In the Consortium for School Networking's 2024 Accelerating K-12 Innovation Report, the organization cited generative artificial intelligence as one of the current technology enablers in schools. CoSN defines technology enablers as tools that schools can use to overcome hurdles (obstacles that slow schools down or force them to advance) and take advantage of accelerators (“megatrends” that motivate and speed up innovation). doing.
Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in November 2022, generative AI has taken the tech world by storm, making headlines and igniting federal policy. Its proliferation is impacting technology users in every industry, and K-12 education is no exception.
Dig deeper: Experts share advice for integrating artificial intelligence into your organization.
Where do schools stand on AI?
Generative AI is primarily used by teachers, as evidenced by recent research and popular sessions at educational technology conferences. Intelligent's research found that 98% of teachers use his ChatGPT in some way, and 97% of teachers use her ChatGPT to create lesson plans.
The use of this technology in schools is likely to continue to increase as companies such as Microsoft and Google release their own generative AI solutions.
Microsoft Copilot AI was announced in September 2023 as a “simple, seamless experience available on Windows 11, Microsoft 365, and web browsers with Edge and Bing.” “It can function as an app or automatically appear when you need it with a right-click,” his Microsoft blog post states.
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Google's AI solution Gemini, formerly known as Bard, debuted in December 2023. “It was built from the ground up to be multimodal, meaning it can generalize and seamlessly understand, manipulate, and combine different types of information, including text, code, and audio.” Images and videos,” reads a Google blog post from Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind.
Yet, as technology advances rapidly, school policy continues to lag behind. According to an Education Week survey conducted in November and December 2023, 79% of educators said their school districts do not have a clear AI policy.
Additionally, the Intelligent survey found that 8 in 10 teachers approve of student use of AI, while 20 percent of Education Week survey respondents said their school districts do not allow student use of AI. I answered that it is prohibited. 7% said it is prohibited for all users. This adds to confusion and, for students, inequalities. Some people learn how to work with technology in the classroom, others explore it at home without instruction, and others don't have access at all.
Other notable trends in CoSN's 2024 K-12 Innovation Report
Generative AI has not previously featured in any of CoSN's annual K-12 Innovation Reports, but last year's report called AI in general a technology enabler.
Other technology enablers included in this year's report, analytics and adaptive technologies, and rich digital ecosystems, have appeared in some form in numerous previous reports dating back to 2019.
Meanwhile, untethered broadband and connectivity was not included in this year's report as a technology enabler for the first time since it first appeared on the list in 2021.
There were other big changes among proponents in this year's report. For the first time this year, CoSN named “changes in attitudes towards demonstrating learning” as an accelerator, but social and emotional learning was not included in the report for the first time since 2020.
Meanwhile, building human capabilities in leaders, named a catalyst in the 2024 report, has emerged nearly every year since 2019.
Regarding hurdles, cybersecurity returned to the report for the first time since 2020. Other hurdles cited this year include “attracting and retaining educators and IT professionals” and “increasing innovation and inertia in the education system.”
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