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How Do We Prepare Dyslexic Students For a World That Just Got Effortlessly Better at the Things They Struggle With Most?

In a world where technology is advancing at lightning speed, the challenges students with dyslexia face are being met head-on by AI, which excels at the very tasks they struggle with most. Imagine an educational landscape where learning is as unique as each student, where AI doesn't just assist but transforms how we teach, making education more inclusive and dynamic. The ACCESS AI Framework is not just a tool—it's a revolution in learning, enabling students to unlock their full potential. This is how we prepare learners with dyslexia for a future where their unique strengths aren’t just supported but celebrated.

Amplifying Information Access

Customizing Instruction

Cultivating Communication Skills

Elevating Expectations

Safeguarding Informed & Ethical AI Use

Showcasing Individual Strengths

Amplifying Information Access

Why It Matters:

• AI allows you to turn the dial on content complexity, reducing barriers to entry.
• AI can leverage seemingly unrelated background knowledge to unlock new material.
• AI can generate endless metaphors and comparisons.

Essential Question for Teachers:

How can I use my students' interests, lived experiences, and passions to unlock new academic content and skills, regardless of reading level?

Customizing Instruction

Why It Matters:

• AI has the potential to democratize a diagnostic and prescriptive approach.
• Customized feedback in real time
• Skill development via individualized areas of high interest

Essential Question for Teachers:

What would it look like for a teacher's role to shift from delivering expertise to designing access?

Cultivating Communication Skills

Why It Matters:

• AI demoted 'great' writing to merely 'good', raising our standards.
• Everyone now has access to a writing coach and editor
• AI-generated test is undetectable. There is no 'beating' AI, only partnering with it.
• The power of AI is in conversing. 

Essential Question for Teachers:

What are the skills needed to be a good communicator as opposed to only a good writer?

Elevating Expectations

Why It Matters:

• AI provides students with accessible, professional-grade tools to analyze and create.
• AI makes novel and meaningful application of skills and content much easier.
• Employers will expect candidates to outperform AI.

Essential Question for Teachers:

How can I transition from measuring what my students know to measuring how they show me what they know?

Safeguarding Informed and Ethical AI Use

Why It Matters:

• AI is filled with the same biases, stereotypes, and hate that permeate the Internet.
• Online 'information' will become increasingly unreliable.
• Today's students will decide the ethical use of AI in everything from workplaces to wars.

Essential Question for Teachers:

Will the ability to analyze information become more important than the ability to generate it?

Showcasing Individual Strengths

Why It Matters:

• AI provides dyslexic students with a leveled platform for communication and creativity.
• AI highlights that many traditional academic outputs and products are only relevant to education.
• Students with dyslexia can use AI to solve academic problems while practicing for real ones as well.

Essential Question for Teachers:

How can I use AI to help students demonstrate what they know and can do—not what they don't or can't?

About the Author

Josh Clark is the Head of Landmark School and Chair of the International Dyslexia Association. Before joining Landmark School, Josh had already begun to make a name for himself as a champion of struggling learners. He was the head of two other schools that empowered struggling dyslexic learners. He is also an expert contributor to the global nonprofit Made by Dyslexia and Microsoft Education. As a brilliant dyslexic himself, Josh is a life-long learner and problem-solver. Learn more about Josh.