Breaking Barriers: Exploring Inclusive Education with Dr. Yenda Prado

Dr. Yenda Prado is an edtech researcher, educator, and author, whose work focuses on exploring the social uses of emerging edtech to support children’s inclusion across complex learning environments.

She has written and advised on inclusive technology use in education and media for diverse organizations including the U.S. Department of Education, PBS Kids, and the University of California.

Dr. Prado also serves as a Ready to Learn Consultant Advisor for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In this role, she has advised on various projects including research and development for Lyla in the Loop – a children’s animated series highlighting critical and computational thinking skills - which will debut February 5 2024 on PBS KIDS.

As the former Emerging Technologies Impact Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education, Dr. Prado supported the development of national edtech policy and investigated emerging technology trends for the Office of Educational Technology. In this role, she developed the EdTech Evidence Toolkit to amplify policies, practices, and resources that support evidence-building activities for effective edtech adoption in schools.

She is currently finishing writing a first-authored book for MIT Press titled “Voices on the Margins: Inclusive Education at the Intersection of Language, Literacy, and Technology” - which will be released Spring 2024.

Previously, Dr. Prado served as a research fellow with PBS KIDS, an education researcher with the UC Irvine Digital Learning Lab, and as an ESL teacher and reading interventionist in California libraries and schools.

Yenda holds a Ph.D. in Education from the University of California, Irvine, an Ed.M. in Education from Harvard University, and a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University.

Recommended Resources:
Voices on the Margins: Inclusive Education at the Intersection of Language, Literacy, and Technology By Yenda Prado and Mark Warschauer
Common-Sense Evidence by Nora Gordon and Carrie Conaway
CAST

Transcript

Alexander Sarlin: 0:05

Welcome to Season Seven of Edtech Insiders. The show where we cover the education technology industry in depth every week and speak to thought leaders, founders, investors, and operators in the Edtech field. I'm Alex Sarlin.

Ben Kornell: 0:20

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Alexander Sarlin: 0:48

Dr. Yenda Prado is an edtech, researcher, educator and author. This work focuses on exploring the social uses of emerging edtech to support children's inclusion across complex learning environments. She has written and advised on inclusive technology use in education and media for diverse organizations, including the US Department of Education, PBS Kids and the University of California. She serves as a ready to learn consultant advisor for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, where she's advised on various projects including research and development for Lila in the loop, a children's animated series highlighting critical and computational thinking skills that will debut February 2024 on PBS Kids. As the former emerging technologies impact Fellow at the US Department of Education, Dr. Prado supported the development of national edtech policy and investigated emerging technology trends for the Office of Educational Technology. She also developed the EdTech evidence toolkit to amplify policies, practices and resources that support evidence building activities for effective edtech adoption in schools. Dr. Prado is currently finishing her first authored book for MIT Press, which will be released spring 2024. It's titled voices on the margins inclusive education at the intersection of language literacy and technology. Yenda also holds a PhD in education from the University of California Irvine, a master's in education from Harvard University and a BA in Psychology from Stanford University. She previously worked as an ESL teacher and reading interventionist, and education researcher at the UC Irvine Digital Learning Lab, and a research fellow Dr. Yenda Prado, Welcome to EdTech insiders.

Yenda Prado: 2:34

Thanks so much for having me, Alex.

Alexander Sarlin: 2:36

Yeah, thanks for being here. We first contacted each other and sort of met in the context of these AI guidelines from the Office of Education Technology, which you were absolutely core to. But you do a lot of different things. You have an upcoming book called voices on the margins about the intersection of language literacy and technology in inclusive education. So I want to start there. Can you give us a taste of that book? What are some of the key findings and insights from your research that you cover in this book, which is coming out in just a couple of months? Absolutely,

Yenda Prado: 3:10

I would love to talk about the book. First, I want to say that the research for voices on the margins took place before during and after the pandemic, which provided many diverse opportunities to observe how teachers, students and parents were pivoting and shifting in their uses of technologies in the book, my co author, Mark, or shower, and I really wanted to know how digital technologies could be used in schools to promote access and inclusion, particularly in the context of knowing that over 30% of students with disabilities spend at least 20% of their instructional time and segregated classrooms. So with this in mind, voices on the margins focuses on three things. First, the kinds of social structures that allow a fully inclusive environment to thrive. Second, the ways that digital technologies can be used to help students express their agency and voice. And third, the ways that digital technologies can be used to foster stronger networks and connections between students, teachers, staff and parents. So essentially, we found that students were most included when digital technologies were used collaboratively. So this probably is not a surprise. But this included collaborative uses of digital technologies that were originally designed for one to one uses such as assistive and communication devices for minimally speaking students. We found that because the school culture encouraged all students and teachers, not just those with disabilities, but all to learn how to use a system to acknowledges together, these technologies became magnets for social inclusion and connection rather than a source of othering. As often happens when only a handful of students know how to use and use assistive devices in school environments, we also found that students, teachers and parents were incredible innovators, and how they translated their use of mainstream technologies beyond what those technologies were originally designed to do. So think something like zoom, right, which was originally designed to be a conferencing interface and ended up being used for teaching and learning. So translation of mainstream technologies beyond their original designs, to support shifts in teaching environments and modalities during both the initial and later stages of the pandemic. And in all of this, we also explored the ethical and privacy questions that arose from allowing schools into students homes, and vice versa. Through the use of video technologies, there was a lot of boundary shifting, and transferring of responsibility for teaching and learning, particularly between teachers and parents during this time, that we were able to capture in our observations of how technology was being used to include and support students, particularly during the pandemic.

Alexander Sarlin: 6:34

This moment this, as you say, pre during and post pandemic moment, you we've talked on this show a lot about how it was just such a paradigm shift for so many people. And some of the things I'm hearing you say, like, people having to adapt mainstream technology to educational use cases? Absolutely. There's a sort of refocus on inclusion, and how do you get everybody on the same page, I love the, what you said, if I capturing it correctly, about, you know that making these assistive devices and these collaborative technologies, instead of them being only available to students who you know, may need them, they're available to everybody, everybody's trained on them. And that just makes such a more inclusive environment. I feel like that coming out of the pandemic is a really interesting, you know, hopefully silver lining kind of byproduct where people got so much more comfortable with technology, that they're able to weave it into education in ways that had never been true before. Is that what you saw as you talk to all these people during the book writing? Well,

Yenda Prado: 7:32

it's very interesting, because a lot of the people that I talked to fall into a couple of different buckets, we had the early adopters, for whom what you just said absolutely applies. And we had what we were calling the Late Bloomers or sort of our reluctant users, the people that you know, really needed a lot of substantive support, to be able to even understand and use technology to support teaching and learning, particularly in the remote context that we saw during the pandemic. And we saw varying levels of adoption, even beyond there were a few of our early adopters who were very thoughtful about what this meant for post pandemic, teaching and learning and had already developed ways to incorporate it into their curriculum moving forward. And we also had teachers that whether they were early adopters or late bloomers said, you know why the technology served its purpose for what it needed to do in that time. By, you know, honestly, my integration will be more mindful, because there's no way for it not to be by it will not necessarily be a central component to the teaching that I do. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin: 8:54

that makes sense. There's a, you know, wide spectrum, and I think, you know, the pandemic for some of the late bloomers the sort of kicking and screaming crowd into the technology bucket. But as you say, we have definitely seen some pullback, where as soon as the pandemic is over, and we're back to a lot of in person teaching, you know, some teachers just jettison the technology and get back to their comfort zone and other say, hey, let's make this part of our work going forward. I want to get into a little bit of your background, you have such an interesting, extensive work, experience and academic experience. You've worked with organizations like PBS Kids, certainly the US Department of Ed and the Office of Education Technology, and you know, a lot of it has been focused on inclusive learning environments. Can you give us just a quick overview of some of the through lines of your career and then talk about how, you know, emerging technologies are playing a role with inclusive environments and in language and literacy development?

Yenda Prado: 9:47

Yeah, absolutely. So I love this question, because I think it's so important to understand where a person where an educator is coming from in the work that they do be because that informs their values, their mission and their vision for the work. So I actually am a migrant to the US, I came to the US when I was five. And early on, I was not only designated as an English language learner, but also identified as having a learning disability. So I experienced firsthand what it was like to navigate the US system. And you know, being very young Gen X sir, I did it right at that cusp, where technology was just becoming a thing. And, you know, teachers were just starting to really tinker with it. And I just, I remember my personal experiences with technology, the ways that it helped and did not help. I remember sort of that personal trajectory through the school system. And I am reminded of that, and I remind myself of that, because I want to remain very mission driven and the types of opportunities that I take on. So that informed my decision to become a reading interventionist and support, reading intervention. For students with reading difficulties. I did that in California schools and libraries, as well as by getting a master's degree in education with a reading intervention focus from Harvard. From there, I decided to really dive into what it meant to develop programming that was inclusive for students with multiple needs. And that led me to a lot of work a lot of directorship work, supporting program development and teacher professional development. From there, I ended up going back to school and never thought I would go back. But I ended up going back again, to get my PhD in education, again, with a focus on inclusive uses of digital technologies to support students with differing abilities and needs. And in that academic environment, I made many interesting connections, one of which led to the book deal with MIT Press to write and publish voices on the margins, which will be coming out spring 2020. For that also set me up for some of the children's media literacy work I've been doing with Corporation for Public Broadcasting PBS Kids, as well as the fellowship that I very recently completed with the Department of Ed at OE t. So that's a little bit of my background. And it's

Alexander Sarlin: 12:37

fascinating. Yeah. And so you know, you're informed by your personal lived experience, both as designated as an English language learner and having learning challenges or difficulties at times, you obviously empathize and really understand your learners in a lot of different ways. Tell us about sort of how your work at all of these places in your PhD program at PBS and Corporation for Public Broadcasting really seeks to serve children who face unique learning challenges, especially around language and literacy.

Yenda Prado: 13:09

Right. So I'll answer that question and then sort of dovetail into your other question about specific examples of emerging tech, making your act in the space. So the focus of my work is really on looking at the social uses of digital technologies. Oftentimes, in the space of Ad Tech Research, the focus is on features functionality, and sort of the actual nuts and bolts of specific apps themselves. I'm more interested in what it means globally to be an effective technology enabled intervention. You know, I'm more interested in looking more globally at features and uses that promote inclusion. Because I think that when we understand more globally, what it means to be an effective attack tool, we can then apply that to not just a variety of tools, but apply it more broadly to our practices as well. So I like to think of the work that I do in a more global socially oriented manner. And of course, as you mentioned, the focus of that work really is on the support of all students, including students with and without disabilities, because technology has the potential to really lend towards helping with the personalization of teaching and learning for kids with diverse abilities and needs. So with regards to specific examples of how emerging tech can make these kinds of positive impacts, I definitely believe that emerging technologies have the potential How to greatly benefit the language and literacy development of children. And I'll share a couple of examples that come to mind. So first, and this is kind of an obvious one, speech recognition and voice assistance, we are seeing a lot of experimentation and user design research involving voice controlled devices and applications like Siri Alexa or google assistant to support children's language and literacy development. And we know that emerging research has suggested that these technologies can assist in improving children's communication skills, particularly for English language learners and students with disabilities. Another one, which I'll talk a little bit more about later, is augmented reality and virtual reality. There's been an increasing exploration of AR and VR applications, which as you know, can immerse children in educational environments that make language and literacy development more engaging, more interactive, particularly so for children who might benefit from being exposed to content in multiple ways and formats. And finally, we have tools that are being powered by natural language processing, just a form of AI enabled learning. So tools powered by natural language processing are also being studied in the context of developing digital supports, for example, for children's writing development, as tools can analyze and provide feedback to help children improve their grammar and writing skills. These tools can also adapt to individual learning needs and offer personalized instruction.

Alexander Sarlin: 16:41

That promise of personalization is something that we've you know, has been a little bit of a Xanadu Holy Grail of the ed tech world for decades, you know, and people have been trying to figure it out. And, but it's really encouraging to hear you name all of these cutting edge technologies, you know, AR VR, natural language processing, obviously, you know, the whole AI suite that's out there, and various types of things that are happening and say, we might actually have a route to personalization for students with a wide variety of learning needs. I'd love to talk more about some of these new technologies. But it was something that stood out to me is your role as a ready to learn consultant advisor for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting around a new animated series called Lila in the loop, which is about critical and computational thinking. You've mentioned AR VR natural language processing some of these really deep technologies, how do you see Television Animation digital media as a means of transforming the way we teach skills to young learners?

Yenda Prado: 17:42

I love this question. So thank you for asking it. I definitely believe that digital media is transforming the way that we teach and promote essential skills like problem solving and critical thinking for young learners. And I'd love to outline several ways that it's doing that, first of all, thoughtfully designed, children's media should facilitate opportunities for quality intergenerational learning between children and their caregivers. So this is the hallmark of the kinds of quality shows that we see for example, on PBS PBS Kids. In the case of CPB funded content. This includes providing viewers with problem solving challenges that encourage critical thinking, particularly for young children who are co viewing the content with their caregivers. Secondly, quality children's content should also promote exposure to culturally diverse perspectives by using media to connect children with diverse role model characters and peers. This multicultural perspective encourages critical thinking by challenging preconceived notions and also by fostering cultural awareness. So this is particularly important for children's media organizations, like PBS PBS Kids, whose mission is actually to ensure that all children across the United States see themselves represented in their content with a focus specifically on families who are typically excluded from or lack access to educational opportunity. Finally, I think the multimodal nature of quality children's digital media presents information across multiple formats, such as video animation, simulation games, it should, right. So this multimedia approach caters to children's a diverse learning needs and can help kids engage with complex concepts. So with the use of two digital games, for example, children are motivated through tinkering and play, to think critically and solve problems as they progress through game based activities. And we see this in the development of series and gaming content, for example, with Lila in the loop, which does promote children's problems solving of everyday problems. And in the case of Lila in the loop also demonstrates computational thinking in daily life.

Alexander Sarlin: 20:30

Yeah, it's really interesting, you know, a through line of several of your answers that I'd love to just drill down on asked about a little bit is this idea of collaboration, and education being so social, as part of an inclusive classroom, it's about collaboration and collaborative activities here, it's about intergenerational co watching and, you know, children with their caregivers, as you put it, or older siblings, all you know, instead of it being a one on one experience of a kid and the tech, it's the tech and then multiple people. Can you just talk a little bit more? You've mentioned it a couple of times, but I'd love to just put a fine point on it. Like, what are the specific benefits of collaborative social learning? In terms of Ed Tech versus solo learning?

Yenda Prado: 21:12

Well, first, I will start by actually sharing a bit about how I conceptualize inclusion. Sure, because I think that will help answer your question. Oftentimes, when people think about inclusion, they're thinking about access, they're thinking about creating equal access to ABCD, 123. When I think about inclusion, I actually think about opportunity. So the name of the game and inclusion is social capital. And our social capital, in large part comes from our ability to engage with get along with work with other people. And when people are not included, a big indicator of that is that they are socially isolated from others, we see that. So to promote inclusion, and I actually talk about this quite a bit in the book, to promote inclusion, we have to engage in strategies that develop people's ability to work with others, which in turn, build up our social capital, which in turn, helps us become more included. To do that we have to focus on collaborative uses, in this case, on this topic of educational technologies. So yes, there will always be one to one uses. But when we're really thinking about inclusion, how are we using technology together to solve problems? Right? How are we developing our 21st century skills and learning together? Because the toughest problems out there can only be solved if we work together? And ultimately, addressing challenges of inclusion mean, creating opportunities for kids to be able to engage with other kids? Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin: 23:22

that's a really interesting distinction. You know, it's really opening my mind to hear it that way. Because we talk about accessibility and inclusion, often in the same breath. But the way you're describing it, and I think this is really sensible, is actually very different accessibility access, as you said, it can be things like screen readers access to various types of technology, or, you know, adaptive testing or things like that, right? That's okay. I mean, it's, it's useful. It's important subtitles on videos, certainly important, but so different than the model of inclusion, that you're naming there of inclusion really being about being included in a social way, being able to have the social capital to communicate with other people to collaborate with other people. And what I love about it is, you know, we're at a time with a lot of social isolation among young people, a time where learning loss is going alongside epidemics of depression and loneliness. And this vision of having education technology be both collaborative, and inclusive, in a social way, could address multiple aspects of the education system, which I just think is so nice, too much ad tech, I think is one on one, but I love this vision that you're painting. Well, thank you. You mentioned that you have just finished a fellowship. This is the emerging technologies impact fellowship at the US Department of Education, I believe, specifically with the Office of Educational Technology. Yes, correct. And this was really about shaping national ad tech policy and investigating technical trends, you know, across the country, and we have a wacky system, we talked to Christina Ismail from the odt. And you know, she talked about how In the US, you know, every state really controls their education. So the US Department of Education can really mostly sort of advise and recommend things but doesn't have a whole lot of direct power. But you've been really included, I bet you've done a lot of things to do some of that advising. Tell us about that fellowship and some of the trends you observed, from your perspective, as a US Department of Ed fellow, where is education going from that perspective? Absolutely.

Yenda Prado: 25:27

The fellowship was an incredible opportunity to not only serve that really get that more global bird's eye view of how the federal government functions and how it provides guidance and resource, particularly to states looking to improve their educational efforts. In my case, as you mentioned, I worked with the Office of Educational Technologies. My project, which I'll talk about more in a bit, really centered on use of evidence in supporting schools at the state level, with their ed tech adoption decisions. So I was really brought on board to do that. I think in terms of kind of taking a broader look out or kind of stepping back from the specifics of the project deliverables that I engaged with during my tenure, I'd love to share a little bit about kind of more globally, what I

Alexander Sarlin: 26:27

think is notable What did you see? Yeah,

Yenda Prado: 26:30

so I actually think one of the most significant and consequential results of the pandemic has been the amplification, or the amplified role of emerging technologies in the classroom. This is actually something that I encountered even prior to coming on as a fellow, particularly as it relates to the normalization of remote and blended learning. So much of my time at OE T was spent sort of pondering on lessons learned from the pandemic, as well, as you know, how do we support states and schools and moving forward given what we've learned, and a lot of that was around remote and blended learning. So as we know, the pandemic accelerated the adoption of both remote and blended learning, which has created unprecedented access to educational and professional opportunities, particularly for people with disabilities, caregivers, and the elderly. So I think one reason I really latched on to this paradigm shift of who is now being included in the professional workforce, who is now being included in classrooms, through the enabling of remote and blended learning is my own experience. You know, I'm a single mom with a 12 year old in California. And there is no way I could have done that fellowship, if I had been asked to move to DC. So we have first hand examples of the enabling of talent that would otherwise not be there to be there, because of the affordances of these emerging technologies for classroom and professional development. So I think the shift and learning and working has allowed for greater flexibility in educational and professional advancement, and as enable people to learn and work in ways that not only better fit their specific context, but that also support organizations and educational institutions across the board. I think this is a topic that has gotten some attention, but not much. Because again, I think that the people most greatly impacted by this are people that might traditionally have been left out of Route certain sectors. I also think that with the advent of things like AI machine learning data and learning analytics, new questions about responsible and ethical use of emerging tag are being raised. This is another issue, and that these questions have led to the proliferation of the field of work and research in ethical AI. Like this has been a thing for quite some time. But I think that the pandemic has really pushed it to be more universally recognized, ethical AI, so it policy we are also seeing a growing emphasis on educating constituents about responsible, ethical use of AI, something that Reese especially recently, the Department of Ag is really focused on This question of ethical lie, and getting our US workforce verification force up to speed on that. This includes issues of digital citizenship online and privacy, media literacy. How do we get everyone on board? With understanding one? What even is AI enabled? Tech, you know, education? And to what does it mean to engage in ethical uses of these AI enabled and emerging technologies? How do we provide guidance, for example, at the federal level to do that, it's

Alexander Sarlin: 30:37

really interesting, I definitely want to drill in and ask you about some of the emerging thoughts about AI, especially from the sort of federal government perspective, because I think there's been some really interesting reports coming out and about, you know, recommendations and guidelines there. But one other aspect of the work you've done, there's the, you know, I think the remote culture is really interesting. And I remember reading during the pandemic, first off, that students with special needs, were getting the sort of the worst case scenario where all of their supports were all disappeared, and they people didn't know how to do occupational therapy and speech therapy online. At first, or all of these things that were the sort of surrounding students during the regular school year were sort of disappearing, at least at the beginning of the pandemic. But then, by the end of the pandemic, there was actually a lot of talk about how many students really enjoyed remote learning wanted to keep doing it. And the school system shrunk by a million students, the public school system, because for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that some students really liked that kind of technology enabled remote learning much more than their traditional in school learning. And it's just interesting to hear you say that there was such an impact, especially for students with different kinds of needs. One other aspect of it that I wanted to dig into, you developed something really key. And just as we get into this, I want to bring up something that just came out this week. So just this week, that state education directors association set that just put out a survey and a report about, you know, what people are doing in states around educational technology, they surveyed 45 states and the District of Columbia and Guam. And one of the things that jumped out to me it's very relevant to your work is that between 2022 and 2023 10%, more schools are reporting that they are collecting data on both the usage and effectiveness of edtech tools, and 10% less are saying they don't collect any data. So that's really a pretty big jump in one year. And with a system this big. The you know, the reason I bring it up is that you really were key in developing the EdTech evidence toolkit that the US Department of Education put out to really help people understand how to measure efficacy when it comes to EdTech adoption. That's really exciting to see those numbers go in that direction. Tell us about that project, and how the toolkit works and how people can use it to inform their practice and improve outcomes.

Yenda Prado: 33:05

Absolutely. Thanks for asking about that. I'll preface my response by providing a little bit of background info. So the Elementary and Secondary Education Act also known as ESCA asks education agencies organizations to prioritize evidence based decisions on the use of edtech in schools. As a result, education leaders charged with making ethic decisions on behalf of schools have for some time expressed a need for resources and guidance at the federal level to support the use of evidence to inform at Tech adoption. So the department has quite a bit of resource and more broadly on the topic of use of evidence to inform practice, but what was really missing was guidance specific to education leaders directly involved in making those ad tech adoption decisions. So in response, I led the development of the ad tech evidence toolkit to support education leaders seeking guidance on how to use evidence to inform these adoption decisions. In a nutshell, the attack evidence toolkit basically introduces evidence building activities for four tiers of evidence using a one pager format, with each one focusing on a different tier of evidence as defined under ESCA. And for our listeners who don't know the four tiers are tier for demonstrating a rationale tier three promising evidence to your to moderate evidence and tier one strong evidence. So the first half of each one pager introduces readers to keep background information and relevant terms for that specific tier. The second half of each one pager uses a case study starting at two your four and continuing through to your one to introduce readers to evidence building activities that in incrementally build an evidence base for a tech adoption. So educators and administrators can use this toolkit to make evidence based tech adoption decisions in several ways. First, the toolkit can be used to help identify educational needs. So for example, a school district could use the toolkit to determine that they would like to support students reading engagement. For example, they could use the toolkit to guide them on how to use anecdotal teacher evidence to identify an edtech intervention that teachers think will help improve their student's reading engagement. Secondly, the toolkit can be used to help determine what level of evidence exists. For example, a school district could use the toolkit to help determine that they need to partner with an evaluation organization to conduct what we call a landscape analysis, which is a review of previously established evidence on a topic. Sometimes the challenge is that evidence already exists, but we just don't necessarily know how to find it. So the toolkit offers suggestions for how to figure out what's what, finally, the toolkit can be used to help develop an evidence building strategy. So for example, if the evidence space is minimal, for a certain intervention, a school district can use the toolkit to help identify steps for building that initial evidence base, which would be tier four demonstrating a rationale. On the other hand, if an evidence base already exists, the school district can use the toolkit to help inform next steps for either using seeing evidence or continuing to build on that evidence to move from tier three to tier two to tier one. For example,

Alexander Sarlin: 37:04

one of the real innovations of this approach, you know, we've talked to Christina Ishmael about it a little bit, we've talked to call rec tennis, who has been, you know, a real champion of evidence based education practices, I think one of the really big sort of framing shifts about these tears that you're introducing or that I think people in the past may have thought of, you know, evidence as sort of a yes or no, it's like, is this an evidence based decision or not a little bit of a binary. And this really breaks it into different levels. But in a way that's not doesn't complicate it. It says, Look, if you have a rational if you've done some of your homework, and you really understand what you're trying to accomplish with this technology, and you can describe it in a clearer way that actually can serve as the baseline of evidence. And then you go into, you know, how much more evidence you need to get to the moderate and strong evidence tiers. It feels like a really important shift for schools and states and districts to be able to think of, you know, making evidence based decisions as sort of like a step stool rather than a hurdle. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Yenda Prado: 38:13

So conversations with Carl, with Christina, with Aaron Mo, were so instrumental in the development process, and often centered on this idea of making sure that the one pagers presented a process that was user friendly, user based, if you read through the one pagers, you'll notice there's very much a shift towards design based thinking. And the idea that evidence information gathering is an iterative, cumulative process. You're never done poking around and finding out whether stuff works or not. You're constantly revisiting the tools that you use the practices that you engage in, and you're doing it starting at whatever level you're already at. And I think oftentimes, people are also intimidated, because they think that evidence needs to mean tier one, which often is, you know, the randomized control trials. And we know working in school contexts, that that is often not feasible, or even necessarily methodologically correct or ethical. You know, we can't always have the resources to literally separate intervention use into control and test groups. And oftentimes, we don't want to and, you know, we may not even need to go all the way there. A big part of evidence gathering is determining what kind of evidence you need to do the things that you need to do. And there are many purposes there's evidence gathering for your specific context and yours specific needs, there's evidence gathering for becoming a model school, for example, there are schools out there that engage in multiple research practice partnerships, because they want to add to the broader evidence space. So yes, and that those cases, we are talking about tiers two and one, for example. And this goes for ad tech developers as well, you know, some ad tech developers, they want the evidence and the research, you know, for the purpose of improving their own product, and some are really interested in being models for the field more broadly, to demonstrate, you know, broader evidence. So it really depends on what the purpose is. I

Alexander Sarlin: 40:42

love that parallel between schools that might want to be model schools and sort of serve as exemplars for certain types of teaching and learning or use of technology, or whatever it is, and ad tech vendors. And we definitely see them we've talked to a number of them on this show, including, you know, Age of learning, who I know you work closely with, has really gone wildly out of their way to say we want to be a model for, you know, evidence looks like in education, so we're going to really put resources into it and really lean into it to sort of show the path for other companies. And I think that's a great parallel. I do want to talk about AI some important topic right now, you have mentioned a few different ways in which you feel like AI, as well as AR VR, but AI and natural language processing are starting to, you know, create paths to effective education for learners who have had, you know, have a wide variety of needs. Tell us a little bit more about your take on AI at this moment. We're obviously just getting into it in the school and education world. How can AI be used to personalize to support students to create the kinds of inclusive environment that you study?

Yenda Prado: 41:50

Absolutely. I think this is a great question. I think this is an important question, because AI enabled technologies absolutely have the potential to play a pivotal role in shaping the landscape of inclusive ed. So I will share, I think three ways that I think this can happen. The first is personalized learning paths. AI can be used inclusively, to analyze student progress and adapt learning materials to match their specific individual areas of need. For example, teachers could use AI enabled personalized learning programs, such as age of learnings, my Math Academy to measure student progress, current knowledge, strengths and areas for improvement to create customized lesson plans that support tailored instruction in the classroom. Another way is early intervention, AI can be used to identify students who may be at risk of falling behind and provide recommendations for early intervention. For instance, AI enabled reading intervention platforms such as Lexia can be used to monitor student progress and provide alerts to teachers when a student may need intervention and support. And finally, I think another really interesting example is the advances that we've made in translation and multilingual support, AI powered translation tools of such as Google Translate can be incorporated into classroom instruction, to help include students who are learning in a language other than their native one.

Alexander Sarlin: 43:30

Yeah, that's a fantastic rundown of three very strong use cases, the personalization, we talked about how this is something we've we've always wanted in education, but there's been, you know, men power basically, or, you know, teacher power to actually differentiate the way we all want to do. But AI can bring that I think the translation is humongous. And something really has has not been focused on enough, especially for English language learners. But even across the board, the AI tools for translation are incredible. And they just completely change the game for getting information to students or being able to interpret what they're asking and saying, across languages. It's incredible. And then, you know, that early intervention and identifying at risk is a really big one that's been used a lot in higher education as well, because higher education is really, you know, all of these are, but the higher education, they're really, really nervous about, you know, people being at risk and dropping out because so many people do so they've tried to use AI to raise flags for people.

Yenda Prado: 44:27

Right, right. And just to quickly piggyback on that one thought that just occurred to me, not occurred to me as in I hadn't thought of it before, but occurred to me in the context of this podcast is with regards to translation and multilingual support. We have an example actually, of technologies, mainstream technologies being used for alternative purposes. So in the case of something like Google Translate, you know, we think of it potentially for English language learners, for example, All right, and how we can support them in the classroom. But they could also be used for students with communication disabilities. And for students, for example, who are mentally speaking, or they can even be used with kids that, you know, are having challenges with reading and writing. So again, you know, we really have an explosion of, of uses, like teachers and students are using these technologies in wonderfully surprising ways that you may or may not have been designed for, but you know, they're helping out in the classroom.

Alexander Sarlin: 45:33

Yeah, sometimes in product, we call that emergent behavior when people start using it. Yeah, it's exciting to see. And I think that's one of the most exciting things about edtech, generally, is that you have tools that are out in the world in so many ways. I remember a really mind blowing, I may have mentioned this on the podcast before our mind blowing presentation in my days at Coursera, about a learner who had completed something like 20 courses, even though he was completely paralyzed, and could only move his eyes. Oh, my goodness, yeah. And using assistive technology, using all sorts of things. He had given himself multiple college educations. And it's like, that was something nobody planned for, it certainly wasn't built in. Nobody in the product team thought that that was a use case. But it was unbelievably inspiring. And you can just see people can take things in directions you can't even imagine. I have a question for you, for Ed Tech developer. So on the topic of AI, you know, you've been looking at it through several lenses as an academic as a consultant for television as a USC Oh, II fellow. What do you think that edtech developers and policymakers these are two pretty different groups should keep in mind when they're thinking about, you know, how AI can influence education? What are some things that especially when it comes to inclusivity? Accessibility? What should they keep in mind as they develop systems to make sure they're not accidentally closing off that emergent behavior and sort of reinforcing the lack of inclusion? Right.

Yenda Prado: 47:08

So I think for this question, I'm going to center the response on at Tech developers. Sure, but then also cap off with talking about what this means for policy. So there are several key considerations that I think tech developers should keep in mind when considering accessibility and inclusion in AI enabled tech tools. First is universal design for learning. This should not be surprised universe. For learning UDL. Please design that tech with UDL principles in mind. So designing for universal learning involves providing users with multiple ways to support representation, engagement and expression to cater to users diverse learning needs and abilities. And one thing that will happen just to make a connection between this discussion and our last question is when you have a quality product tool or intervention that is strongly UDL informed, you start to see these alternative uses, even in, for example, our sidewalk construction, right Originally, the sidewalk on ramps were designed for wheelchair users. But now we see everyone from parents and caregivers with strollers to elderly we see everyone using those ramps for a variety of uses. So always start with universal design in mind. Another biggie that is related to UDL, but distinct as we chatted about a bit ago is accessibility standards, right? Please adhere to accessibility standards, or example, the web content accessibility guidelines to ensure that tech tools are actually usable by people with disabilities, user centered design and continuous improvement. Please involve educators, students, people with disabilities in the design and testing of edtech products regularly assess the impact and effectiveness of AI enabled features on learning outcomes with a focus on inclusivity. Use the feedback and data to make iterative improvements. So again, this idea of user centered research and design, professional development and technical assistance, this is a biggie, we often create the things and then sort of Peter off in our attentions to what comes next, professional development and technical assistance. Please offer training and support to educators to effectively use AI power tools in the classroom, especially those that address the needs of students with disabilities and learning differences. And finally, customization and flexibility across diverse devices allow educators to customize AI driven features to meet the specific needs of their students. And sure that AI power tools are accessible on a wide variety of devices, including those used by students with disabilities. Amazing

Alexander Sarlin: 50:20

list, I'm gonna see if I can remember the five. Okay, universal the time for learning, fantastic accessibility, making sure that you design with user centricity, you're actually working with educators and students, customization offering options for teachers and flexibility across devices. And I

Yenda Prado: 50:39

forgot one, professional development and technical assistance. That's

Alexander Sarlin: 50:43

a really big one. This is something that ad tech companies, at least the ones that I've been, you know, close to often struggle with, because it's very expensive, it's a lot of resources, it can take a lot to really do the kind of, you know, hardcore professional development that is often needed to new use new tools. So people end up doing FAQs, and online videos and, you know, things that can get you part of the way but certainly aren't going to go nearly as deep as the actual, you know, in person PD sessions. Here's sort

Yenda Prado: 51:10

of the value proposition of that, because it is expensive and time consuming and laborious. But here's the deal, when you engage in this technical assistance and professional development, you increase the odds of your tool or intervention, actually being effective. And for developers, who are interested in assessing the effectiveness of their tool, who are interested in this idea of use of evidence to inform Design and Delivery than technical assistance needs to absolutely be part of that equation. And this is something I've learned in all the work I've done, but especially in the research practice partnerships that I engaged in, during my time at University of California, Irvine, as an education researcher, we often found that ad tech interventions, and programs and practices failed when the technical assistance was not provided. So it was only when it was provided that we were able to accurately measure whether or not something actually worked. So it's almost like, well, if you don't do it, you might actually be shooting yourself in the foot, and the money that you did spend to develop the thing. You know, that's, you know, up to the developer to decide. But, you know, certainly I would want to know, as the developer, whether or not the thing I made actually worked,

Alexander Sarlin: 52:42

I'm sure educators listening to this podcast, recognize that scenario of having a new technology, but not having enough professional development to know how to use it properly, and then not having enough technical assistance to get even over the basic humps of getting your students logged in or being able to get it onto the right devices or being able to use it the way you need to use it. And you're right. Without those things in place, the chance of it really having an effect in the classroom gets smaller and smaller. I would even add to that that another potential benefit of professional development is you get close to your users right to see very, very, very you know, firsthand what confuses them, what excites them what they wish was there that isn't there right now. So it's great chance for user research as well. Absolutely. So I'm really interested to hear you know, we're coming to the end of our time, but you have such a broad view of education, you look at it through many different lenses. What do you think is the most exciting trend in the landscape right now for education technology, that our listeners should keep an eye on something that's sort of coming over the horizon right now?

Yenda Prado: 53:47

Yeah, yeah. So I think the answer that a lot of people would give is the AI enabled technology. I want to dive a little deeper because AI enabled tech can be many things, actually. So I want to dive deeper into an aspect of that one of the most exciting trends in the tech landscape right now is a growing focus on immersive learning experiences, which we mentioned, you know, encompass virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality. And I'll give you several reasons why we think immersive learning is so exciting, real world applications. So VR and AR can provide students with hands on experiences in fields like medicine, engineering, art. This has the potential to bridge access gaps and address issues of equity, as well as help students gain practical skills and insights, accessibility and inclusivity you know, something we've been talking about during our time together, immersive technologies have the potential to make learning more accessible for students with diverse learning needs. For example, VR can create controlled and adaptable learning environments. that cater to individual students personalized learning another hot topic that we've been discussing. Technologies can adapt content and experiences, again, to individual student need. And you know, finally, innovation in education, the adoption of immersive technologies stimulates innovation. And both in user design as well as in practice, and curriculum development. For example, we know that educators have been and already do explore new and innovative ways to leverage both AI enabled tech as well as immersive tools to support their students learning outcomes. And we saw a lot of this experimentation during the pandemic, where, you know, we saw that VR and AR could also be used to enrich remote and hybrid learning, for example, by providing engaging and interactive alternatives to traditional in person instruction. Some

Alexander Sarlin: 56:03

of the VR and AR projects and companies that I've been most excited about are ones that I think share your vision of inclusivity as collaboration, as well, because what we're seeing more and more sort of multiplayer, VR XR, where people can work together to solve problems can interact with each other can sort of, even if they're taking the experience individually, they can come out of it and debrief and say, What did you do when this happened? And what did you think when this happened? And let's, we spent a lot of time talking in the show about AR and VR, and then AI came in and sort of sort of took all the air out of the room. Right. I'm glad to hear you talking about this, because I think it is, there's a lot that this technology offers. And as we sort of get over the hump, I agree that it's still around the corner a little bit. But you know, there's going to be a moment where we, I think, see how these things all work together. Right.

Yenda Prado: 56:57

Right. And this is why it's a merging, right. So could be that, you know, we meet up again, and it is a completely new animal at that point. Yeah,

Alexander Sarlin: 57:07

I think people are really working hard to get to the sort of next phase of VR, virtual and immersive learning. And I'm really excited to see it. You know, we've talked about a lot of things today, what is a resource other than your upcoming book, which we will absolutely link to, or you know, for the pre order. In the show notes, what is a resource that you would recommend for people who want to dive deeper into any of the topics we discussed today? I

Yenda Prado: 57:30

actually have two resources, if that's okay, for those who are interested in taking a deeper dive into using evidence to support educational policy. In practice, I recommend a book called Common Sense evidence, the education leaders guide to using data and research by Gordon and Conway. And for those who are interested in exploring inclusive attack, I really recommend checking out the resources provided by cast. So Cass stands for Center for Applied Special Technology. And for those that don't know cast is a nonprofit that offers professional development, resources, publications and tools to educators and anyone interested in making tech more inclusive and accessible. And their website is www dot cast dot work.

Alexander Sarlin: 58:18

Fantastic. Suggestion cast is incredible. I do not know that book. And I'm really interested in learning more about it that looks like it's from Harvard education press. Terrific suggestions, common sense evidence, Gordon and Conway and Cass the Center for Applied and special technologies out of Massachusetts has done really innovative work, especially around the sort of multiple modalities UDL thinking that you've been mentioning. It's so so important. Absolutely. Yeah. Dr. Yenda Prado, really appreciate your time today and your expertise, we are cutting into a whole new world and I think keeping an eye on what inclusivity really means and making sure that we are building inclusive classrooms is more important than ever. Thanks for being here with us on edtech insiders.

Yenda Prado: 59:02

Thanks so much.

Alexander Sarlin: 59:05

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