Hello EdTech friends. We're back. Season 7. Episode 189. We're kicking off the new season with a tool that my team thought was a game changer during summer PD - Ludia. It's a chatbot that makes Universal Design for Learning (UDL) a breeze.

Hey, Shanna, now that you're done just doing PD and all the kids are back in the hallways, when you walk through, are you like, Move, kids, get out the way.

I needed a pun for ludia, so I went with one. And you're trying to go, like,

And I'll kind of explain how it works and everything, but it's very cool. And it was a hit with the staff. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to start the season with something that I already have a bunch of people excited about. So we're going to talk some more about it. We also decided, you and I decided, that for season seven, the setup of my podcast is, The same, but a little different.

Yes. So at the start of each chat, I'll kind of give my top five reasons why I really like the tool.

To me like that's very important because she backs this tool. This piece of AI. Till! It's really, really easy to use. You just like write all the information and it does all the work for you, which, you know, it's a time saver. Three, it aligns with the UDL guidelines. So it is very specific. Like if you're talking about engagement and talking about barriers and you're talking about, so it uses the language of UDL guidelines, which is really important because it is aligned with it.

So it all makes sense. Four, it shares barriers and how to break them down. So a big piece of UDL. is talking about students barriers. So if they're struggling with something, or just these roadblocks that you run into all the time in your classroom, how, and it tells you, here's going to be a barrier, like it tells you the barrier.

And then it says, and these are all the ways around it.

Sure.

which

So if it gives you some ideas and you say, Hey, but I need more reflection pieces. And it goes here, you can use using this. Do you want more information? And it gives you question prompts at the bottom to then give you the next steps or other questions to ask and gives you even more relevant information.

And so they were the creators. So the Poe. com like platform lets you create different AI tools. So these two. Designed this specifically to be able to teach, like to support teachers with UDL, which is fabulous. So basically it gives you the little prompt like, hi, I'm Ludia. I'm your AI powered UDL partner.

Yeah. Hey, how can I help you today? Like a good old AI chat bot does. And what's cool about this is when you type in the information. So I'm going to give you an example. I typed in and you can be really specific, but you don't have to be crazy specific. So I said, I want geology. Like a geology lesson was UDL, UDL based with properties of minerals, ninth grade with lexiles of 450 to 900.

So this was actually a prompt that one of my staff members gave me in our PD that I was running. I'm like, somebody just throw this out to me. Let's see what it does. And it starts you with potential barriers and UDL checkpoints. So already it's going to tell you, it references the UDL guidelines. So here's your barrier, limited engagement with textual materials.

So we already know kids probably might struggle with the text. Here's your solution. Provide a variety of texts at different lexiles about minerals, and it gives you examples, like infographics, videos, find, that explain mineral properties, and it goes into specific details, like what to look for when you're prepping this lesson.

Another barrier, kids may not have prior knowledge. Okay, so what can we do to know what our kids already know? It gives you like KWL charts, and, different group responses and existing understanding, things like that. And then it gives you another barrier. So, there might be limited opportunities for expression.

That would be students sharing their work. So then it gives you ideas like creating digital presentations, hands on models, doing reports, flexibility and accommodate. So it gives you all these things. Okay, so then I want to know how can I assess kids understanding. Then it gives me more information about assessment strategies and what assessments could look like.

And then I asked, can you provide examples for guiding questions for self assessment? Yes, I can. And then it gives you a literally like sets up the questions for me, like what key properties of minerals, um, other minerals I research and how well do I understand them? Like there's your kid's reflection prompt.

And then they explain it. And it's really cool as this tool just keeps prompting you, like, I want more things on engagement. Cool. Here's all these, here's six, five different ways to set up engagement. And then I said, can you create a graphic organizer to support and enhance the discussion? Yes. Here's a self assessment reflective organizer.

It doesn't physically make the organizer, but it gives you the questions to prompt. To set up your organizer gives you the section breakdown, between like project execution, skills developed, and then it gives kids adaptations for feedback. So it just keeps on going. And then at the very bottom, after giving me all this information to set up a lesson for my kids, it goes.

How can I effectively introduce this organizer for my students? Do I want to know that more? Click on that. It'll give me more information. I can ask what strategies can I use to encourage peer sharing? It will give me a whole nother setup. Can I assess students reflections using this organizer? Here's a whole nother setup.

So it just keeps. Leading and building on UDL guidelines specific content areas or you can put in your specific content or targets you want students to learn as well a and it's super cool. Yeah. So

we're

mm hmm,

And I'm worried for you too. Great. In line with UDL. Here we go. Engagement with text gives you it's UDL 2. 2 with checkpoint 2. 1. Students may find it difficult to engage with texts. Here's your barriers. Here's a solution. Provide texts that are culturally relevant and high interest. Like it already like sets you up.

Here's your barriers. and then which solutions do you want to go with? And I'll circle back with observations and results if you want it, so. Again, it just continues to build your lessons and support the information that you need., Which is really cool. And then once you have it all set up, n click the little copy and share link and share it out. Yay, copied! So I can send that to myself in an email or send it to my team. So if you're planning together, you can be like, Hey, all right, we've got different groups of kids, but we're all teaching the same thing.

These are some barriers we might run into when we're planning. Let's talk about how we can make this happen in our classrooms.

So, like I can go back to my geology lesson. I have typed in interactive ideas. I've done lessons on textual evidence. I did one on mapping skills, so it keeps my chats in the left hand side of my screen. So I keep collecting them so I can go back to my resources as needed. You just log

Fabulous. And it's UDL aligned and it's been out for about a year now. So what I appreciate is a lot of the bugs have kind of been worked out and it's pretty accurate with what you're looking for when it's aligning with UDL, guidelines and things like that. And it's super cool and super useful. And you can just take bits and pieces of it.

Cause a lot of things like we've been teaching for a long time, or even if you're new and you've got some background, this just helps you plan and set up. And strategically think about how you're setting up your stuff. So it's pretty fantastic. And our, my staff was very excited to like, play around with this one and test this one out

No paywalls. There you go.

It's going to go into

Yeah.

Or on SmartinWI. com or on Instagram. Like we are everywhere at this point. If you want to get more information on the links to the technology discussed in this episode, you can visit SmartinWI. com. If you liked this report to show, please consider buying me a coffee or two. Visit BuyMeACoffee. com slash SmartinWI or visit SmartinWI.

com and click on that cute little purple coffee cup. Your donations help keep the show going. So nice to be back here and chatting with all of you. New episodes each week. Thanks for listening. Go educate and innovate.

Prior to using any of the technologies discussed on this podcast, Please consult with your employer regulations. This podcast offers no guarantee that these tools will work for you as described, but we hope they do. That's why we do this show. And we'll talk to you next time, right here on the tech tools for teachers podcast.