Artificial Intelligence - Not just for science fiction movies anymore!

The article by Matthew Lynch, ‘7 Roles of Artificial Intelligence in Education’,  suggests that artificial intelligence is making its way in to our everyday lives more and is no longer reserved for science fiction movies. Our mobile phones alone provide us with intelligent resources such as Siri and the opportunities that these kinds of resources provide educators are able to change the way that teachers differentiate their classrooms in the future. Education Perfect is one such teaching tool that brings in elements of artificial intelligence to assist educators in the way that they run their classrooms.

If you were to ask a group of teachers what the number one thing that they would love more of in their classrooms, you would find that majority of them would give you the answer, ‘time’. The role of the teacher has evolved beyond simply creating and delivering lesson plans to now include a gamut of administration jobs while ensuring that all students within their care are catered for at all times.

One of the main roles of artificial intelligence in education is the automation of marking - something that is going to save teachers precious time.  Education Perfect allows teachers to assign their students activities that will be automatically marked with detailed feedback provided to both the teacher and student at the push of a button. Teachers are able to see the strengths and weakness of the cohort at once and dive deeper, right down to the individual child. Pre and post test results are able to be compared easily to provide the teacher with growth data to ensure that their teaching and learning strategies have helped to improve student outcomes.

Through the use of the ‘Targeted Remediation’ function within the Assessments feature of the platform, teachers are able to see exactly which students need help with which areas of the content assessed - another role of artificial intelligence explored in Lynch’s article, identifying weaknesses in the classroom. The platform then recommends resources to the teacher that can be used for these individual students to help fill these gaps in their understanding. This remediation can be automated or the teacher can choose to differentiate their classroom by assigning appropriate remedial work to those students who require it while also assigning extension work to those students who require a bit of a push. Being able to easily assign different resources to different students within the same class matches the roles ‘meet a variety of student’s needs’ and ‘provide personalised help’ perfectly.

In my teaching with Education Perfect, I moved away from using the ‘Tasks & Homework’ function to the ‘Assessment’ function to give my students small quizzes to enable me to be able to differentiate my classroom better. I was able to see what areas of the content we were covering that the students already had a solid grasp on so that we could explore these in other ways such as project based learning and inquiry learning, versus those areas where students were not as strong and therefore needed a bit more teacher input. This shows how Education Perfect meets the role, ‘allow teachers to act as learning motivators’ as teachers are able to drive the learning in directions that will engage and inspire the students.

Along with the ability to gather quick and detailed data about my students strengths and weaknesses, Education Perfect allowed me to provide my students with syllabus aligned content wherever they needed it. If students were absent for any reason, they were able to maintain their studies by logging in to the Education Perfect platform. This meant that learning did not stop for students. The way that the platform is designed also allows students to explore the content library at their own discretion. This allows students to delve into areas of the syllabus that interest them as well as exploring areas that they feel they need more help with, without having to rely on the teacher to assign the work. 

Although artificial intelligence and programs like Education Perfect will never replace a teacher in a classroom, they provide educators with the tools needed to be able to accelerate the potential for differentiation and develop personalised learning experiences for their students.