Advantages of AI in Education
In the past year, there has been an explosion of AI tools in the rapidly evolving digital world. AI is transforming various sectors, including education. So, how can AI in education support you in your teaching role? In this article, we explore the key advantages and pitfalls of using AI in schools. We also highlight how AI can help personalise learning for students and ease the workload for teachers at the same time.
Table of Contents:
- How is AI used by teachers and in schools?
- 4 Key Advantages using AI in Education
- How can AI support students?
- How Does AI Support Lesson Planning?
- How Can Pango Help You Use The Power of AI?
- What should teachers be aware of when using AI?
How is AI used by teachers and in schools?
With increasing teacher workloads being given as one of the reasons for our teacher retention crisis, the Department for Education (DfE) has been looking into the ways in which AI can support staff working in schools.
Teaching staff often find themselves juggling numerous responsibilities. From creating lesson plans and searching for teaching resources to marking work and handling admin tasks. The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in education offers a promising solution to these challenges. By automating time-consuming tasks, AI enables teachers to dedicate more of their energy to their primary mission: educating and supporting their students.
With a range of education AI-powered tools rapidly becoming available, we are beginning to see an increasing number of teachers identifying the workload benefits of incorporating AI into their day-to-day tasks.
4 Key Advantages of using AI in Education
With the use of the right prompts, information and tools, some of the key highlights and advantages of using AI to support in education include:
- AI can tailor educational content to individual students' needs, pace and learning styles. This can support personalised learning experiences.
- AI technologies, such as speech recognition and language translation, can make education more accessible to students with disabilities and those who speak different languages.
- AI can streamline, support and speed up time-consuming admin tasks. This means more time left to spend with the students.
- AI can be a great starting point for lesson and activity ideas when your mind goes blank – we've all been there!
How can AI support students?
Using AI to assist students in the classroom is a rapidly evolving area. AI tools designed for children must prioritise their safety and security as key considerations.
Some of the ways in which AI is already supporting students include:
- Personalising learning materials so students learn at their own pace, using methods that work well for them. This also helps aid student motivation and engagement. This can be particularly helpful for students with SEND.
- Data analysis driven by AI can highlight gaps in student knowledge and understanding. This can result in more timely action and intervention being taken to close the gaps.
How Does AI Support Lesson Planning?
Most of us will be very familiar with traditional lesson planning, but have you explored how helpful AI can be during this process?
From finding appropriate, accompanying resources with ease to creating a unique plan to meet the needs of your specific class, AI can save you time and increase the quality of lessons for your students. In addition, with the right tool, you’ll be able to include adaptive teaching strategies tailored for individuals in your class, as well as add challenges and extension tasks.
This means you can plan lessons with fresh, new ideas, while having all of the helpful supporting materials you need to make your lesson a success.
How Can Pango Help You Use The Power of AI?
At Pango, our primary goal has always been to assist teachers in reclaiming valuable time through more efficient lesson planning. Now, with our AI assistant, this process is even quicker! Simply select the tool that is best for the task at hand, enter information such as the year group, lesson objective, intended outcome and any personalised requirements and let AI get to work! You’ll be able to generate unique and customised lesson plans, quizzes, assessments, presentation slides (and more!) with just the click of a button.
After creating your initial lesson plan, Pango gives you the flexibility to refine it. Add additional activities or make the lesson shorter. Tailor it to different learning needs or incorporate additional resources from our extensive collection. You’ll be able to do it all. You can also discover additional units and comprehensive schemes of work from trusted content providers too. Keen to plan your next lesson in minutes instead of hours? Join Pango today and enjoy a 7-day free trial!
What should teachers be aware of when using AI?
The partnership between teachers and AI should be viewed as a collaboration. AI can enhance efficiency, customise student learning experiences and support time-consuming admin tasks. However, it's crucial to recognise the irreplaceable value of teachers' human strengths: their ability to know and understand each child individually and adapt approaches in real-time during teaching moments - areas where AI tools will typically fall short.
While AI can be a powerful asset to teachers, it’s important to remember that it is not designed to replace you and to be mindful of some of the limitations AI may have, including:
- The impact on human connection. An over-reliance on AI-powered tools might diminish the personal connection between teachers and students. This can potentially affect social and emotional learning outcomes.
- AI lacks the understanding and experience that teachers bring to their classrooms. This can impact decision-making processes that require contextual understanding and familiarity with individual students.
- The effectiveness of AI tools can depend on the quality of their training data. This may limit their applicability and accuracy, especially if the tools are not created specifically for teachers.
Like with anything you find on the internet, it's important that any AI-generated content we use is checked for accuracy. While AI is a powerful and supportive tool that can aid teacher workload and in turn enhance wellbeing, it should complement your practice, and not become a 'click and go' substitute for your knowledge and expertise.
When using AI, it's important to check for errors, misinformation, misconceptions, factual inaccuracy or misunderstanding. Sometimes, your search will not generate what you expect. Also, as a teacher in the UK, watch out for those Americanisms!
Inspire the Next Generation with Pango’s Teaching Resources and AI Tools
Save valuable time on lesson planning with Pango. Our extensive library of educational resources sourced from leading publishers, coupled with our powerful AI tools, transforms what used to take hours into mere minutes. Whether you need a quick quiz to assess students at the end of a lesson or to create presentation slides for an upcoming activity, our high-quality content is easily accessible with just a click. Start today with a 7-day free trial to explore all our premium resources.
