Educators And Students Now Have A Secure AI 'Scaffolding' To Support Them In The Classroom
Microsoft News, Wednesday, March 6th, 2024
Clare Prowse needs ideas for a 'medical mystery' course for her 10th-grade biology students and has turned to AI. As the sample curriculum it created scrolls down her screen, she gushes over its bullet points and ready-to-use formatting - not to mention its suggestion of exploring a famous historical case she hadn't thought of in years.
'Oh, the mystery of Phineas Gage, that would be a fascinating one,' says Prowse, who's been using Microsoft Copilot for the last few months to help with 'the work that adds to a full day of classes' as she teaches at Seattle's O'Dea High School. 'I might not use all of this, but it gets me thinking. It gave me the scaffold, and now I can go off and do this.'
From helping to draft course plans to inspiring homework ideas to jump-starting recommendation letters, teachers worldwide are reveling in the time savings they're seeing with new AI tools such as Copilot. The technology is helping them focus more on their classrooms - and on the paradigm shift underway for learners as those same tools are rolled out to students. Educators of students from children to adult researchers are starting to change the way they teach, focusing more on the fundamentals of each subject and less on the clerical aspects of assignments.