For Makenzie Gilkyson, spelling is so difficult that words like rhinoceros are sometimes called “lineanthesaurus” or, ironically, “sulkastic.”
The 14-year-old from the Indianapolis suburbs can pronounce words, but because of her dyslexia, she often struggles to understand them because the process is so laborious. “I just thought I was stupid,” she recalled of her early elementary school years.
But thanks to assistive technology powered by artificial intelligence, she was able to keep up with her classmates. Last year, Makenzie was named to the National Junior Honor Society. She credits customized AI-powered chatbots, word prediction programs, and other text-to-speech tools.
“If I didn’t have them, I probably would have given up,” she said.
Artificial intelligence has the potential to help countless students with a variety of visual, speech, language, and hearing disabilities. perform a task It is easily transmitted to others. Every school is struggling Where and how to incorporate AIHowever, many are rapid tracking applications for students with disabilities.
Providing the latest technology for students with disabilities is a priority for the U.S. Department of Education, which tells schools: must be considered Whether students need tools such as text-to-speech or alternative communication devices. Under new Justice Department rules, schools and other government agencies can also create apps and Access online content To people with disabilities.
There are concerns about how to ensure that students who use it, including those with disabilities, can learn.
Students can use artificial intelligence to organize jumbled thoughts into summaries, summarize complex texts, and even translate Shakespeare into common English. Additionally, computer-generated voices that can read text for students with visual impairments or dyslexia are becoming less robotic and more natural.
“A lot of students seem to be exploring on their own, almost feeling like they’ve discovered a cheat code for a video game,” said Alexis Reed, an educational therapist who works with students in the Boston area. he says. Learning disabilities. But in her view, that’s far from the case. cheating: “We meet students where they are.”
Ben Snyder, a 14-year-old freshman from Larchmont, New York, who was recently diagnosed with a learning disability, is increasingly using AI to help him with his homework.
“In math class, sometimes the teacher will explain the problem to you, but it makes no sense at all,” he said. “If you apply that problem to AI, you have multiple different ways of explaining how to do it.”
He likes a program called Question AI. Earlier in the day, he asked the program to help him write an outline for his book report. This task would have otherwise taken an hour and a half, as I struggled with the writing and organization. But he believes using AI to create entire reports crosses a line.
“That’s just cheating,” Ben said.
Schools are trying to balance the benefits of technology with the risks of overreach. If reading comprehension is a goal set in a special education plan, students need to improve that skill. Mary Lawson, general counsel for the Metropolitan Council of Schools, said AI can’t do that for them.
But the technology could help level the playing field for students with disabilities, says a Minnesota-based company where families can try out a variety of assistive technology tools or rent devices. said Paul Sanft, director of the center.
“There will definitely be people who will use some of these tools in nefarious ways. That happens all the time,” Sanft said. “But I don’t think that’s the biggest concern for people with disabilities. They’re just trying to do something they haven’t been able to do before.”
Another risk is that AI could track students and steer them into less rigorous courses of study. And because he’s so good at it pattern identificationAI may be able to detect when a student has a disability. Luis Perez, director of disability and digital inclusion at the Center for Accessible Technology, said disclosing it to an AI rather than to students and their families could pose ethical dilemmas.
Schools are using this technology to help students who are struggling academically, even if they don’t qualify for special education services. In Iowa, a new law requires students deemed not proficient (about a quarter) to have individual reading plans. As part of that effort, the state Department of Education spent $3 million on an AI-powered tutoring program. When a student struggles, a digital avatar intervenes.
More AI tools are coming soon.
The National Science Foundation funds research and development in AI. A company is developing tools to help children with language disorders. Called the National AI Institute for Exceptional Education, the institute is headquartered at the University at Buffalo and has pioneered work in handwriting recognition, helping the U.S. Postal Service save hundreds of millions of dollars by automating processes. .
“We can solve postal applications with very high accuracy. When it comes to children’s handwriting, we fail horribly,” said Venu Govindaraju, director of the institute. He believes further work is needed in this area, along with speech synthesis technology, which is not good at understanding children’s voices, especially if they have language disorders.
Classify the vast number of programs developed by educational technology companies This can be a time-consuming challenge for schools. Richard Clutter, CEO of the International Association for Educational Technology, said the nonprofit began an effort this fall to scrutinize what school districts buy and ensure access.
Makenzie wishes some tools were easier to use. Sometimes a feature mysteriously turns off, leaving you unable to use it for a week until our technical team investigates. The assignments are so tedious that some students resist technology altogether.
But Nadine Gilkyson, Makenzie’s mother, who works as a technology integration supervisor at Franklin Township Community School Corporation in Indiana, said she thinks the upside outweighs the downside.
In September, her district implemented a chatbot to assist high school special education students. She said teachers, who sometimes struggle to provide students with the support they need, were emotional when they heard about the program. Until now, students had to rely on someone to help them, and were unable to move forward on their own.
“There’s no need to wait any longer,” she said.
___
Associated Press education coverage receives funding from private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP standard To cooperate with charity activities, list AP.org supporters and number of funded coverage areas.
