Empowering Education with AI Tools
Join me in my journey as a teacher, learning to navigate the opportunities and challenges of an AI-augmented world.
Teaching students to surf the AI tsunami
The fundamental purpose of education is to prepare young people for the future. Most futurists anticipate that an AI-infused world will yield huge improvements in productivity, employment and economic wealth over time but population benefits like these will take time to emerge. In the interim, there will be disruption, likely job losses and widening inequality for those who don’t or can’t capitalise on the emerging opportunities. With this in mind, look over these projections:
10-30% of jobs in the UK are highly automatable (Royal Society)
The IMF estimates that nearly 40% of global jobs could be affected and that figure rises to 60% in advanced economies (BBC)
The AI market is projected to reach $1,339 billion by 2030, up from $214 billion today (Forbes)
As a career educator, I think it is a moral imperative that we teach our students to leverage AI tools so that they are best positioned to ride the coming AI tsunami, rather than be consumed by it.
Future-proofing the education sector
I’ve dedicated almost three decades of my life to the teaching profession. I am proud of what I have achieved in that time and in awe of some of the colleagues I have had the privilege to work alongside. We work hard, have learned to dance of the shifting carpet of education which is so often a political hobby horse, and more often than not, no one outside the school gates will know the personal sacrifices we have made to serve the young people in our care. We teach because we care.
But the economic landscape we have been working in over the last 20 years has made it increasingly difficult to do our jobs and maintain a life/work balance.
A 2023 survey reported that 77% of education staff have experienced symptoms of poor mental health due to work (Education Support)
The 2023/24 Initial Teacher Training census showed postgraduate teacher recruitment was 38% below target (Commons Library)
Nearly a third of teachers leave the profession within five years (The Times)
If we want to recruit, retain and empower teachers to help young people prepare for an increasingly uncertain future, we must equip them with knowledge and tools that will help them be more productive in less time. I am convinced that AI has a significant role to play in this process. We can use AI systems to help with admin tasks, planning, resource development and assessment.
AI will not, in my opinion, replace good teachers. What it will do is augment the work we do so that we can have longevity in a profession which is desperately in need of experienced and capable practitioners.
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Teaching AI tools for enhanced productivity and learning.
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