Why Machine Intelligence Could Help Education

As a technologist, I applaud and celebrate the evolution of technology in today's world. As a human being, I notice that, in some cases, technology has an impact. It is only sometimes a positive impact. One of the areas where the concept of machine intelligence is going to benefit the human race greatly is in the area of education. My thesis for today is that machine intelligence will benefit education and teachers. But I want to put a disclaimer here at the beginning of the article stating that I do not believe machine intelligence will replace teachers. Machine intelligence will allow us to improve education while allowing teachers to be more effective in the jobs they went to college to study.

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Based on that thesis and the disclaimer, I want to discuss what machine intelligence means for educators. Those who don't know me and are reading this have no knowledge of me as a human being; I was a schoolteacher. That was my first professional career, and that was my educational training. I left education to embark on a career in technology many years ago. But I did start as a teacher many years ago. The basis of what I'm talking about has to do with personal knowledge, the many friends I have in the field of education, and the reality of what technology can do that is positive for education.

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Let's talk about the concept of an educational or education-focused chatbot. What do you think is education-focused? Let's lay out what an educational focus Chatbot will have. The system will allow educators to interact with it. It will focus on education but will also allow teachers to ask questions. Say, for example, you want to cover the evolution of spaceflight in your classroom. There are three things that you need to consider. How old are the students? What are the overall educational goals? Finally, consider the various learning styles you know of in your classroom. In other words, it presents more than just a lecture. Present various activities that allow students to embrace the entire reality of STEAM. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics. All are critical. They are the five legs of a good educational program.

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The Chatbot may return with a present video from one of the Mars rovers. That Mars video shows the students what Mars looks like. From there you can have several interesting activities. One of them could be what the city would look like on Mars. That is more so today in artistic and engineering activities. You get the idea that a teacher can quickly grab a model and a method for teaching the concept of human spaceflight.

Additionally, since we are referring to history, we can create a social studies lesson about the space race in the 1960s. Talks about the building of the cooperative international space station. It can talk about the many orbital systems that are overhead. We can discuss that your cell phone often utilizes signals that bounce off the satellites. You can get into the mathematics of the satellite launching. You can get into the art of a rocket launching into space. You can get into the concepts of scientific activities in space. You are measuring gamma radiation and evaluating the danger or risk of asteroids and the potential for those asteroids to hit the planet Earth.

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But, you'll have an educational system that allows teachers to teach many more subjects more easily. They will be able to focus their research on things that interest their particular class. For example, if you have a class of extremely artistic kids, you focus on the art activities within the steam process. You can do it if you have a group of kids who love mathematics. How much force is required to lift 1 ton 2200 pounds of material into space? Remember that you also have to measure the rocket's weight when doing that equation. So that's 1 ton plus the weight of the rocket. You can talk about the economics of space travel. The cost of lifting things into orbit today means that there will need to be different ways to get the materials into the space system in the future. Is that mining in the asteroid belt? What does that look like? The other advantage for the teacher is that the chat system will give them first-hand knowledge of what must be in each lesson. Additionally, the teacher will give the lessons in various learning formats.

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I will end where I began. Quite simply, the impact of technology and, in particular, the impact of machine intelligence on education will be significant. But at the end of this article, I wanted to return to my initial statement. While machine intelligence will greatly improve the ability of teachers to provide a variety of lessons in the Steam framework, we won't replace teachers. Meanwhile, machine intelligence will eventually notice that John is having a bad day. Oh, that Susie is having a terrible time at home. And that system would, of course, be able to report that in the proper channels and authorities to get help for the student; there is something about a human being being there and being able to say it will be okay. As we look at the impact of machine intelligence on education,k we see it as an opportunity for teachers to shine and students to learn. What more could you ask for?