One important area where AI can prove very helpful is in special education. I taught for fifteen years and I have seen the amount of work and responsibilities special education teachers have to deal with. Students with special education require an extra dose of personalized attention and individualized instruction to meet their unique learning goals.
This is where AI comes in handy!
AI and more specifically generative AI can tremendously facilitate students learning , streamline your work as a special education teacher, and help you create an inclusive and engaging learning environment where all students regardless of their skill level or learning difficulties feel valued and supported.
Given the importance of AI in special education, I deemed it important to cover this topic in depth across multiple posts. In the current post, which is the first in this series, I discuss some of the important tips for using AI responsibly and effectively with students with special needs. From developing AI literacy to safeguarding student privacy, this post lays the groundwork for leveraging AI as a valuable tool in creating inclusive and supportive learning environments.
Stay tuned for upcoming posts where I’ll dive deeper into specific tools, strategies, and real-world applications of AI in special education.
Tips for Using AI with Students with Special Needs
Before integrating AI into your teaching, it’s important to approach its use with responsibility and care, especially when working with students with special needs. These tips will help you ensure that AI is used effectively and ethically to enhance learning outcomes while protecting student privacy and maintaining the critical human connection that is vital in special education.
1- AI Literacy
It goes without saying that before you integrate AI in your instruction you need to develop a working understanding of how this technology works, what it offers, and its potential impact on learning. Try out a bunch of tools, experiment with different AI chatbots, and more importantly learn how to effectively communicate with AI, that is, develop your prompt engineering skills.
This foundational AI knowledge is integral to your work as a teacher in an educational environment where AI is becoming a key player. There are various platforms where you can access beginner-friendly resources to help build your AI literacy including: Google AI resources, Microsoft AI Resources, and of course our Educational AI section here in Educators Technology.
2- Recognize AI Limitations
While AI brings a lot of benefits especially for those of you in special education, it also comes with its own set of limitations that you need to be aware of in order to use it more responsibly and ethically. The first thing to keep in mind is that these AI tools are here to help augment your teaching and not replace you. Use them as co-intelligence, to use Mollik’s term.
A co-intelligence approach to AI integration enables you to benefit from AI’s computational power while also leveraging your own expertise and human insight to design balanced and effective teaching strategies.
While AI does a great job with repetitive tasks such as grading, data analysis, generating summaries, etc, it lacks empathy, intuition, and understanding that you bring to the classroom. All students and especially students with special needs need this human connection, emotional support, and personalized attention that only a teacher can provide.
3. Privacy
Using students data in AI tools requires very careful consideration. Privacy is a critical concern particularly in special education where sensitive data about students disabilities, learning difficulties, and personal needs may be collected.
Be very selected with the information you share with AI and know that once you share it nothing is private anymore. Some of these AI tools use prompted information to train their models which is indeed very problematic.
To be on the safe side, do not share any identifiable students data (e.g., names, addresses) or any other information that could link the data to a specific individual. As special education teacher Julia Tarasi said “if you wouldn’t put it on a billboard outside of the school, you should not be putting it into any sort of AI”
Always anonymize data to ensure student privacy is maintained. It is true that these AI tools can best provide recommendations and suggestions when they are given access to detailed data. However, this does not mean that all data should be shared indiscriminately especially when it involves sensitive or personally identifiable information about students.
Provide just enough information for the tool to generate meaningful insights and use your own expertise and your knowledge of your students to interpret, refine, and apply those insights effectively. This ensures that the AI’s recommendations are contextualized and aligned with your students’ unique needs while also safeguarding their privacy.
4. Customize AI Settings
Most of the popular AI chatbots have features that enable you to customize your interactions and enhance your privacy. Before you use any AI tool, spend some time going through its settings and see what’s there. For instance, ChatGPT has this handy feature called Temporary chat that allows you to have conversations without saving the chat history.
This is especially useful if you’re working with sensitive information or simply want to keep your interactions private. Additionally, ChatGPT provides another feature that you can access from its settings that enables you to turn off memory entirely, ensuring that the chatbot does not retain information from your conversations for future use.
Related: Benefits of Using AI in Special Education
Final thoughts
AI definitely holds immense potential for special education, but only if we, as teachers and educators, know how to leverage its power in ethical and responsible ways. In this post, I shared some basic yet essential tips to keep in mind as you integrate AI into your special education instruction. Starting with understanding AI literacy, recognizing its limitations, safeguarding student privacy, and customizing tools to fit your needs, these strategies ensure that AI becomes a valuable ally in enhancing learning while prioritizing the well-being of your students.
Sources
- Goldman, S. R., Taylor, J., Carreon, A., & Smith, S. J. (2024). Using AI to Support Special Education Teacher Workload. Journal of Special Education Technology, 39(3), 434-447. https://doi.org/10.1177/01626434241257240
- Churchill, B. (2024). Leveraging AI in special education. Leadership Magazine. https://leadership.acsa.org/leveraging-ai-in-special-education
- Klein, A. (2024). The Pros and Cons of AI in Special Education. EducationWeek. https://www.edweek.org/technology/the-pros-and-cons-of-ai-in-special-education/2024/05
- Mollick, E. (2024). Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI. Penguin Publishing Group.
- Shriver, T. (2024). A New Era of Special Education Begins with Inclusive AI. Time. https://time.com/7018588/special-olympics-ai-idd-artificial-intelligence/