Over the last thirty years, technology has been an important cog in ever-evolving formal learning environments. Continuous technology innovation is changing the way we learn, teach, and interact, reshaping classrooms into dynamic, adaptable environments that support a wide range of learning styles and needs.
From the early introduction of computers to today’s artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, technology is making a difference in schools and bolstering the learning experience.
One way technology is modernizing the learning environment is through the introduction of multi-sensory technology. Several studies have shown how multi-sensory learning, referring to the engagement of a student’s sight, sound, and touch, can enhance attention, focus, and memory retention. Using interactive projectors, teachers provide dynamic visuals and interactive content that gets projected onto surfaces.
For example, the Obie projector has become a popular option for small classrooms where physical activity is space-restricted. The projector provides a bright high-definition display with over 350 premium games. It is easy to install in small spaces and can project content to any surface. For children aged 5 to 9, it is potentially the best interactive projector today to make learning more fun and physically interactive.
AI is being used in classrooms to enhance the personal learning experience. AI-driven learning platforms can assess each student’s progress and learning style and provide tailored lessons and feedback. This customization allows students to learn at their own pace, giving them a unique and effective educational experience.
Relatively new, educational AI’s potential benefits still represent unknowns, but there is little doubt that AI will prove to be a significant disruptor in the advancement of learning in schools across the globe.
Perhaps one of the most significant ways technology is modernizing schools is by giving
teachers a chance to understand their students better. Analytic tools, for instance, have been enabling educators to gather and analyze data from multiple sources, including assessments, quizzes, and attendance records. This allows teachers to attain a broader view of a student’s performance over time, identifying patterns in student scores for different subjects and pinpointing strengths and weaknesses.
The same tools can facilitate formative assessments, ongoing evaluations that provide feedback in real-time rather than at the end of a term or school year. From this, educators can curate a personalized learning plan, to help address both individual needs as well as promote student agency. Teachers can become more aware of how a student participates in the classroom, and reach out to them using what the collected individual data tells them.
Students can use the shared data to take ownership of their education and work on subject areas where it clearly shows they are challenged.
In a decade you may not recognize the school learning environment. With virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), automatic grading and reporting, and interactive personalized learning, classrooms will be environments that cater to students with diverse learning styles and needs. Industrialized, assembly-line-style learning, a product of the 19th century will finally be thrown into the dustbin of history.
This is a future of promise for students who will emerge not just with knowledge, but also with stronger critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaboration skills, essential for navigating the increasingly complex 21st-century world.
]]>In his 1951 short story “The Fun They Had,” science fiction writer Isaac Asimov envisioned children in the year 2157 being so bored with their mechanical teachers they daydream about the fun kids must have had when they still went to schools with human teachers.
But an essay Asimov penned 25 years later, “The New Teachers,” strikes a more optimistic tone, proposing that future educational challenges be solved by customized teaching machines adjusted for each individual student. Recent technology has taken several steps toward fulfilling that latter vision with former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan pushing for tablets to replace textbooks.
But will technology ever totally replace teachers? Or will human instructors continue to play a significant role in education? Can artificial intelligence (AI) and human teachers co-exist in the classrooms of tomorrow?
AI Advances in Education
One way AI can increase educational efficiency is by taking over routine, rules-based tasks, according to Digital Tsunami author Abhijit Bhaduri. For instance, computers using AI can grade assignments and tests about topics with straightforward answers such as solving math problems.
Meantime, Microsoft founder Bill Gates sees AI as a way to customize learning. Gates has invested millions of dollars in developing personalized learning software that creates lesson plans for students based on their performance and guides them through trouble spots.
Another way AI can improve education is through analytics providing feedback to educators, administrators, and parents, according to big data expert Bernard Marr. For instance, educational software provider Third Space Learning has been working with University College of London, analyzing hundreds of thousands of hours of tutoring data and identifying and imitating patterns that make for good teaching.
The Role of Human Teachers
While these types of technology can help automate many educational tasks, experts agree they are unlikely to entirely replace human teachers and classrooms in the near future. Asimov acknowledged as much, saying machines were unlikely to eliminate human teachers in certain subjects, and Gates concurs that AI is better-equipped to teach mathematics rather than subjects such as writing.
For one thing, AI is geared toward rules-based, deductive tasks, but one function of teaching is helping students inductively discover rules in the first place. This aspect of teaching is more art than science, pivoting around a teacher’s creative insight into how to best present examples and clues in order to trigger student understanding. Thus, while AI may be useful for evaluating how well students can deductively apply memorized formulas and facts, human teachers are better equipped to help students understand inductive insights that underlie rote rules.
Similarly, while AI software programs can analyze students’ past performance and optimize lessons accordingly, they cannot provide the social support of a human teacher or fellow students. As Asimov observed, there is educational value in students interacting with teachers and their peers.
Finally, AI and other technology-based programs can present knowledge that human beings have already learned. They still depend, however, on humans to add new knowledge, and they also depend on human programmers. As Asimov put it, “who will teach the teaching machines?”
How Human and AI Teachers Can Work Together
These factors suggest that the future of education lies with humans and AI working collaboratively rather than the latter replacing the former. AI can handle routine tasks such as:
Relieving teachers of the routine and mundane will free up more time for them to work with individual students in areas in where they struggle or are delinquent. As well human teachers can handle teaching creative and critical reasoning skills not transmitted through rote learning and develop new classroom presentations that fill gaps not covered by automated curricula.
As automation increasingly enters classrooms, cyber security will become a growing classroom issue. Just as hospitals must safeguard patients’ healthcare records, schools will need to secure and provide reliable online backup for student personal information and performance. InBloom, a personalized learning software provider, was recently compelled to close down after parents and privacy advocates expressed concern over potential misuse of student data.
