Special Education for Beginners | Managing Paraprofessionals, Special Education Strategies, First Year Sped Teachers, Special Ed Overwhelm, Paperwork for Special Education Teachers

Beyond the Basics: Reimagining Assistive Tech with Robokind

• Episode 201

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Today we're going beyond the basics of Assistive Technology and exploring its expansive potential to transform educational experiences for students with special needs. Joining us today is Brian, CEO of RoboKind, who brings a wealth of experience with over 15 years in educational technology leadership. We'll be discussing:

  • The challenges teachers face with understanding and implementing AT.
  • How RoboKind's innovative technologies are providing real solutions that align with educational standards and IEP requirements.
  • The role of data in customizing educational experiences to improve student outcomes.
  • Success stories that highlight the transformative effects of RoboKind's technologies in classrooms.
  • The future of educational technology and the trends shaping it, with a special focus on AI and personalization for exceptional connections.

Talking Points:

  • What RoboKind is and how its technology stands out in the field of AT
  • Specifics of how RoboKind's technology works—no prep, standards and IEP alignment, and evidence-based approaches
  • Innovative strategies like the use of virtual avatars and multi-sensory training tools to engage students
  • Stories of how RoboKind has been instrumental in student success and classroom transformation
  • Discussion on how these technologies support mastery-based learning and inclusion.

Brian's insights remind us of the powerful impact that innovative tech can have on special education settings. Remember, the key to successful integration of AT is understanding its scope and potential to help our student access life easier. 

Learn more about Robokind at robokind.com/teachers 

Connect with Brian at Robokind

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I'm so happy that Chelsea reached out after learning about this podcast from Dawn at Be the Exception Podcast. I'd love for you to listen to her podcast as well and learn even more about the world of special education!

Hey special educator…Do you feel like you're just barely keeping your head above water? Like you're stuck in the same old routines, wondering how to make a bigger impact in your classroom? Well, I’ve got something special just for you. I’m excited to offer a unique opportunity to take your teaching to the next level.  I’m ready to step outside my district to offer individualized coaching calls designed to offer person

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Speaker 1:

Well, hey there, welcome back to another episode of Special Education for Beginners. I'm thrilled to have you join me today as we continue the conversation on assistive technology. I'm actually conducting training over assistive tech this week in my district, so it's been a topic that's been on my mind a lot lately. Last week's podcast was a basic overview of AT, so if you haven't listened to that one yet, I encourage you to go back at some point and learn about what it is, why it can seem so confusing, who's responsible for it and how we can better address it in our IEPs. Today, we are going to go beyond the basics to take a look at what assistive technology can really offer. We are joined by Brian, ceo of RoboKind, who has over 15 years of leadership in educational technology. Brian shares how RoboKind is transforming learning for students through innovative technologies. We discuss the challenges teachers face in understanding and implementing assistive technology, the solutions that RoboKind provides and how these tools align with the educational standards and IEP requirements. We discuss the role of data in tailoring educational experiences, the impact of RoboKind's technologies in real classroom settings and what the future holds for educational technology.

Speaker 1:

I can't wait for you to listen, so let's get started. Hey, special educator, are you overwhelmed by the absurd amount of paperwork on your to-do list? Do you wish you had the skills to build a rock-solid team with your staff? Do you find yourself scouring the internet for how to meet the needs of each student on your caseload? Well, hey there.

Speaker 1:

I'm Jennifer Hopperberg, an award-winning veteran special education teacher and current instructional coach, who has walked in your shoes through each of these challenges and, yes, I have the metaphorical blisters to prove it. I have cried your tears and felt your pain, and now I'm here to support you in the way I wish someone would have been there to support me. Listen in each week as my guests and I dish out practical wisdom to help you handle all the classroom curve balls that are thrown at you and learn how to laugh in spite of the chaos, to celebrate those small yet significant victories that only a special educator can understand. So are you ready? Wipe your tears and put on your superhero cape, because together we are going to learn how to survive and thrive in the ever-crazy, completely overwhelming, laugh-so-you-don't-cry profession of being a special education teacher. Well, hello, brian, welcome to Special Education for Beginners. I've been looking forward to our conversation.

Speaker 2:

Well, thank you for having me. Me too, I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 1:

Well before we get started, why don't you briefly share about who you are and what your company does?

Speaker 2:

Sure, so my name is Brian Baggs. I'm the CEO of Robokine. Robokine is a little educational technology company that exists to serve special education teachers and administrators across the country. Our hope is that we can build some really good educational technology that helps those teachers provide instruction and practice and skill acquisition in the foundation space. So things like behavior, self-regulation, emotional understanding and then some of our academic disciplines. We've got a phonics program and soon a numeracy program that we're excited to release here as well.

Speaker 1:

Well, when I was deciding on the 12 themes that I wanted to focus on for the 2025 podcast episodes, I chose assistive technology because it's an area that many of my teachers really seem to struggle to understand.

Speaker 1:

It seems like it's an area where they think of AAC devices or they think of a read aloud opportunity for kids. They don't really have a good understanding of all the different types of assistive technology and all of the different things that are out there, both high tech, mid tech and low tech. Conversation about your business and your company is so needed for our teachers, and it was right around the time that I chose that topic of AT that I got an email from someone in your company and we had a connection between a fellow colleague in the online space, don, and so we connected that way and I was so excited because I felt that this was something that I had to share with the listeners, and I've dug into your company just a little bit, and RoboKind is a fascinating piece of technology, so would you share just a little bit more about exactly what it is?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely so. You know, robokind is actually in the midst of transition, which is, I kind of feel, like all of us in this space of education in one way or another. It feels like these days, robokind is a company that has a history of trying to listen to some of the special and unique needs of our diverse and oftentimes marginalized, as we think about the general education space, set of students are trying to find innovative ways for us to be able to come in and support that foundational skill acquisition space. You talked about high-tech, mid-tech, low-tech type of solutions. Part of our past is that we developed these humanoid robots that were meant to support some of the engagement needs of some of our students who are in our special education classrooms.

Speaker 2:

One of the things that we've been transitioning to is using technology that's more accessible for teachers, both to afford and to use in the classroom.

Speaker 2:

That may not be something as crazy as like a humanoid robot, and so over the past few years, we've been listening to teachers trying to respect the realities of you know, hey, there's high demands.

Speaker 2:

We have a pretty broad range of needs that are happening within our classroom.

Speaker 2:

We have different learning styles.

Speaker 2:

We may have different diagnoses of students with disabilities or deficits that we're trying to address or to stand up, and so from that place, and then also like it just seems that it's just getting harder and harder and we have big demands on our time so we try to recognize that space the best that we could and so we started leaning into this idea of no prep ready-made lesson plans that are aligned to both standards and IEP goals, that would use evidence-based practices to help our teachers, kind of like leverage a virtual avatar as a way to engage and connect with your students, to spark that interest, to get them excited about different pieces of content.

Speaker 2:

So if they're using it on that interactive whiteboard or they're using it on those tablets or their laptops, we could start to build a bridge with those students around really important things like how to do self-regulation for minimally speaking students, how to start conversations and breaking case endorsement, which is the Council of Administrators of Special Education. So we try to put this together and so that's what we do. We sit in this space of educational technology and kind of building together lessons to help our students and our teachers tackle those things that may be on their IEPs and those academic disciplines tackle those things that may be on their IEPs and those academic disciplines.

Speaker 1:

There's what you said. There's so much to unpack. First of all, kudos to you for listening to teachers. I feel like not many people listen to teachers anymore and you know, having those no prep ready-made things that would be amazing, because teachers are busy and having really high quality options is something that's important to us. But you talked about innovative and I love that word, and when I'm envisioning this, I feel like it's like social stories. You know we do the social stories on paper. I feel like this could be like a digital version of that. Is that correct? Oh, yeah, so absolutely.

Speaker 2:

We have those different social stories there and video modeling, and we give our students and teachers opportunities for interactions and so we can follow along in a social skills program and talk about when we have video models of students performing self-regulation the correct way, or communication the correct way, or recognizing emotions I'm getting a little bit of a nerd out of this. But we also have progress monitoring so that interactive tech allows us to record those students' responses, so that when we go into those IEP meetings we also have some ready-made data that you can leverage in that of how students have maybe tackled different skills that you are working on. But let me maybe even take a little bit further back that word innovation to us. We are a tech company. Our background is in robots. We now have these virtual avatars that help with the instruction we interlace like real world activities, like fire drills or transition time, to help our students, you know, learn skills for those particular moments.

Speaker 2:

But one of the big things about us is that we believe that good tech should be about connecting teachers with their students, not just students with their screens, and so we have an approach that has this perspective that it should be right-sized tech and it should be part of a broader set of tools used, and so at RoboKind, our innovation is around this concept that we call iVACT and for us that's taking probably a familiar term VACT the multisensory strategies of visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile but combining those places, but also using that as the bridge so that we have exceptional connections with our teachers and our paras in the classroom, and so our ready-made lesson plans that we talked about earlier kind of walk our teachers and our paras through structured lesson plans that have elements of using that technology to hook, have moments of using multisensory learning and have moments of generalization practice as kind of a continuum.

Speaker 2:

Because at the end of the day, we feel like the biggest innovation impact that's going to happen is not going to be an education company, it's going to be the teacher or the parent that's sitting in that classroom.

Speaker 2:

And what we really want to do is just give them tools to have confidence and find success, and that's a big part of our strategy here at RoboKind.

Speaker 1:

I appreciate the fact that you pulled in the conversation of para professionals because they are you know the cliche term boots on the ground. They're the ones that are doing the heavy lifting. I feel like a lot of times whenever teachers have paperwork to do and meetings to go to, but our parents are there every single day in the classroom supporting our kids. So being able to provide them with that support and that training with this program, that's really important.

Speaker 2:

It's a big deal. You're right, yeah, I mean, like you know, a lot of times our special education teachers or specialists in the classroom they may be providing more one-on-one based interventions, but how do we have someone who has all the heart in the world, but maybe not some of the same academic exposure or training, and have them find success as well, so that no prep ready-made lesson that's easy and structured for them to follow, allows them to work on things, maybe in small group or even in whole class, that still allows learning to take place within the classroom, and that's just part of it. We try at our best to be reflective of a holistic approach and realizing that there are a multitude of players that have to come together, some shared language, for us to find success, and that's part of it. We're still going to try to do it in a simplified way, which is part of the ongoing challenge, but I think we are and we're trying to get better day over day and what we're excited about right to get to do this work.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's great. So how do your solutions? How do they support teachers and guiding students towards that mastery-based learning? How do you? I mean, I don't want anyone to hear this and say, oh, they're just going to set a child in front of a computer screen. So how do you direct that in a more positive frame? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So that's a really great question. So this is like. There's so many things and I'm going to try to not take the rest of your listeners whole days to unpack this answer, so I'm going to go small. First thing that comes with like kind of a philosophical approach. The first thing is that we got to send our teachers. So, at the end of the day, if this isn't something that's going to be helpful to them in finding success, then it's got no chance at getting us to a place of mastery-based learning for our students.

Speaker 2:

So we begin there, we include there, we end there, and we have a nice little loop from an infrastructure as a company to make sure that we stay on track. Part of that is some guiding principles that design our pedagogy. As an organization I talked about, we want to be special tech that allows for exceptional connections, and so we are part of that process. We're not meant to replace the teacher. We're meant to center and include the teacher. We want to make sure that we're delivering measurable outcomes, that it's easy to use, that it works and that it recognizes that holistic approach. So our goal, then, is that, whether it's our social skills, our phonics or the brand new numeracy program coming out that we integrate evidence-based practices to walk through, oftentimes like an oversimplification of that gradual release model that I do, we do, you do.

Speaker 2:

It's a systematic approach for us to get that instruction use, those multisensory strategies where students can have some choice and how they might apply or reinforce some of the instruction that came in and practice as we march towards a place of being able to have both assessments and progress monitoring through that digital practice to give us guideposts for how we're doing, when we can create some transparency around that and we can make sure that every single one of our lessons are incorporating the science of reading or the science of learning the things that work.

Speaker 2:

We know that we get to the end. And then for us I talked about the feedback loop, we talked about teachers and time we can't waste it with ineffective lessons and so for us, a big part of a feedback loop is looking at student skill acquisition. We had a three-year study with the State Department of South Carolina and the whole goal was to look at in that particular study, the generalization success of IEP mastery. So using our tools as that first step and then looking at its impact and students being able to master those IEPs in a generalized way, beyond, just like you know, their interactions with our program. That's part of our whole process is to make sure that we are getting to that place of student-based mastery.

Speaker 1:

You mentioned the progress monitoring piece and I feel like, as a special ed teacher for 27 years, I just wanted to teach. I just wanted to get in there and be with the kids and teach them, and taking data was something else I had to do. So can you explain how the role of that data taking and those analytics can be tailored to the student themselves?

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, that's perfect, like I'm glad you asked that question because we talked about, you know, the quality of a teacher's time and trying to bring simplification to that with the midst of all the other ones. So we do this a number of different ways. One of the ways is is that you can actually, you know, write in. We have like a whole bank of standardized IEP goals and if you import your students' IEP goals, we're going to pull back the relevant skills and practice that that student needs to focus on. And you know I talked about this IVAC learning assessment. So we have some assessments and when students interact with that we're collecting. Even if they're touching on their tablet, we're correcting their responses to questions.

Speaker 2:

If it's an assessment, we're taking their responses and collecting that and it's going to be matched against their IEP goals or matched against the standards that we're tracking for that, which is super fun, and then like, as they're going through the rest of the program, like it's already there. So when you get to the end, you're right. That's the big deal is that you know we don't have time to go back. We've got to capture the data as we go along and that's why that interactive tech piece as part of our IVAC strategy can be so beneficial. Not only does it hook students, but it gives us kind of that container for collecting student based responses. That can be the data so we can talk about, like how often did we recognize appropriate self-regulation skills or emotional displays within peers and friends, or how well did we do on our vowels and consonants and articulation? Like we're capturing that data to hopefully simplify that whole experience for folks.

Speaker 1:

Simplify, that's the word of the day. Simple is good. So there are so many different types of kids, different. They have different diagnoses, they have different disabilities. In what ways does RoboKind adapt its strategies to meet the diverse needs of the learners, especially adapt its strategies to meet the diverse needs of the learners especially I'm thinking especially like in inclusive settings.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's a really great question because I mean, ultimately, that's what we're trying to get. Done here is to meet students where they are, sit within that zone of proximal development, match their particular learning styles so that they can find their individualized or personalized pathways towards success. Part of this goes back to the beginning. Robokind was actually in research and development for six years before we ever brought anything into school classrooms. So we were first there and in that place we got to work with universities and a variety of research-based professionals ABA therapists, slps, occupational therapists. We got to work with folks who specialize in the science of learning and reading, and so we got to build a curriculum that would be reflective of a kind of a wide, diverse range of students pulling in practices that allowed for some of that flexibility. So you'll notice that as you go throughout the curriculum that we have different ways of being able to support folks.

Speaker 2:

But even beyond that, that IVAC pedagogy, part of our innovation is that when we get into some of the specifics of you know which students need which things, but when it comes to their practice and their opportunities to demonstrate the things that they learn, being able to tap into those different learning styles as part of how we meet those students where they are.

Speaker 2:

And so you know, our whole goal is that we try to chunk individual concepts and skills in a way that makes it accessible for a broad range. Some of them may get an opportunity to run through that content relatively quickly. Some of our students will need repeated practice. Having a program that's flexible, that gives them that opportunity of sameness the same lesson broken down in the same way, in a way that they can engage with the avatar that they like, with the learning style that matches them, allows us to do that. And what we often see is that even in our self-contained classrooms we're getting skills that allow us to push into mainstream environments, to go to music and PE and giving our students opportunities to find success in the lunchroom and wherever they may be. But we know that we've got to respect where they are just kind of like. We've got to respect teachers, meet them there, give them those skills, allow them to move forward.

Speaker 1:

So do you have? You said that you were in development for six years. How many years have you been in classrooms actually?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, so we started in 2011, or, excuse me, we have been around for 14 years now, so I think that, yeah, 2011 still makes sense. So we were there for six years. We started going into classrooms in 2017. And we had to do a lot of learning and listening. We got an opportunity to work with that State Department in South Carolina I talked about that earlier for three years. That was our first kind of out of the research lab into real schools across the state.

Speaker 2:

We learned a lot of things. Like you know, some lessons work great in a sterilized lab, so to speak, of a research environment, but the real world was like there is lots of things like. There are things like fire drills that come, there's meltdowns that happen, there's disruptions that happen in the class, and so there's all these things that we just didn't build for in the beginning, that we had to adapt, and so you'll even see now in our program like you can pause a lesson, you can take a dance break, you can bring down even if you're in the phonics program an opportunity to work on your self-regulation strategy. So if you're noticing a trigger, we can pull up the count to 10, or the balloon breathing or the stress ball. So real-world applications.

Speaker 2:

Just like a teacher who may develop their lesson, the first go-around may find some success. They may tinker with it as they come over the years. We've done that as a company too. Some things we got great, some things was, you know, crash and burn. It was a fail and we just had to keep learning, and I think that's part of the fun and the excitement about it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so you've been in the classroom since 2017. You've changed a lot of things and tweaked things as you went along. Can you share a success story that you might've had that kind of illustrates how your approach has transformed a whole classroom or has boosted student achievement in any way?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely, there's so many, and I would encourage folks, if they want, to go to RoboKindcom, or you can even go to us on YouTube. There's a good selection of wonderful stories of things that we have been able to celebrate with our partners across the country. One of my more favorite ones that I recently got to experience is that we had the opportunity to work with a teacher in Indiana and she had a student that came into her special education self-contained classroom as a kindergartner, was minimally speaking, had severe challenges with self-regulation, was unable to engage with their peers, was not able to stay on task for more than two minutes, and there was a lot of frustration on all sides parents, students, teachers, the school around trying to find something that would work. We were fortunate that we were able to deliver our social skills and our phonics program to this kindergarten teacher and over the course of that year, this one particular child got an opportunity to learn some really important self-regulation strategies and began to speak and have conversations with his peers. He got an opportunity. He had no reading skills when he first started and at the end of the year he was reading at a third grade level and got to go on some assignments with the rest of the school of delivering mail and running different errands with a gen ed peer and is now getting an opportunity to participate in more of the mainstream classrooms and superlatives.

Speaker 2:

And it's just so exciting because, like you know, this whole thing is hard but when you can find moments of success, you get to acknowledge that you know you're changing trajectories of students and as teachers and as education companies like that's what we're in business for is to be able to come alongside, unlock and uncover these really great strengths.

Speaker 2:

We just got to meet them where they are. I have that story times a district because they had RoboKind and over the course of a number of years, her story that she shared with us was that her students not only learned social skills that they did not have prior to coming, but her big moment was that they finally had friends and got invited to their first birthday party and, through our birthday party lesson, knew how to act and respond. And it's just, it's amazing. Like you know, we get this opportunity to help kids integrate with the rest of our society, our communities, and that's all sorts of things that's the academic disciplines, it's the birthday parties, it's the school community and well beyond. And so yeah, it's. We get to see we can't do without the partners of the teachers and the school districts and the administrators.

Speaker 1:

But to be able, to have a front row seat is the best thing ever. Yeah, and I feel like when you have those wins, it just motivates you to keep going and to keep making your company even bigger and better. Yeah, yeah, that's the whole goal.

Speaker 2:

Like we want to help our teachers and our peers and our districts find success. And you know, the days are long and they're hard, but there's hardly anything as rewarding as this.

Speaker 1:

Right. So, looking ahead, what emerging trends do you see shaping the future of education? I know AI is one of the biggest buzzwords out there right now and there's a lot of people who are fearful of what that looks like 20 more years down the road. But how is RoboKind preparing to lead that change?

Speaker 2:

I think AI is a big part of the conversation no-transcript, and that's a big part of how we are thinking about our process forward is that good tech needs to be central in helping build relationships. It's the human-to-human relationships and finding better success there that matters. And so you know, I think there'll be lots of AI based solutions. That will be more of students and screens, but RoboKind is continuing to look at how we can leverage great technology to save time, find better personalizations and better insights. To get back to the thing that's kind of primary and that is creating wins for our educators, their students and their families by building bridges of their connections together. And I think that that's a more holistic way forward. And I mean, look, if we're not creating winds where teachers get to experience the joy of teaching and learning, we're going to have more of a teacher problem. So the answer is not tech at their exclusion. I think the answer is tech at their inclusion and centering them in ways where they can find even more success and more joy in their craft.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I like that. Great tech and great teachers. I think they're going to have to go hand in hand. Brian, this has been an amazing conversation. I am excited to kind of research your company even more. I have a director who I talk to on a regular basis, so I'd love to share this with him. So where can the listeners find more from you? And and to research more on their own?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so they can go to our website. It's robokindcom. There's lots of great things where you can find out what we're doing and how we're doing it. One of our kind of big arcs right now as an organization is increasing the accessibility of our programs and resources and making sure that we're able to serve more folks. And so, for the teachers that are listening, I want you to know that we've historically been someone who works at the school district level, but we're trying to create more and more of our resources that they can pull down and use themselves.

Speaker 2:

So robokindcom slash teacher is a site that you can go to. We've got some beta stuff and some free trials and some goodies that we're going to continue to put into that space, and so, if you're a teacher, I would take a look there, and if you're an administrator, robokindcom. That's primarily who we've started conversations with in the past, but in all those places. Oh, and then social media Look, if you want inspiration and excitement about great things that are happening to help you continue to, you know, get great ideas, like we do these Facebook Live seminars of other practitioners in this space. Look, there's some other great things too. So Rokincom and social LinkedIn.

Speaker 1:

Twitter, facebook and Instagram. Yep, we got those there. Yeah, jennifer, thank you so much for having us. Well, thank you again. It was so nice to meet you and I look forward to seeing how much your company can grow and help students and teachers.