Artificial Intelligence in Education

Book excerpt: "The landscape for education has been rapidly changing in the last years: demographic changes affecting the makeup of families, multiple school options available to children, wealth disparities, the global economy demanding new skills from workers, and continued breakthroughs in technology are some of the factors impacting education. Given these changes, how can schools continue to prepare students for the future? In a world where information is readily available online, how can schools continue to be relevant? The emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has exacerbated the need to have these conversations. Its impact on education and the multiple possibilities that it offers are putting pressure on educational leaders to reformulate the school curriculum and the channels to deliver it. The book "Artificial Intelligence in Education, Promises and Implications for Teaching and Learning" by the Center for Curriculum Redesign immerses the reader in a discussion on what to teach students in the era of AI and examines how AI is already demanding much needed updates to the school curriculum, including modernizing its content, focusing on core concepts, and embedding interdisciplinary themes and competencies with the end goal of making learning more enjoyable and useful in students' lives. The second part of the book dives into the history of AI in education, its techniques and applications -including the way AI can help teachers be more effective, and finishes on a reflection about the social aspects of AI. This book is a must-read for educators and policy-makers who want to prepare schools to face the uncertainties of the future and keep them relevant." --Amada Torres, VP, Studies, Insights, and Research, National Association of Independent School (NAIS) "The rapid advances in technology in recent decades have already brought about substantial changes in education, opening up new opportunities to teach and learn anywhere anytime and providing new tools and methods to improve learning outcomes and support innovative teaching and learning.Research into artificial intelligence and machine learning in education goes back to the late 1970s. Artificial intelligence methods were generally employed in two ways: to design and facilitate interactive learning environments that would support learning by doing, and to design and implement tutoring systems by adapting instructions with respect to the students' knowledge state.But this is just the beginning. As Artificial Intelligence in Education shows, AI is increasingly used in education and learning contexts. The collision of three areas - data, computation and education - is set to have far-reaching consequences, raising fundamental questions about the nature of education: what is taught and how it is taught. Artificial Intelligence in Education is an important, if at times disturbing, contribution to the debate on AI and provides a detailed analysis on how it may affect the way teachers and students engage in education. The book describes how artificial intelligence may impact on curriculum design, on the individualisation of learning, and on assessment, offering some tantalising glimpses into the future (the end of exams, your very own lifelong learning companion) while not falling victim to tech-hype. The enormous ethical, technical and pedagogical challenges ahead are spelt out, and there is a real risk that the rapid advances in artificial intelligence products and services will outstrip education systems' capacity to understand, manage and integrate them appropriately. As the book concludes: "We can either leave it to others (the computer scientists, AI engineers and big tech companies) to decide how artificial intelligence in education unfolds, or we can engage in productive dialogue."I commend this book to anyone concerned with the future of education in a digital world." --Marc Durando, Executive Director, European Schoolnet