Artificial Intelligence

Take Advantage of Microsoft Copilot’s Capabilities in K–12 Environments

Here’s what IT administrators can do to ensure school staff can take full advantage of artificial intelligence platforms, applications and devices.

Adam Stone

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Adam Stone writes on technology trends from Annapolis, Md., with a focus on government IT, military and first-responder technologies.

K–12 educators and staff have their hands full.

“Teachers have the day-to-day tasks of lesson planning, grading papers and providing customized feedback to students. It’s a very time-consuming process,” says Jordan Chrysafidis, principal group program manager for customer and partner success at Microsoft. Other educator and staff tasks include organizing meetings, delivering budgets and managing school administration.

Artificial intelligence can help. From drafting lesson plans to summarizing meetings, AI brings powerful capabilities to the education arena. The right AI agent paired with the right hardware can help schools bring those features to life.

Integrating Artificial Intelligence with AI-Ready Devices

As an AI assistant, Microsoft Copilot can help with brainstorming, writing, summarizing and analyzing. Copilot+ PCs are designed to help teachers and staff put those capabilities to work.

EXPLORE: See how Microsoft Copilot and Copilot+ PCs could benefit your K–12 environment.

“We have a set of Copilots, which are the agents or assistants built into Microsoft 365 as well as Windows,” Chrysafidis says. “Then we have Copilot+ PCs, which have a different architecture than a regular PC.”

The machines include neural processing units in addition to the usual GPUs and CPUs. Those NPUs make AI processing lightning fast, delivering some 40 trillion operations per second, versus 15 trillion in an ordinary PC. “This is a marked change in terms of productivity,” Chrysafidis says.

For teachers and staff, these devices also deliver significantly enhanced battery life. “I personally am using one of the Surface devices, and I don’t plug it in for two days. You can easily get more than 20 hours of battery life,” he says. “That’s a big deal for people who are in a classroom situation where they might be moving around or unable to plug in.”

In terms of productivity, the integration of Copilot into the device’s operating center offers benefits in the education setting.

“I just got back from a weekend away, and the first thing I did this morning was ask Copilot to give me all of the tasks that I have due. It will go through all the information on the device, including the inbox, and produce a summary,” Chrysafidis says. “You can also set it up to ping you proactively with a note like, ‘You have this request from last week that you haven’t responded to yet.’”

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In January, Microsoft developed Project Spark, an AI-enhanced learning application, currently in private preview. “You can think of this as a teacher’s hub for both lesson planning and creating things like quizzes,” Chrysafidis says.

“It pulls from content that already exists,” he explains. “For example, to create a lesson on photosynthesis that maps to Washington State standards for eighth grade, it will use a small language model to look at any content that resides within the teacher’s device or the teacher’s environment.”

The app will allow lesson creation on Copilot+ PCs, with limited features available to users on other devices.

Factoring in Windows 11 and the Devices That Support It

For school administrators and IT teams looking to bring these capabilities to teachers and staff, it’s important to understand how Windows 11 factors in.

First, a free version of Copilot is built into the Edge browser, which is included in Windows 11. Perhaps more important, schools using Windows 10 need to know that security updates for that OS are coming to an end in October.

“We know that roughly two-thirds of people in education are still using Windows 10,” Chrysafidis says. “They’re going to need to do something, and as you think about replacing devices, you need to think about how AI is going to play a role in the future, certainly among teachers and administrators.”

LEARN MORE: How can you bring AI into your K–12 district?

Training K–12 Staff to Take Advantage of AI

For schools looking to tap into the power of AI, it’s time to start training.

“There are many free courses and certifications that teach things like the basics of prompt engineering, or how to use AI to automate some core functions of your role,” Chrysafidis says.

Schools should be making these resources available to teachers and staff.

At the same time, it makes sense to think about the devices teachers and staff will use as they enter this new era. With AI emerging as a game-changing force in education, “a Copilot+ PC is a great answer to future proof your investment,” Chrysafidis notes.

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