AI in Education
Artificial Intelligence or AI, once a concept that belonged solely to the realm of science fiction, is now a reality that has penetrated every aspect of our lives, including the field of education. Now is the time to start thinking about how you might use this technology to make you more effective. Understanding it’s potential will be essential, not only to saving you time but also to ensuring that your students continue to learn.
AI has the potential to revolutionize the way teachers and school leaders approach education, by providing valuable insights and tools that can help them enhance their teaching and administrative practices. In this article, we will explore some of the ways in which AI can be useful to teachers and school leaders, and how it can transform the learning experience for students.
AI Can Help You With Your Planning
If you want to plan a sequence of work and you are not working from an existing scheme, you can now ask an AI chatbot to simply create the programme for you. From the outline to the individual lesson plans it will do it all. You will still need to review and edit and steer it in the direction you want. You may even need to regenerate sections or rewrite them entirely. As I have played with it for this purpose I have found that it is useful for moving past the blank page but that ultimately it was not creating a quality sequence without my professional input.
AI-Powered Personalization: Tailoring Learning for Every Student
There could be many benefits and drawbacks to AI in education. One particular strength is the ability to personalize learning experiences for each student. I will admit to being disappointed that we do not seem to have moved anything like as quickly as I expected over the last 15 years or so.
AI-powered educational platforms can gather data on each student’s performance, strengths, weaknesses, and preferences, creating a comprehensive profile that teachers (or the AI) can use to design personalized lesson plans and activities. This approach ensures that every student receives the support they need to achieve their learning goals and can work at their own pace, making learning more engaging and effective.
It is already possible to purchase packages for your school that can do the above. The key, ultimately, is whether the content they serve is actually effective or of good enough quality. If you decided to engage in this area you will want to look very carefully at the content that is being delivered and how the algorithm will decide what to give students. We have explored a range of packages but have not found one that we are that impressed with to date. Our current favourite is the Doodle suite, which has some nice content. We do find the system assessment of students’ capabilities is not in line with what they can do. As time progresses it is certain that this aspect of these programs will improve greatly.
Predictive Analytics: Using AI to Identify and Address Learning Challenges
Predictive analytics is the process of using data, statistical algorithms, and machine learning techniques to identify patterns and predict future outcomes. In education, predictive analytics can help teachers and school leaders identify and address learning challenges before they become more significant problems. By analyzing data on student performance, attendance, and behavior, AI can identify students who are at risk of falling behind or dropping out and provide/suggest targeted interventions to support them. In principle this should save us hours looking over data, whilst also streamlining meetings with colleagues to discuss children. I do think that the human element needs to be kept front and center, we should, for example still meet and discuss our students and keep our relationships with each other at the forefront of our work. Whilst the computer may analyse the data only we really understand the child.
Streamlining Administrative Tasks: How AI Can Make
School Management Easier
Managing a school is a complex and time-consuming task, which involves a lot of administrative work. AI can help school leaders streamline these tasks and make them more efficient. For example, AI-powered systems can help with class scheduling, attendance tracking, and grading, freeing up teachers and school leaders’ time to focus on other essential tasks. Teachers can use AI to help them write lesson plans and even to create presentations for their class. We are very excited at the possibility of saving teachers time so that they can be more effective and keep their work life balance in check.
Another area where AI may help is with data analysis. If you have a large school an AI tool that automatically creates a report based on your data could be a real time saver that helps you to be more effective.
The latest iterations of chat clients can digest large documents or bodies of work and then provide reports or summaries for you. This could be incredibly useful when looking to work quickly and efficiently.
Summary
Whether you like it or not AI is coming. At the moment it is hard to see exactly where it will end up. I suggest making the most of the efficiencies that it has to offer you and be wise to the issues that may come about when students start to use it more widely and at younger and younger ages.
What would you like me to look at in future posts? Would digging into some specific tools be of use? Let me know in the comments.
