How students must learn today: 10 features of the school in the AI era
Read this article in Spanish as published on INFOBAE.
This article was edited by Dr. Susan Neimand, Ed.D.
The 9th edition of the FIFA Women’s World Cup has some favorites to win: the United States, Germany, England, Spain, and France. The U.S. is the top choice, as the country has won four of the eight World Cups and four of the seven Olympic editions. No wonder why: 70% of the women who practice soccer worldwide are in the U.S.
One may think Brazil should have these achievements, as its men’s national team is the top World Cup winner. But it isn’t the case: the Brazilians never won a Women’s World Cup. Is it a quality or quantity issue? It’s both. There are 3,000 registered female soccer players in Brazil compared to 1.5 million in the U.S. and 1,300 coaches in Brazil compared to 72,000 in the U.S. In conclusion, the bigger the talent pool, the higher the chance to win.
The same happens with artificial intelligence (AI): the more data – or talent pool -, the higher the chance of retrieving precise information – or winning the World Cup. So, whenever you talk to Alexa, search for something on Google, watch a YouTube video, shop at Amazon, or chat with ChatGPT, you feed AI with data: your language style, tones, shopping preferences, favorite videos, and so on. Soon, AI will drive our cars, precisely read MRIs, and take over worldwide logistics. According to an IDC report, the world’s data will increase by 61%.
With all the information already available on the Internet, AI has passed the bar examination, shown success on medical school examinations, and has written numerous essays, to name a few of its achievements. One may think AI will take over humans, given these capabilities. Indeed, it took millions of years to evolve our biological intelligence, and it is taking decades to evolve AI since its first conception in the 1950s – a much faster pace.
So, is “hold on for dear life” the answer to this evolution? Perhaps it is the answer to many education systems not embracing AI because they are based on students precisely retrieving content shuffled in their heads. In other words, today’s students learn to have answers, but in the AI era, they must learn to ask questions. The right question, or prompt as AI tools call it, takes users to an infinite world of information and possibilities. If AI gives all the answers, we finally have the chance to learn what to do with information rather than merely regurgitating it in tests.
So, how can students learn in the AI era?
Schools need to evolve into places where students solve real-world problems daily, into research labs that foster their interests and talents. How do we do this? We need computers with access to AI tools, the Internet, and teacher training to provide a different pedagogy based on skills development, inquiry, and autonomy rather than imparting content.
Here is an example: Imagine a group of students who want to diminish the use of plastic worldwide. They research the subject for a couple of weeks and refine their prompts when using AI tools. Their brainstorming sessions are “heard” by Microsoft’s Copilot, an AI itself, which later summarizes the conversation into a paper with the conclusions and a concept idea.
Students then ask Copilot on LinkedIn to find potential investors more likely to invest in an idea like theirs. The Copilot designs a PowerPoint presentation using Dall-E AI-generated images and the concept paper as the prompt to resonate with these investors.
The students’ plastic-less solution is to create an app, which they want to demonstrate the prototype to potential investors. They ask ChatGPT to write the code, which students can cut and paste on GitHub, and voila! They have a demo prototype. These students never went to college to become experts on environmental cleaning. They have never met investors before and are not presentation designers or coders. But they know how to ask questions – or create prompts.
AI can also assist students in improving their athletic or artistic performances with data points and clear objectives. For example, providing information on how long it will take to improve an athlete’s VO2Max based on current training or how to develop a unique musical style inspired by Mozart.
AI makes us smarter when we use it with a purpose. AI is an extension of our brains, our augmented intelligence. Think about it: in the past, we had to go to college to deepen our knowledge in a specific field. Today, AI already possesses this deep knowledge available at our fingertips. AI democratizes learning, bridging the gap for the ones who take advantage of it.
You may argue that AI is bad because it will replace jobs - and you are right. A recent study by Goldman Sachs estimates that 300 million jobs may be replaced by AI, such as office administrative support, legal, architecture and engineering, business and financial operations, management, sales, healthcare, and art and design. At the same time, AI will create new jobs at such a pace that it will require us to change professions three to four times in our lifetime. But these changes will benefit us all: AI adoption can increase annual global GDP by 7%.
Are you one of those who insist on being oblivious to the impact of efficiency using AI in the job market? Check this out:
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg have invested heavily in efficiency by embracing AI throughout the years. The difference between these individuals and the average worker is that the former works to improve processes to make their product more efficient, and the latter uses the same old approach to perform their job.
How much energy do you spend every day, every year, to have the same outmoded results? While in the past, you needed an army of software developers to access the power of AI, today, thousands of tools are available to enhance your learning. AI augments your biological intelligence to make you smarter, increase your productivity, and make you more efficient.
It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert on anything. If students spend 16,800 hours in school, K through 12, modern education systems must responsibly instruct students in using AI tools with a clear purpose for as many hours as possible. Since experience improves personal performance, the school in the AI era must be:
Inquiry-based rather than answer-based.
Driven by learners.
Focused on learners’ intrinsic motivation.
Fostering students’ interests rather than their capacity to do well on tests.
Goal-oriented with each year’s completion producing a Portfolio of personal work instead of a grade transcript.
A guide to students throughout the learning process.
Encouraging students to teach one another.
A timeless education, or lifelong learning as a continuum.
A way to award credentials by AI based on millions of data points rather than a certificate based on tests.
Set to recognize each student by his/her combination of skills that makes a person unique.
Until now, learners had access to resources available in schools and technology with vertical content. But we are at an inflection point in history when we can shift the use of AI in education in the right direction. The proper use of AI develops students’ learning autonomy, with the ultimate goal of fostering competencies and habits of mind, which will be part of students’ lives forever.
AI opens their horizons of knowledge, entices students’ minds to ask more questions, and sparks a desire to explore what they have not thought about. AI will enable us to reach the next level of intelligence, ask questions we do not yet know how to ask, and expose us to knowledge that already exists but has yet to be discovered.
“All creation waits with eager longing for the revealing through the sons of men.” (Albert Einstein)
