In my planning and thinking for this project and course in general, I was not thinking enough about businesses and ventures that were really disrupting the current educational technology space. At a recent technology strategic planning meeting I was discussing emerging technologies with my current ed tech director at my school (we often like to share and discuss new technologies we have seen or read about) and this led us to discussing AI and what is new in the AI space. The AI technology space is advancing so rapidly and has a tremendous potential to truly change the educational landscape. My thinking about this emerging technology is continuing to grow and learning more about this AI tutor has stretched my mind about the possibilities of education in the future.

As a science teacher and former science student myself I have used the Khan Academy on multiple occasions to support teaching concepts and as a learner myself. I was familiar with their simple and accessible platform and was very excited to hear about Khanmigo. Person to person tutoring is expensive and impractical in my experience. The “new student” is working during more flexible hours and their day is not laid out in a simple way like it may have been in the past. Students are partaking in high level athletics, performing arts and other activities and need flexibility when they are studying. This is where I fell in love with the idea of Khanmigo. I have taught Math and Science for years and know how beneficial it is when I am working directly with students and can see their thought and decision making process when it comes to solving problems. The issue as an educator is that in a classroom this is very challenging to do all of the time. It is very hard to be with all students in ordre to see their thinking process. Thinking about an AI bot that can observe (in the background) students problem solving and provide quick and valuable feedback and corrections to them will be an incredibly valuable tool for educators.

Another passion of mine is improving the feedback process for students and for educators. Feedback should be timely, action oriented, useful to the person receiving it and encourage thinking. This is another feature I enjoyed about exploring the pilot program. It was not feeding students the correct answer, instead it was guiding them in the right direction and even questioning them about their thinking. 

I am thinking about an AI/data driven feedback bot for my opportunity pitch. It will consolidate some of what I have seen with the AI tutoring along with some best practices for feedback and grading.