One of the big themes that dominated ISTELive 2024 was artificial intelligence. To be more specific, companies made strides to implement ai into their existing offerings to help make the end experience more intuitive, seamless, and useful.
I had the privilege of speaking with Paige Johnson, Microsoft’s Vice President of Education Marketing, about the tech giant’s ISTELive offerings, what they would bring to users in the near future, and Microsoft’s vision for the future of serving users in the education space.
“In our Microsoft 365 and Copilot offerings, we have more generic productivity tools that can help educators and school leaders be more efficient and effective,” Johnson said. “So across all of our academic sectors, both paid and free, they get data protection and copyright protection from us. That’s part of our corporate social responsibility and our commitment to serving education customers.”
And of course, we can't forget about ai.
“Specifically, in our educational offerings, we have leveraged and incorporated some of those new ai capabilities into products like Reading Coach and Reading Progress so that students and teachers can take advantage of the generative ai tools in Chat GPT4 that are built into our Microsoft platform and really enhance engagement, personalization, and personal productivity,” he said.
<h2 id="ai-adaptation-in-the-classroom”>Adapting ai in the classroom
Educational spaces have been bombarded with new ai offerings over the past year. Part of the conversation around these ai products has been about how easily teachers and students can adopt using these tools. Johnson explained how using platforms like Microsoft Copilot can be intuitive and straightforward if you know what to ask.
“I think there are some tools that require learning how to use a little bit of prompt engineering,” Johnson said. “In Microsoft Copilot, for example, you have to know how to ask the right question to get what you need, and learning how to do that takes a while. We offer free training courses to help support that. When you look at the generative ai tools that are being built into Microsoft learning products or learning products from our edtech companies like PowerSchool, a lot of that barrier is lowered because those prompts are built into the use case. Rather than creating a drag on productivity, what you see is that it makes it much easier for teachers to use those tools.”
Rather than leaving it up to teachers to figure out how to use its products on the fly, Microsoft is making it easier to bring these tools into the classroom, paving the way for ai integration for educators.
A more security-focused approach
Security and ai go hand in hand when it comes to the impact on students and teachers in the classroom. Specifically, ai tools raise questions about data security, privacy, and more.
“I think there are three themes when you talk about this area,” he said. “The first is data privacy, which is a part of security, but it’s not all of security. That’s part of the benefits you get with our offerings. The second is an IT story around data governance. As institutions start to use more ai in their environment, especially if they’re leveraging ai tools to build some of their own stuff, data governance becomes even more important. The third is fundamental IT security. How do you make sure that across your platform, you’re thinking about a zero-trust environment? One of the benefits of working within the Microsoft platform is that a lot of that is built into all of our systems. We’ve thought deeply about how we make sure you have good data protection when you use our productivity tools. We have tools for IT teams to set up that data governance across all of our products. And then we have back-end security tools like Sentinel and Defender to help protect your IT end-to-end.”
Does digital citizenship create digital disconnection?
As students increasingly use internet-connected devices, digital citizenship remains a critical component of education. Johnson elaborated on the nuances surrounding the topic.
“I don’t think (students) separate their physical life from their digital life, but I do think (digital citizenship) refers to a number of different things,” she said. “One of them has to do with thoughtful and effective use of technology with kids during their time at home and at school. I think as ai comes to fruition, it’s important to have meaningful conversations with leaders, policymakers and parents about what that looks like. Microsoft is deeply involved in those conversations and thinking about what responsible use of ai is for a student. I would say it’s really important to understand how quickly ai skills are starting to be defined in the workplace. Because even a student who wants to do something after school may have to have some quick skills or understand responsible use of ai in that category.”
Microsoft clearly has the educational present in mind when it comes to engaging students and teachers in the use of ai, but not without shirking the growing responsibility of preparing students for an ai-enabled professional future. With new updates to the Microsoft suite of programs, teachers will have even more flexibility when it comes to creating lesson plans, assessing student responses and behavior, and reestablishing meaningful connections within the classroom.
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