Can Artificial Intelligence Solve Today’s K–12 Classroom Challenges?

Here are some of the challenges and solutions the participants discussed.

Teachers Don’t Have Enough Time to Build Lessons and Connections

A frequently recognized challenge for today’s K–12 educators is having too many responsibilities to accomplish in a day.

“Teachers very simply do not feel like they are in control of their world, and that’s result of too many demands, too many distractions, and not enough direction and support,” said Mackey Pendergrast, education strategist for district leadership at GoGuardian.

Jennifer Mari-Wyka, senior manager of product experience at Merlyn Mind, noted that it is important to give teachers the time they need to create connections. “They need time because time means building meaningful relationships with students, which has been proven to directly impact engagement and positive outcomes,” she said.

How can AI solve this challenge? The speakers shared use cases for its application in a few different ways.

Using GoGuardian’s Instant Pear Deck, “A teacher can upload some of their curriculum resources, they can target the standards they want and the AI will actually craft a core lesson in about a minute,” Pendergrast said. “Now, they’ve saved themselves 30 minutes. They can put their own personality into it and their own life into it.”

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Eric Ackerson, associate director of product marketing at Acer, pointed out AI lesson planning and tutoring tools that use analytics to learn patterns and find skill gaps more quickly, giving teachers more time to engage with students. “AI applications can help develop curriculum or … a specific lesson plan for a very specific student based on where they are in their learning journey and what their specific needs are,” he said.

Merlyn Mind’s tools also aim to give teachers time back “so that they’re not necessarily thinking about all of the other things that we know our teachers are burdened with … outside of their domain of delivering content,” Mari-Wyka said. Instead, they should “be able to deliver that content in a way that your students can digest it and also recall it when necessary, and even more important, apply it.”

Teachers Need Support to Learn and Implement AI Tools

Time is also a factor in the additional complication of learning new classroom technologies. AI, in its various forms, can be difficult to implement in K–12 schools for this reason.

“We can’t just say to teachers, ‘Here, go learn AI,’ because then we’re just replacing one thing with the next, and it’s not going to help them because it can be overwhelming,” Pendergrast said.

“Implementing new technology in the classroom can really place a heavy burden on teachers when coupled with all of the other things that they have to do throughout the day,” said Samantha McNabb, training manager at Newline.

Not only do AI products need to be implemented, they sometimes require new hardware. Ackerson and Strietelmeier noted that you can’t have good AI if you don’t have the right devices to run it on.

McNabb said that Newline’s team is particularly focused on training teachers. “We really design our products with teachers in mind, and our whole goal is to make their day easier, not harder,” she said. “Our training team works really, really hard to build online content for our teachers and our administrators so that they can access content that meets them where they’re at what time they have available.”

TAKE ACTION: Demystify artificial intelligence adoption for your K–12 district.

Students Need Personalized Lessons to Remain Engaged

The webinar also tackled challenges around student engagement. One focus for speakers was personalized learning. When lessons are tailored to students’ skill sets and interests, panelists said, it improves learning outcomes.

Ed tech tools can help shift the center of instruction from the teacher to the student, McNabb said. “When you give students the opportunity to really drive their own learning … it gives them a lot more excitement about what they’re doing. When they know they’re not just going to sit there and listen to their teacher for 42 minutes straight, they actually have the ability to take some ownership of what they’re doing.”

AI helps students drive their own learning, and it can help teachers create lesson plans that capture students’ interest.

“With AI tools, students’ imaginations can run free, and education can be adaptable to the learning styles of individual students,” Ackerson said. “Technology is what kids know. So, we present them with solutions that they want and that enrich their mind.”

Mari-Wyka shared an example of Merlyn Mind’s personalized learning capabilities. “One of our newest features is our lesson plan builder,” she said. “We were able to develop a game around the NCAA tournament that was all geared toward vocabulary that’s used in photosynthesis. Being able to capitalize on what already interests students and weave that academic piece into it is the key component.”

To watch the full recording of the “Achieving Better Student Outcomes with AI and Interactive Solutions” webinar and explore other free resources, visit the CDW Education webinar landing page.