A.I. - All Inclusive

Empowering the special needs education ecosystem

PROBLEM:

Learning disability in children is a key international agenda with resulting improvements in child survival in many countries. Children spend their developmental years in an institution where learning occurs, which forms the foundation for their lives in the wider community. It's easy to realize why development & inclusion of children with learning disabilities is a top UNICEF priority.

Educators face a severe deficit in terms of awareness, training, and skill-sets in their attempt to introduce adaptations and differentiations, to make the curriculum more accessible to the child with learning disabilities. This is primarily because:

1. They lack access to resources for awareness, identification & everyday teaching support
2. Lack of an effective dialogue or collaboration between educators, parents, therapists, etc.
3. The work and ideas of special educators working on grassroots challenges remain siloed & unnoticed
4. Lack of focused research & development of indigenous tools & study aids 

Individualized Education Program (IEP)

Many countries follow a common practice of an Individualized Education Program (IEP) process in their special needs framework - which is an ongoing collaborative process by which IEPs are developed, implemented and reviewed. Effective IEPs help shape the future for students with special education needs; however several issues need to be addressed:

1. The specious notion that IEPs are mere paperwork or a dead document - a document that is completed at a meeting and then not looked at or used until the next meeting
2. Loss of IEP records when a child transfers schools due to the lack of a centralized store

SOLUTION:

We present EdInclusive - A single space for all Special Education Needs:

1. Provides information and training, right from awareness issues to everyday schooling support
2. Digitizes the IEP process
3. Facilitates open collaboration between educators and opens channels of dialogue (niche social network)
4. Uses AI to suggest learning tracks, collaterals, and activities for the child (experimental prototype which will improve with more data and users)
5. Keeps the IEP team (educators, therapists, parents) together & on the same page
6. Through capture of data, identifies the Best Practices and provides guidance to better understand the issues and their resolution, using a collaborative review process
7. Provides data insights for a better objective understanding of issues in special needs education, which feeds into the work being done to solve them at a local, regional & global scale
8. Recognition & incentives for educators for their contribution towards collaboration & development of new tools

IMPACT:

Educators presently face a severe handicap in dealing with learning difficulties. We strongly believe in the wide-reaching potential of an established, easy to use, continuously evolving technology-based solution that comes to the aid of all special educators and other such stakeholders who are a part of the special needs education ecosystem today, especially those in developing countries.

We believe the time is ripe right now – for creating a concerted unification of today’s scattered efforts of special educators & other stakeholders – so that we may make breakthroughs in forming a local, regional, & global understanding of these issues.

Our approach to change is to drive a transformation through the application of technology to make the special needs education ecosystem more accessible, collaborative, transparent and personalized.

Our web application along with its corresponding mobile support will be the first of its kind to unite special educators and other stakeholders (parents, therapists, psychologists etc.) in special needs education built on a scalable technology stack. 

1. We digitize the IEP process and also simplify it progressively
2. We make use of Machine Learning for suggesting learning tracks for children with disabilities (based on the IEP process).
3. For regulatory bodies, we provide a single pane of glass for insights on data pertaining to special needs education.

What we aim to achieve in the next year:

• Adoption of the platform in public and private schooling system
• Proliferate awareness information on Learning Disabilities - right from identification & diagnosis, to everyday schooling support
• Empower educators to create indigenous study tools & aids to account for neurodiversity and differences in cultural contexts
• Fuel an increased collaboration between educators, therapists, parents & all stakeholders
• Driving transformation in the IEP process with increased transparency; emphasizing collaboration and outcome driven approaches

In the next few years, we envisage a smoother path paved for educators who work in the challenging arena of educating children with learning difficulties. Through a steady adoption of this solution and an increase in awareness, indigenous teaching aids, and collaboration, we predict a huge upheaval in the special needs education framework, which is largely unorganized today. We want to expand our work to countries in the African subcontinent, where work on inclusive education is nascent.

Our solution is a web application along with complementary mobile application support, owing to the ubiquity of handheld devices.

Our plan is to evolve the product to reach a critical mass of users, and eventually form long-term associations with governments, education bodies, schools, special needs education schools, etc.

Through partnerships we are currently associated with a total of 9 schools and 2 NGOs who are our beta users. They are in the process of adopting the web platform and we work closely with them for validation & feedback.

In the next year we predict that we will reach a user-base of 10000 active members who will be teachers, special educators, parents, therapists, principals, regulatory authorities and other stakeholders of special education. The benefits of the features of the platform are already being realized by special educators. By the continuous engagement that a niche social network has to offer, EdInclusive has the potential to become a part of everyday lives of teachers, parents and others involved.

In 3 years we plan to expand to other geographies and may reach a user base of the order of several hundred thousands.

We are a growing team of passionate educators & technologists. Our combined experience in special needs education is around 15 years; experience in the software industry is around 25 years. Two of our team members work with a school which was the recipient of the Defense Minister's Award (India) for Excellence in the field of Center for Differently Abled Children (2015).

We are sitting on top of a substantial amount of IP, research work, publications & patent pendings. We have practical experience in the spheres of assistive technology, instructional design & pedagogies, and understand the nuances of special needs education.

EdInclusive will remain available for free to all stakeholders of special needs education. We have plans to

1. Introduce a marketplace for special educators where they can showcase their work on teaching aids, study tools, teaching collaterals, activities, etc. Showcase of Free and Paid tools can incentivize teachers in terms of recognition of their efforts, help them monetarily as well as accelerate the pace of indigenous tools being developed.
2. Explore offerings in certification courses, webinars, lecture series, etc. which can generate revenue to be put back into development of the platform & help our expansion strategy.

Solve is the confluence of the world's best innovators and change-makers collaboratively tackling some of today’s toughest human problems. We draw inspiration from this, and we are keen to join hands with leaders, educators, entrepreneurs, researchers, NGOs & policy makers all across the world for their support and mentorship.

We are looking for help with:

• Connections to governments, education bodies & policymakers 
• Global visibility & media coverage
• Funding support for our active research and development arm
• Guidance and mentoring across various stages

1. Awareness about the platform
2. Legal backing and support from governments and education bodies across the world
3. Funding support for continued research and development of the platform