How edtech companies are pitching AI for teachers
But this year, educational technology companies are urging schools to use AI in a new way. These companies don’t try to limit the use of AI in the classroom. Instead, they teach teachers how to make the most of AI to save time on tasks such as grading students, giving feedback, and planning lessons. These companies are positioning AI as the ultimate time-saver for teachers. Magic School claims that its AI tools, such as quiz generators and texts summarizers, are used by over 2.5 million educators. Khan Academy has a digital assistant called Khanmigo that it offers to teachers for free. Teachers can use this to help students with subjects from humanities to coding. Pressto, a writing coach, helps teachers give feedback to students on their essays. The pitches of edtech companies often reference a 2020 McKinsey & Microsoft report, which revealed that teachers worked an average 50 hours a week. According to the report many of these hours are spent “late at night marking papers, creating lesson plans or filling in endless paperwork.” The authors suggested embracing AI tools would save teachers up to 13 hours each week. Companies aren’t alone in making this pitch. In the past year, educators and policymakers also pushed for AI to be used in classrooms. The education departments of South Korea, Japan and Singapore as well as US states such North Carolina and Colorado, have released guidelines on how teachers can safely and effectively incorporate AI.
But when it comes to how willing teachers are to turn over some of their responsibilities to an AI model, the answer really depends on the task, according to Leon Furze, an educator and PhD candidate at Deakin University who studies the impact of generative AI on writing instruction and education.
“We know from plenty of research that teacher workload actually comes from data collection and analysis, reporting, and communications,” he says. AI can be helpful in all of these areas. It often comes down to two main teaching responsibilities: lesson plan and grading. Many companies claim that their large language models can be used to generate lesson plans in accordance with different curriculum standards. Teachers in California, for example, have used AI models to provide feedback on essays and grade them. Furze claims that many teachers with whom he has worked are not confident about the reliability of AI in these applications. When companies claim to save time on planning and grading it’s a “huge red flag,” says Furze, because those are “core parts of the profession.” “Lesson Planning is thought-out, creative and even fun,” he adds. “Students like feedback from human beings and assessment is one way for teachers get to know their students.” Some feedback is automated but not all.
