When you hear “AI” and “school” in the same sentence, you might think, “Wait a minute, aren’t kids cheating like that these days?” Not exactly, some of the nation’s most hard-working educators are now using new AI “edtech” tools to support an overhaul of our long-sluggish public education system. It says that there are.
“AI and adaptive software have completely changed the look of our classrooms, our school climate, and our culture. The work our students are doing is truly amazing,” Pease Elementary School Principal Micah Allott said in a video call from his office in Odessa, Texas. Told.
Since taking the helm in 2021, Allott is one of thousands of school leaders across the country who are fully committed to “blended learning.” The teacher now uses tablets in programs such as Age of Learning’s My Math Academy and My Reading Academy to provide her one-on-one, technology-enabled instruction to every student.
“Everything has really changed. Experiencing the campus now compared to three years ago is truly magical,” Allott explains.
“this [My Math Academy] This gives us a way to see where each child is and how they learn best,” added Pease Kindergarten teacher Shadiana Saenz. “They don’t necessarily grow up in an environment where they always have access to what they need.”
Can AI help students recover from learning loss due to the pandemic?
Three years ago, students were just returning to classrooms in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Allott was relatively new to the role of principal at the kindergarten through second grade school, which enrolls about 550 students. And she faced even more challenges.
Odessa is located on the westernmost border of the American heartland and is home to one of the most productive oil fields in the world. It’s also home to the football team that inspired the book, then the movie, and the TV series. friday night lights.
It’s also a region that has known the highs of oil booms and winning streaks and the lows of recessions and losses. 2021 was a slow year.
Between a series of oil industry bankruptcies and the pandemic’s impact on an already economically challenged region, Allott said the majority of her students, primarily Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students, are struggling to fall further behind. I had to fight like that.
The Texas Education Agency (TEA), which oversees Texas public schools, gave Pease an “F” grade based on student grades and test scores. Ironically, poor grades could make it harder for schools to get the funding and support they desperately need.
At a time when everyone was struggling, not just at Pease, but in similar public schools and communities across the country, educators needed a “Hail Mary.” and new AI technology tools.
What are the benefits of AI in the classroom?
“No classroom exists where all students learn in exactly the same way and at the same level,” says Diana Hughes., Age of Learning’s Vice President of Product Innovation and AI said in a video call. “What we’re seeing in our 600,000-plus classrooms is that kids are all over the place, and very few of them are where they’re supposed to be when they start class.”
Hughes said there are several reasons for this, and he has been working on solving them since he first developed the company’s flagship ABCmouse platform more than 10 years ago.
“What we know from extensive research is that it actually works: assessing each child individually to find out what they know, what they don’t know, and whether they’re ready to learn. “It’s about knowing,” she says. “Then you go back, reteach everything you don’t understand, and move on. You can’t move on until every kid in the class masters it. And you repeat that all day, every day. For the rest of your education. But that’s outrageous to ask for individual teachers for all 30 kids in a classroom.”
Hughes says this is where AI can change people’s futures.
“We have games designed to introduce a new concept, give them some experience with it, and then assess what they understood,” Hughes explained. To do. “So they’re playing a game, but we’re getting a lot of data about whether they understand or not. [what they’ve been taught] or not. And if you feel they don’t understand, for example by getting the wrong answer, you can apply additional feedback. ”
What makes this approach different from “standard” classroom learning is that students only move on to the next topic or idea when they are ready. “The system is like going through a loop of teaching, assessing, helping if needed, and choosing what to choose. [the student] We’re ready,” Hughes said. “This is very different from the ‘one-size-fits-all approach’ of traditional models. This way, no one is left behind and advanced students are not held back.”
The results speak for themselves. Age of Learning has a proven track record of success in some of the nation’s most at-risk, low-performing schools, including Jefferson County in Tallahassee, Florida. After 15 years of “failure”, often with students as much as five years behind their grade level, their assessment scores increased after just 12 hours of AI-assisted learning.
Will AI replace teachers?
Although a completely different type of school, at the $40,000-a-year private Alpha High School in Austin, students who use an app-based “AI tutor” score an average of 1545 (out of 1600) on the SAT. There are many. The national average is 1030 people.
“AI is the great equalizer,” MacKenzie Price, co-founder of 2hr Learning and Alpha School, says by phone. “AI has infinite patience. It doesn’t care how fast or slow it learns a concept. This is not possible in a traditional classroom. It doesn’t matter if the student is black, white, or brown. It doesn’t matter if the student is rich or poor, and it doesn’t matter if the child is in the 10th or 99th percentile.
At Alpha School, students spend two hours in the morning focused on personalized education enhanced by AI, with instructors acting as “supportive guides and counselors” rather than “traditional teachers.” says Price. Students spend the rest of their class time focusing on life skills, art, sports, and even entrepreneurship.
“It’s made learning so much more fun,” said Peyton Price, 18, a senior at Alpha High School and the daughter of Mackenzie Price. One example Peyton shared was recently using AI to replace the lyrics of Taylor Swift’s song “Blank Slate” to help students study for the Associated Press US Government finals. .
“Nice to meet you. Let’s start with an introduction to AP government. Where do I start? The Declaration of Independence, Setting the Stage for American Democracy, Turning the Page… Natural rights, sovereignty, social contract, these are certainly principles that guide our actions. ”
She also uses another modern technology tool created by her mother, a new “study TikTok” called TeachTap. In this app, students learn as AI-generated figures from Albert Einstein, Harriet Tubman, Marie Curie, and hundreds of other historical figures speak and interact. TeachTap is free to start, but prices range from $20 for “access to discounted courses” to $250 for “unlimited AP test prep.”
“A lot of adults and educators are like, ‘TikTok is bad or social media is hurting you,'” Peyton explains. are you having fun? ” and then think about how you can create a version that is useful for teaching. ”
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Mackenzie Price added: “This is what we’re doing here: taking all the potential negative effects of screen time and turning it into learning. We’re harnessing the power of AI, We’re using that for good.”
Can AI help all children in public schools?
Back in Odessa, 8-year-old sophomore Tripp Galloway has a similar story. Tripp is an upperclassman at Peace Elementary School. “He’s in second grade, but he’s already reading at a ninth-grade level,” his mother, Savannah, said over the phone. “He learns so quickly that he was bored and disengaged in school. Once we started learning his AI, he excelled, focused, and performed to the best of his abilities. Now I can work on it.”
“This is important because it teaches us things that teachers usually don’t teach us.” [be able to] Because the app tells you when you need it,” says Tripp. It’s fun now. ”
When I asked Tripp what would happen if he returned to his old classroom, he groaned and said, “I don’t know. [AI], we’re doing our jobs faster and more fun. It’s much better than doing worksheets all day long or having a teacher teach you all day long. ”
For veteran teachers like Carlton Conoquendo, that must be painful. She has taught a variety of grades and subjects at Chicago’s Hawthorne Scholastic Academy for nearly 42 years, but even with all the help that AI tools can give students and teachers, the most important part of her job is We know firsthand that AI tools will never replace us.
“Technology is a great tool, but it cannot replace human connection,” she said by phone. “Most of us still remember that one teacher who really spoke to us and influenced us. With technology, we can scale anything we want. But that connection Having one really, really impacts kids.”
Jennifer Jolie is an Emmy Award-winning consumer technology columnist and on-air correspondent. The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect his views and opinions at USA TODAY. Please contact JJ@Techish.com.
