A teacher needs to teach and educate, why does she need to understand AI, when until today all the new technologies have only interfered. The post tries to find positive reasons that will prove that it is worth being involved with this specific technology.
During the last decades, there is constant pressure on teachers to use technologies as teaching aids. Tutorials, Wikipedia, apps, TikTok and what not. Most of them required a great effort from the teacher with a rather marginal output. So why will this time be different?
In my humble opinion (and I’m really not alone here) artificial intelligence is the most significant revolution that happened in the last century (more significant than the car, internet and smart phone) and it will affect every area of our lives. Therefore, ignoring the capabilities of artificial intelligence in education is similar to a teacher’s decision to ignore the disturbed student in his class, as ignoring that will lead to problems in the long run. Artificial intelligence when it is embedded in the world (and not far away that day), will be present in the classroom, giving advice to students, doing their homework, behave as a close friend… it will simply be there (see post on the inevitability of technology). A teacher who does not know the field, will not understand what is happening in his class.
In this post I will try not to be a prophet of wrath but to find uses that will help the teacher.
>> Once you get past the initial stage of talking to a machine, having a conversation with it can be fun and informative.
>> In the same way that technology can help the student, it can be a tool for the teacher. It should be remembered that she draws her knowledge from everything that has ever been written about teaching and education in the world, therefore she often gives new insights, interesting directions and ‘brain-blowing’ tools.
>> Example of tools that will be (and are) available: check homework; grade tests; create an assignment or test for the student; adapt an assignment to the individual student (personalization); prepare a lesson plan; find papers that were all written by the machine; track the students’ progress; find students with social/educational difficulties… It is important to remember that these tools will only help those who know how to use them.
>> Like any technology, artificial intelligence has limitations, it is important to understand them in order to direct the students.
>> We have no idea where this technology will develop (see post on the potential of the technology), but it is clear that it will not remain a nice game for the afternoon, at the moment the progress is made in huge and rapid leaps. A teacher who won’t get on that train when it’s crawling will quickly find out that it’s going too fast and it’s impossible to catch it.
To summarize an example (see a separate post on personalization), a teacher who has finished teaching a subject can demand a uniform assignment from all students, or ask the system to create an assignment adapted to each and every student according to their abilities and ask the system to check the various assignments submitted by the students. What kind of teacher do you want to be?
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