a canva link with active hyperlinks. And so this is this is a pretty comprehensive. It contains about 20
Tahnee Wilder: a a 20 websites that will help you. Just brainstorm and utilize AI as a thought partner. So it can help you with things like creating presentations, even generating multimedia content that's culturally responsive and more specific to the needs of your students. And researching. Even, we've found some very great resources that can help us. Research like Drino had mentioned.
Tahnee Wilder: And so you should see this this handout pop up with active hyperlinks, and the ones that are noted with an asterisk are specific chat. Gbt plugins. So have fun. Be safe ethically, and I'm here to answer any questions that we may have.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Tony. This might be a great time if you don't mind to pause, because there are a lot of questions coming in. And I want to give people a chance to engage
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: So if you have a question for Tony about this this handout, just shoot that in the webinar chat, and I will. I will pause her and ask as we as we get them.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: okay, can you put the link to the QR. Code in the chat since she's accessing through her phone.
Tahnee Wilder: Yes, I absolutely can do that.
Tahnee Wilder: And also, this is this Pdf, is it available in the resources section after the webinar, but I can absolutely do that. Give me 1 min.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Thank you. But it was can help, too. Oh, thank you. Right there, thank you.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Okay, why don't you go ahead? And then, if there are.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: if we get the cascade of questions, I'll pause you.
Tahnee Wilder: Oh, these resources real quick, create udl lesson plans cause. I do know there is a udl AI which I was super excited to see. Umhm. I do think that with the power of AI. The power really relies on your prompt. And so, if you incorporate elements of Udl, the more specific it is, the better the outcome will be.
Tahnee Wilder: But I'm excited about the yeah yeah as well.
And you can also kind of customize and make your own
Dr. Don McMahon: Gpt, and like one of the things I do with mine is upload like the cast, like 2,012 udl guidelines that are like
Dr. Don McMahon: more like a 30 page document rather than just like the guidelines
Dr. Don McMahon: discuss in more detail, and then I'll ask it to make a lesson plan. Focusing on
Dr. Don McMahon: a few
Dr. Don McMahon: good. I want you to highlight these 3 udl guidelines. And it does a really nice job of that.
Dr. Matt: That's a good point done. And in addition to that, I would say that you can access multiple multiple websites like the cedar center or the iris center. If you want to call out, or even CC's evidence, based or high leverage practices. And if you drop those websites into your prompt and ask Chat Gbt to go explicitly to those sites, it will do that for you.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Okay, couple more questions coming in magic school. AI generates choice boards based on udl
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: and Dr. Claire, Hughes said in broad terms, you can ask Chat Gpt to create a Udl
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: lesson plan and provide justification, and it can do that. You can adjust it for your classroom and the prompt as well.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: And then somebody. Liz is asking, how is the accuracy of AI compilation tested?
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: How does my sort out incorrect?
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: This is a really good question.
Dr. Don McMahon: So how does AI sort incorrect information? The answer is most lots of the time. It will not. Yeah, I think. One. How many of you, when you put in an address on your GPS.
Dr. Don McMahon: Zoom out just to make sure that it makes logical sense, and that you're not being taken
Dr. Don McMahon: to like a bizarre destination outside of well outside where you want to go. Like to Portland, Oregon, instead of Portland, Maine. Yeah.
Dr. Don McMahon: you should probably do that same type of thing and just run like a basic logic check. I would never copy and paste text
Dr. Don McMahon: that I had not read into something. A good example of this is, I don't know if any of you saw it on the news yesterday. But Chat Gtp. Had a pretty significant failure where it
Dr. Don McMahon: released massively incorrect information and kind of hallucinated what? When it gets something very wrong, it's called an AI hallucination. I asked it for a summary of one of my colleagues Service accomplishments, and gave them their service statement
Dr. Don McMahon: it talked about their work in the National Security Administration, and then went on to muse about the complexity of time. It had lost its mind, and my friend also did not do any work for the National Security Administration.
Dr. Don McMahon: So
Dr. Don McMahon: that was a good, a great example of I'm glad I checked before I trusted any of that text, because it had really made some strange decisions.
Dr. Don McMahon: Matt, as we're talking about prompts, this might be.
Dr. Matt: Yeah, this is actually gets at your customization piece done. So. It when you go into chat. Gbt, if you click on your name in the bottom left hand corner of your screen. You're gonna have the option to go in and give Chat Gbt more information about yourself.
Dr. Matt: And so I found that after I gave it more explicit information. The responses I was getting to my prompts became much better. Right? So
Dr. Matt: if you look at the the first section up here where it says, customize your instructions. What would you like, chat? Gbt. To know?
Dr. Matt: I went in and told it a little bit about myself. It's kind of like speed dating with chat. G. Ppt, you go in, and you say, here's what I'd like you to know about me.
Dr. Matt: and then at at the second stage. It's going to say, how would you like me to respond to you? And you can go in and tell it how you'd like it to respond.
Dr. Matt: What I found was by elevating the language by using gre, and sat words.
Dr. Matt: The vocabulary in the responses was very quickly elevated.
Dr. Matt: so you can imagine. It took me
Dr. Matt: 5 to 10 min to come up with this script, and then run a couple of tests before I was happy with it.
Dr. Matt: and it is immeasurable, immeasurably better, now that I took the time to do that. So my first recommendation for all of you, if you haven't done this is to go ahead in there and do it.
Dr. Matt: I have a shameless plug I need to put in here for the Sidel center.
Dr. Matt: and the reason I'm doing that is because on the left side of the screen you'll see that there's a picture of me eating some key lime pie. We have a competition through the Sidel center where
Dr. Matt: folks are cooking and talking about technology and how the technology is being used with students. And so because I use that photo as the basis for the photo that's listed second here under the cartoon picture. I thought, well, what a great place for me to put a link to the sidel center. So if you're interested in learning more about technology and the types of work we do click on that link, it'll take you there.
Dr. Matt: Alright, Don, next.
Dr. Matt: Okay, we have 2 examples of prompts here. The first one write a lesson plan about cells. and the second one is develop a 50 min lesson plan for inclusive eighth Grade Science class goes on to be very detailed.
Dr. Matt: Tony touched on this, so I don't want to spend a lot of time on it, but I do want to say the more specific your prompt, the better the response will be. And if you, if you have a more explicit, prompt, and you've gone through and taken the time to put in the prompts for Chat Gp. Like you saw in the previous slide, it will make for a much better response for you.
Dr. Matt: Yeah. Next slide
Dr. Don McMahon: Yup. And if we wanted to add anything to this you could mention, like, I'd like to have these 2 assessment options available for multiple means of action and expression. The more detail you're added, you add into the prompt, the better off, we're going to be
Dr. Don McMahon: alright.
Dr. Don McMahon: So here's a quick example of what kind of a easy example of chat. Gtp, providing an personalized learning. So let's say I have a student who absolutely loves horses, and I have my prompt here is
Dr. Don McMahon: pretty generic. I'm asking for
Dr. Don McMahon: 5 word problems for middle schoolers that have horses in them as a theme or topic, and just like that, it gives me those. If I wanted to make it more specific, which would have probably been a lot better, I would say. I need.
Dr. Don McMahon: you know, these long, all to be long division problems involving horses in some way, and it will generate them.
Dr. Don McMahon: And you know you're still going to want to engage in some checks on logic on some of this but
Dr. Don McMahon: easy way for us to do some personalization for some of our students.
Dr. Don McMahon: So I just wanted to pull up a couple of examples. You know how we were talking about using
Dr. Don McMahon: Chat Gtp. To help support
Dr. Don McMahon: some of our evidence-based practices or high leverage practices. Let's look at a couple of examples in reality. Here in Chat, Gtp. 4. I've asked it to give me a task analysis of completing all the steps of using a dishwasher.
Dr. Don McMahon: And so, as I scroll through here
Dr. Don McMahon: pretty straightforward. It's a little busy
Dr. Don McMahon: for a lot of my students with intellectual disabilities that I work with, so I asked it to clean it up a little bit.
Dr. Don McMahon: I said, to remove the maintenance section. Dishwasher. Maintenance isn't something I want my students engaging in every time.
Dr. Don McMahon: And I asked it to just order these as steps.
Dr. Don McMahon: still a little busy. But it's a whole. It's gonna be a whole lot easier for me.
Dr. Don McMahon: To create this task analysis and then edit or have chat Gtp, create it for me.
Dr. Don McMahon: and then
Dr. Don McMahon: go through this process and edit it down a little bit. I found that the free version and the paid version both do a nice job of making task analysis. And I haven't noticed a huge difference in the 2.
Dr. Don McMahon: But
Dr. Don McMahon: and let's look at a video modeling example. So
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: let me pause you. We have a couple of questions coming in. Somebody said for the task analysis, could you? I think it's for the task analysis. Could you use images instead?
Dr. Don McMahon: Yeah, I could ask it to generate pictures for that.
Dr. Don McMahon: A lot of the video examples are actually static pictures that are spliced through a video. So that would work.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Okay? And then somebody asked, are these examples from the free version?
Dr. Don McMahon: These examples right now are from I pay. I pay for it. So a lot of these examples are but for a task analysis. Again, I'm not seeing a huge
Dr. Don McMahon: difference what I generally find.
Dr. Don McMahon: I find much more of a difference in longer writing assignments.
Dr. Don McMahon: and it's analysis work like in Pdf. Documents between the free and paid version.
Dr. Don McMahon: And then let's look at example from that involves some video modeling.
Dr. Don McMahon: I asked it to create a
Dr. Don McMahon: video model of the phases of the moon, something a little bit more academic in nature
Dr. Don McMahon: and hit created.
Dr. Don McMahon: and the full moon. It casts a shadow on the moon, creating a lunar eclipse.
Dr. Don McMahon: It's like earth, saying, Hey, moon, let me steal the spotlight for a moment.
Dr. Don McMahon: This can only happen during a full moon, turning it a reddish color as it passes through earth's shadow, a celestial event not to be missed.
Dr. Don McMahon: Each phase, a step in the moon's never ending. Dance around earth illuminated by the sun. Watch the sky, and you'll see this beautiful cycle and the awe inspiring eclipse unfold.
Dr. Don McMahon: Welcome to the moon's
Dr. Don McMahon: not bad for a prompt of. I need you to explain the phases of the moon, and then also explain how a lunar eclipse works.
Dr. Don McMahon: If I didn't like a particular part of this, let's say, one of the video models I had to make was explain the steps of making spaghetti. And one of the videos was someone wearing spaghetti on their head.
Dr. Don McMahon: I'm going to take out the clip of the person with spaghetti on their head, because, while that was cute and adorable, for whatever reason.
Dr. Don McMahon: probably not a great fit for my goals, so if I do need to make any changes here, I could click here on the subtitles and change the subtitles. I could delete one of these videos, and, let's say, insert one of my own examples if I needed to. But
Dr. Don McMahon: for any of us who have been in the field for a while, and, you know, used to make video models with a video camera and then have to move over to computer edit and do all that. I when I started doing video models, I'd used to have to roll down a TV the size
Dr. Don McMahon: of, you know, a steamer chest down to the cafeteria to play it. You know the ipad made my life a lot better for things like that. But this is a great starting place for making a video model it could be something academic
Dr. Don McMahon: for those of us who don't enjoy writing social narratives. It does a really nice job of creating social narratives. One of our evidence based practices there. So keep those in mind as well.
Dr. Don McMahon: Alright. Let's talk any questions before we get into AI cautions and concerns.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Somebody was asking if there was a training for chat gpt newbies, which I think it's a great question other than just playing around with it. There, if you were to look up
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: AI resources for teachers, you could go down a very deep rabbit hole.
Dr. Don McMahon: Somebody asked, what platform. Did you use to create the video? Is it Openai? Yeah, it was on Openai. And it was
Dr. Don McMahon: this one called Video GPT.
Dr. Don McMahon: And there are a couple of these video creators. If you click on explore gpts.
Dr. Don McMahon: there are a couple of these. There are lots for
Dr. Don McMahon: image creation. They're all under this section here called Dolly. There's some for writing productivity.
Dr. Don McMahon: Several in education that Tony mentioned earlier. And if you type in video, you will get a nice list of them. So, Video Creator.
Dr. Don McMahon: some of these will summarize a Youtube video. So one of the first ones on the resource list that Tony provided will take a Youtube video and create a summary and a transcript for you. So let's say you needed a good transcript for a video that didn't already have one. It will generate one for you. You probably want to read it and make sure that it does it correctly. But
Dr. Don McMahon: it's a good first step.
Tahnee Wilder: Yeah, I'll also add that AI can be very overwhelming. So we tried to condense the top AI websites, the top 20 AI websites and we couldn't just stop there, or we had to stop at 20. So hopefully, the the handout with that, with the icons will help direct everyone to with the starting point.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Right? And this is why we're spreading out the webinars, and we're also having an affinity gathering which is very informal. So we can all talk right about what we're doing and what you know.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: because it's all new to everybody.
Dr. Don McMahon: Yep.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: So mindful of the time.
Dr. Don McMahon: Yeah. alright.
Dr. Don McMahon: we're gonna get to joy. We're gonna get to your question. I believe here in our AI cautions and concerns.
Dr. Don McMahon: it definitely doesn't always provide accurate information. As you can see here our image that was generated.
Dr. Don McMahon: As we mentioned earlier, there's an explosion of the Special Education mentor or special education. Iep writers, lesson plan helpers. Some of them might be good. Some of them may
Dr. Don McMahon: be, including more bias or
Dr. Don McMahon: problems than we initially know. I think
Dr. Don McMahon: I'd encourage us all to be cautious. There.
Dr. Don McMahon: This is a quick example, and then I'm gonna hand it off to Matt about some of these concerns.
Dr. Don McMahon: I asked it recently. Since we're talking about in higher education, or a to help me find 10 articles on Udl implementation in higher education.
Dr. Don McMahon: It generated 10 articles about udl implementation and higher education for me.
Dr. Don McMahon: 7 of those it had completely made up.
Dr. Don McMahon: For example, this one here with Kavita Rao. She does great work.
Dr. Don McMahon: This does. But the article.
Dr. Don McMahon: It just made it up.
Dr. Don McMahon: You know that journal exists. That's a great title. I would love to read that article
Dr. Don McMahon: just totally made it up, and you should be cautious even when I prompted it. Hey? I need you to make sure those things are actually existing
Dr. Don McMahon: the right. After that it generated another list for me several
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: more. It just made up. I love distance in your question.
Dr. Don McMahon: Yeah.
Dr. Don McMahon: Matt.
Dr. Matt: Ethical consideration. So I was in Washington, DC. With Dr. Jamie Vasham and Dr. Trey Vasquez at the Higher education consortium of special education
Dr. Matt: back in January, and we were going to different representatives offices across the Hill.
Dr. Matt: What we found when we started asking questions about ethics was
Dr. Matt: that just about everybody was referring us to a subcommittee on AI.
Dr. Matt: But there was no representation from education on that subcommittee which we found to be deeply concerning. So I wanna reach out to everyone who's on this webinar and let you know
Dr. Matt: that, as of now, there's very, very little representation from education in any of the A. I. Ethical conversations that are happening in Washington, DC.
Dr. Matt: We have a through this little center. We're putting together an AI blueprint that has a chapter on Ethical Considerations. We will be rolling that out at CC. In San Antonio this year. We had a very talented group of authors working on that, and I've summarized the work that all those authors did in 4 bullet points here
Dr. Matt: that distill kind of the ideas. But there's a much more sophisticated and nuanced article coming. We hope that all of you are going to
Dr. Matt: read that. Look at it, see what you think about it in practice in your local schools, and then give us feedback because we're looking at it as a work in progress. Someone had to get out there and write this chapter.
Dr. Matt: and we thought it should be us, since there was no one else talking about it in education
Dr. Matt: wouldn't want to things up. Go ahead, go ahead, Don.
Dr. Don McMahon: and we've got several questions in the chat about
Dr. Don McMahon: ethics, Sarah, do you wanna read those? Or I can.
Dr. Don McMahon: You're muted sorry.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: You would think I have figured that out by now. There's a whole conversation in the chat about equity issues, and I. And I think that could come up in our responded summaries as well, because we could really have an entire webinar just on the bias inherent bias that exists, and ethical considerations of using other people's art without their permission, or even photographs.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: and all the deep fake stuff that's going on. And that is one of the reasons why we I kind of put in the chat in all caps. I didn't mean to shout at you, but I wanted to get my point across. Never put your students images in there. Never put their names and information in there because of the risks of Deepfake. They're real so I wanna make sure that we give time for for Lisa and Claire and Shawn also weigh in
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: is now a good time for them to do that or yes.
Dr. Lisa Dieker: okay, so I'll do just a short, quick summary. And you know, thanks, Tony, Don and Matt, and I know Matt. Now why you're wearing a tie so you could match for superman suit there. Cause that was the fun image to see if you might. But you know, when Covid hit one of my local schools that I worked with. You know, I definitely said to the superintendent, keep calm and teach on, and they need T-shirts. With that I think kind of the theme today is, keep calm and AI on, you know. Figure it out. No.
Dr. Lisa Dieker: I know there's there's issues. We, you know, we've dumped off a lot of clips in this society lately. I don't want to be a cliff jumper, but I also don't want to miss out on an opportunity. And you know, I think in the article, Matt, that you led and that we published, you know Dave, Eddie Byrne talks about Tech as a prosthetic.
Dr. Lisa Dieker: And you know, I think this is a prosthetic for site, sound cognition, physical environmental access. But I think we do have to worry that it's being done for all. Equally, I think, too many times we fix a tool for one population.
Dr. Lisa Dieker: and we turn around and alienate another. You know, we make text to speech, but then the brow reader can't read it or we lower the lexile. But we forget to raise the lexile. So kids are gifted. And I think that's what we need to think about with AI. I know we've been doing that with buildings, but I just feel like the generative AI tools are happening so fast that the accessibility of these tools is just unknown at this point in time.
Dr. Lisa Dieker: I I've learned a new term lately called trilingual tools, and I think this is going to be quad lingering tools and UN ended linguing tools. You know the ability to have multiple languages, and my heart goes out to those teachers on the call where you've got kids that speak 40 languages in your school. And how do you reach them all. I think AI can get us there, but we do have to be cautious. I thought I would just give a quick little laugh in my short summary, too. I thought
Dr. Lisa Dieker: this morning I was coming. I was like, I'm gonna think about how I use AI in the first hour of my day, so that you can kinda keep common. AI on, you know. Well, first of all, I got up to Alexa with some music. I won't tell you what kind. You have to figure that out on your own if you don't know me. I went to get an eye exam. And it it was at 8 20, but I was to be there at 805 to check in at 806, because I was 60 s late. AI generated a message that says if you're canceling the
Dr. Lisa Dieker: appointment, call us immediately. That's like I'm in the parking lot, people. But you know some person wasn't sitting there 60 s before my appointment going. I need to type right away and remind her she's got to be here. And then I had a portrait made today for my new job here, and 15 min before AI told me where to go, how to get there, and even told me the elevator was how I got to the second floor because there isn't stairs
Dr. Lisa Dieker: I was like, isn't this interesting? So I got all kinds of it. I then took the elevator which pinged on each floor, which drove me crazy, cause it was a brand new elevator. I wanted it to say I was on floor 2 floor 3. So good example of AI being there, but it's not quite yet the right AI and again a eyes all around you. I got to work immediately and got an ad. As I open my website for new glasses. Isn't it interesting that it knew I'd been at the Eye doctor that morning? And then I went
into chat Tpt, and I, truly, actually, I did Google Gemini and I took one of my colleagues. Cv. And said, Can you please help me write a letter recommendation for an award she's about to receive.
Dr. Lisa Dieker: That was my first hour today. And, and, by the way, it's a much better letter than I would have written in the last 100 years, and it took me less than 60 s. So again I took the letter down. I cleaned it up. I changed it. I rearranged it. But again, I just wanted to remind you, this isn't something. So I love Don's statement. Don't techno panic. You're using it all day, every day. This webinar is just to remind you there's new ways, new spaces out there. I think it's the blending of the human, and for those of you who are teachers
Dr. Lisa Dieker: out there writing lesson plans, writing really specific IP goals. I'm a parent of a kid with a disability. I would not be offended if you said, Take the Massachusetts standards for algebra 2, and write an IP golf doesn't know the multiplication fax with fluency.
Dr. Lisa Dieker: That's not cheating. That's giving you the time to spend more time teaching that kid those skills. And I think that's where we're going. And so my last little statement is that you know, if teachers in Finland only have to teach 600 h, and teachers in the Us. Have to teach 1,080, I think we need more and more. AI use that becomes their AI mentor, the AI friend, their AI tutor, to give you more time to do what you do, which is a human touch that kids need. And I think that's really where we're going. So those are my thoughts.
Dr. Claire Hughes: Alright.
Dr. Claire Hughes: Thank thank you. Thank you, Lisa.
Dr. Claire Hughes: Thank you, Lisa. I think I'm next. I'm clear, Hughes. I'm the president of the Association for the Gifted, and
Dr. Claire Hughes: Dr. Matt talked about something that I that I perked up quite a bit at. He talked about unlocking creativity through AI, and and being able to sort of use AI as a way of of creating of creating things.
Dr. Claire Hughes: And and I was also struck because the mind map that you talked about in terms of the instructional instructional strategies. There's a tremendous number of high order thinking skills that are right there. And that's why I'm here. That's why I'm I'm so excited about AI, because
Dr. Claire Hughes: if we include and we work with gifted education teachers on sessions about using AI to deliver and develop courses with kids with disabilities and diverse needs in the classroom. It's an incredible addition for
Dr. Claire Hughes: E, comprehensive and inclusive educational environment, primarily, because in in ways that we can't even think about yet. But
Dr. Claire Hughes: gifted education teachers bring a really unique perspective to the table
Dr. Claire Hughes: because they they emphasize strength, space, education, which recognizes and and develops individual talents and and abilities. So rather than focusing on gaps. There's a real focus on, why are we closing those gaps? The purpose for closing gaps is to develop what kids can do.
Dr. Claire Hughes: And and we can. We can think about how AI powered tools are designed not just to address those gaps, but to really build on the strengths of kids, particularly kids from diverse backgrounds.
Dr. Claire Hughes: gifted education teachers there have had expertise and talents and
Dr. Claire Hughes: really helping AI reach the broad variety of of learners.
Dr. Claire Hughes: And I think it's really important that we think about technology, not just as a as a means of making learning accessible, but as a way to challenge and inspire each student to move beyond where where they are currently and where they could be.
Dr. Sean Smith: Thank you, Claire. Well said, thank you, great. So II have a minute to wrap things up.
Dr. Sean Smith: Yes, okay. So I'm gonna continue. II said at the beginning when we were prepping for this, I had a minute and they all left. And here I am with a minute. So I just wanna emphasize a few things. So Sean Smith University, Kansas colleague with Matt with the Sidel center, Lisa's little analogies and turns out she started. The day to me is a reinforcer of what Matt and everyone else has shared today, and that is this is nothing new.
Dr. Sean Smith: Yes, we tend to think. Chat Gp. In November of 2022 was the introduction of AI. But no, we've had AI in our lives for years, and just kind of reinforcement of that, and respect to where we are. And of course it'll only continue to evolve the other thing I want to reinforce as a technologist has always worked with educators and increasingly working with educators, integrate technology. Oftentimes it comes up. I don't have the time.
Dr. Sean Smith: And yet, if anything today reinforce the fact that this is actually a time saver. I also often emphasize. I'm a parent awful of a child down syndrome. I want technology to be used, not only because it's effective, but also it's efficient.
Dr. Sean Smith: And I think there's AI elements right now that can take text and level it and bring it to a reading level with a snap very quickly. So it's a time element, too, that can be very, very effective. And the other thing I want to emphasize to me to to what to talk about today is we haven't talked about assistive technology or instructional technology, AI believe, is very much blending the element of the fact that
Dr. Sean Smith: very much it is a technology and then very much useful for all individuals, particularly struggling learners and those with disabilities. And finally, I want to reinforce the fact that that crosswalk, and when we think about Oh, my gosh! This new AI tool here. There's no AI tool here. How do I begin thinking about using them?
Dr. Sean Smith: Going back to that theme that many of our speakers reinforce? Think of our evidence based practices or high leverage practices that we're utilizing and crosswalk it over to an AI feature that can be able to facilitate further implement it and integrate it, and I'm beyond time. Thank you very much.
Dr. Matt: Good point.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: We squeeze so much into 60 min.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: II but it's like it is sometimes like drinking from a fire hose for AI. I wanna thank you all as presenters and discussions for your knowledge and your expertise, and I would like to also congratulate Dr. Tony Wilder for her new Doctorate.
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: Yay, and thank you to all of you. I consider you my AI nerd friends. Now we're besties, so I will hope to see you and many of the participants at our Cec affinity gathering
Dr. Sean Smith: in San Antonio.
Dr. Sean Smith: I knew you were. Gonna ask me that it is on the program. I believe it's Thursday. I think it's Thursday afternoon.
Dr. Sean Smith: And if I'm wrong I'll send out a correction for those unfamiliar. It's in San Antonio, March thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and Sixteenth. There you go, Brooke. I do have advertisement for the convention.
Dr. Don McMahon: We'll try to post it on the tag and Iset and Ted Facebook pages and other social media outlets. I imagine
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: it's Thursday at 3 15 Texas time. Yeah. So on an Eastern time. It looks like it's in the not even thing here at my end. But yes, 3, 30 Thursday and San Antonio. We will see you there.
Dr. Matt: Thanks for joining us everybody. We really appreciate it.
Brooke Massey, CEC Staff: Thanks everyone. And if you're still hanging on as attendee reminder, you will receive a follow up email with information on how to access the recording, the slides, the hand that's the links. I will probably put the chat document up there, too, because it was just robust with thoughts and questions, and I loved it. So thank you. To these amazing experts, such good content. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much to isette
Brooke Massey, CEC Staff: Tag and Ted for putting this on and for letting Cec just give you the zoom to do it with. Really, y'all did all the work, and you're so great. So thank you so so much, and everyone have a great rest of your day.
Dr. Matt: Bye, everybody. Bye, thanks
Dr. Sarah K. Howorth: bye, guys.