Opinion: AI Tool Shows Teachers What They Do in the Classroom — and How to Do It Better
There is no question about the negative impact of the pandemic, or that its effects have not yet been adequately addressed. That's why it's time to make use of one of the innovations from that time — the artificial intelligence-fueled revolution that can help teachers improve their instruction, develop their skills and help students learn.
The first step of this revolution was teaching on video. Traditionally, teachers worked as if their classrooms were islands. The pandemic brought video into every classroom, and, perhaps for the first time, teachers could see how their colleagues worked. They could share what they learned by showing each other, instead of telling what they did in the classroom.
The second step of this revolution was the use of AI to analyze that video and provide data to teachers and their instructional coaches on what works in the classroom and what does not. This is not for evaluation, but for improvement of teachers' ability to connect with their students.
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter
AI is reshaping how teacher coaching happens. One example is Project CAFE, pioneered by the education nonprofit Urban Assembly and the American Institutes for Research. Project CAFE is already in use in Urban Assembly's public high schools in New York City, as well as schools in New Jersey, Florida and Illinois. Ramapo College in New Jersey uses it to make feedback for student teachers more meaningful.
This AI tool scans classroom video and produces graphs that measure student talk time, teacher talk time and silence during a class; how often and when talking is on topic; and when respectful, encouraging and insulting language happens. The tool observes, but it does not judge. It leaves the teacher and coach to interpret the observations — and because AI identifies what it hears so quickly, it saves coaches hours of transcribing and collating data, time that can be spent helping teachers through guided, data-informed conversations.
The tool allows teachers to review video of their classes and focus on meaningful moments, such as which instructional interactions affect student learning. For example, it would allow a teacher to consider if they dominate the conversation in a class while many students never spoke. It can help identify useful patterns in a teacher's work to build upon. And it can amplify the way that in-person observation from experienced colleagues builds the skills of student teachers.
It is still too soon to have data on whether improved coaching translates into measurable results for students, Urban Assembly internal data shows that teachers spend 12% less time speaking and classes spend 7% more time talking on topic while using the tool. But anecdotally, both teachers and coaches who have used it are enthusiastic.
Phillan Greaves, an instructional lead teacher at the Urban Assembly Institute of Math & Science for Young Women, told her principal in an email that she has learned more quickly about her own teaching practices. 'I never thought I could upload lesson clips into an app and receive data that shows things like talk-time balance, student engagement and pacing,' she said. 'Instead of relying on gut feelings, I can analyze real patterns and trends. … Reflection feels less abstract — now it's focused, evidence-based and actually energizing.'
One of her colleagues, English teacher Patricia Gyapong, said Project CAFE's flexibility gives her various ways to improve her work in the classroom. 'I can choose to watch the video if I'm paying attention to my movement, and which part of the room I tend to focus on. Or maybe I want to see how aligned my questions were, so I read over the transcript. Sometimes, time is limited, so I can look over the bar graph and see my teacher voice-to-student voice ratio. … I love the autonomy to figure out what I need to work on, especially without feeling judgment.'
That time saving is key. When feedback is immediate, it locks in strengths and improves weaknesses. Project CAFE allows educational coaches to distill strengths and opportunities for growth much more rapidly than previous approaches.
Until now, teachers have often felt that feedback was something that was done to them. With tools like Project CAFE, they can take control of the feedback and make it work for them and their students. Good teachers are created with deliberation, care and compassion — and today, with the most vulnerable students being left even further behind, they are more vital than ever.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Yahoo
Opinion: AI Tool Shows Teachers What They Do in the Classroom — and How to Do It Better
There is no question about the negative impact of the pandemic, or that its effects have not yet been adequately addressed. That's why it's time to make use of one of the innovations from that time — the artificial intelligence-fueled revolution that can help teachers improve their instruction, develop their skills and help students learn. The first step of this revolution was teaching on video. Traditionally, teachers worked as if their classrooms were islands. The pandemic brought video into every classroom, and, perhaps for the first time, teachers could see how their colleagues worked. They could share what they learned by showing each other, instead of telling what they did in the classroom. The second step of this revolution was the use of AI to analyze that video and provide data to teachers and their instructional coaches on what works in the classroom and what does not. This is not for evaluation, but for improvement of teachers' ability to connect with their students. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter AI is reshaping how teacher coaching happens. One example is Project CAFE, pioneered by the education nonprofit Urban Assembly and the American Institutes for Research. Project CAFE is already in use in Urban Assembly's public high schools in New York City, as well as schools in New Jersey, Florida and Illinois. Ramapo College in New Jersey uses it to make feedback for student teachers more meaningful. This AI tool scans classroom video and produces graphs that measure student talk time, teacher talk time and silence during a class; how often and when talking is on topic; and when respectful, encouraging and insulting language happens. The tool observes, but it does not judge. It leaves the teacher and coach to interpret the observations — and because AI identifies what it hears so quickly, it saves coaches hours of transcribing and collating data, time that can be spent helping teachers through guided, data-informed conversations. The tool allows teachers to review video of their classes and focus on meaningful moments, such as which instructional interactions affect student learning. For example, it would allow a teacher to consider if they dominate the conversation in a class while many students never spoke. It can help identify useful patterns in a teacher's work to build upon. And it can amplify the way that in-person observation from experienced colleagues builds the skills of student teachers. It is still too soon to have data on whether improved coaching translates into measurable results for students, Urban Assembly internal data shows that teachers spend 12% less time speaking and classes spend 7% more time talking on topic while using the tool. But anecdotally, both teachers and coaches who have used it are enthusiastic. Phillan Greaves, an instructional lead teacher at the Urban Assembly Institute of Math & Science for Young Women, told her principal in an email that she has learned more quickly about her own teaching practices. 'I never thought I could upload lesson clips into an app and receive data that shows things like talk-time balance, student engagement and pacing,' she said. 'Instead of relying on gut feelings, I can analyze real patterns and trends. … Reflection feels less abstract — now it's focused, evidence-based and actually energizing.' One of her colleagues, English teacher Patricia Gyapong, said Project CAFE's flexibility gives her various ways to improve her work in the classroom. 'I can choose to watch the video if I'm paying attention to my movement, and which part of the room I tend to focus on. Or maybe I want to see how aligned my questions were, so I read over the transcript. Sometimes, time is limited, so I can look over the bar graph and see my teacher voice-to-student voice ratio. … I love the autonomy to figure out what I need to work on, especially without feeling judgment.' That time saving is key. When feedback is immediate, it locks in strengths and improves weaknesses. Project CAFE allows educational coaches to distill strengths and opportunities for growth much more rapidly than previous approaches. Until now, teachers have often felt that feedback was something that was done to them. With tools like Project CAFE, they can take control of the feedback and make it work for them and their students. Good teachers are created with deliberation, care and compassion — and today, with the most vulnerable students being left even further behind, they are more vital than ever.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Yahoo
Technologists Welcome Executive Order on AI in Schools But Say More Detail is Needed
This article was originally published in States Newsroom. Education software experts say they're cautiously optimistic about a Trump administration drive to incorporate AI into classrooms, but such a program needs clear goals, specific rules — and enough money to fund the costly systems. 'AI is, inherently, really expensive,' said Ryan Trattner, CEO of AI-assisted studying tool Study Fetch. 'It's not something that scales like a normal piece of software where it might be the same price for 1,000 people to use it as 100,000.' Among a handful of education-related executive orders last week, President Donald Trump released an order to incorporate artificial intelligence education, training and literacy in K-12 schools for both students and teachers. Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter The move is in line with other actions Trump has taken to promote quick growth of artificial intelligence in the U.S., including rolling back the 2023 Biden administration executive order that aimed to promote competition within the AI industry while creating guidelines for responsible government use of the technology. Introducing AI to grade school children is meant to create an 'AI-ready workforce and the next generation of American AI innovators,' the order said. A task force made up of members from various federal departments — like the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Energy and Labor, as well as the directors of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the National Science Foundation and other federal agency representatives — will be developing the program over the next 120 days. Some makers of AI tools for students said they are cautiously optimistic about more widespread use of AI in schools, saying it would better prepare kids for the current workforce. But they say success with this program hinges on the ability to measure outcomes for AI learning, an understanding of how AI plays a role in society and a set of clear federal guidelines around AI, which the U.S. does not currently have. Many students, parents and teachers are already using AI in some portion of their learning, often through AI-powered tutoring, counseling, training, studying or tracking tools mostly available from private companies. Bill Salak, chief technology officer at AI learning and studying platform Brainly, said that many AI tools built for education right now aim to fill gaps in schools where teachers are often spread thin. They may be using AI tools to help them make lesson plans, presentations or study guides. Brainly was founded on the idea of simulating student-run study groups, and is a supplement to classroom learning, Salak said. Salak is happy to see an initiative that will prompt educators to incorporate AI literacy in schools, saying he feels we're in a 'rapidly changing world' that requires much of the workforce to have a baseline understanding of AI. But he says he hopes the task force gets specific about their goals, and develops the ability to measure outcomes. 'I do think there will be further mandates needed, especially one in which we revisit again, like, what are we teaching?' he said. 'What are the standards that we're holding our teachers to in terms of outcomes in the classroom?' Specific objectives may come after the 120 day research period, but the executive order currently says that the initiative will develop online resources focused on teaching K-12 students foundational AI literacy and critical thinking skills, and identify ways for teachers to reduce time-intensive administrative tasks, improve evaluations and effectively teach AI in computer science and other classes. It also seeks to establish more AI-related apprenticeship programs targeted at young people. Trattner of Study Fetch said he's eager to see a green light from the administration for schools to invest in AI education. The Study Fetch platform allows students and teachers to upload course material from a class, and receive customized studying materials. Trattner said that initially many educators were worried that AI would allow students to cheat, or get through classes without actually learning the material. But he said in the last year or so, teachers are finding specific tasks that AI can help alleviate from their long to-do lists. Generative AI chatbots are probably not the best fit for classrooms, but specific AI tools, like platforms that help students learn their curriculum material in personalized ways, could be. 'Everybody knows this, but teachers are extremely overworked, with multiple classes,' Trattner said. 'I think AI can definitely help educators be substantially more productive.' But cost is something the committee should consider, Trattner said. The executive order calls for the development of public-private partnerships, and said the committee may be able to tap discretionary grant funding earmarked for education, but it didn't outline a budget for this initiative. AI tools are often more expensive than other software that schools may be used to buying in bulk, Trattner said. Some AI tools are targeted toward other parts of the school experience, like College Guidance Network's Eva, an AI counseling assistant that helps users through the college application process, and helps parents with social and emotional dynamics with their children. Founder and CEO Jon Carson said he's not sure that this executive order will make a big impact on schools, because schools tend to follow state or local directives. He also feels like the current administration has damaged its authority on K-12 issues by attempting to shut down the Department of Education. 'In another era, we might actually even bring it up if we were talking to a school district,' Carson said. 'But I don't think we would bring this up, because the administration has lost a lot of credibility.' Carson hopes the committee plans for security and privacy policies around AI in schools, and folds those principles into the curriculum. Federal guidance on AI privacy could help shape everyone's use, but especially students who are at the beginning of their experience with the technology, he said. A successful version of this program would teach students not just how to interact with AI tools, but how they're built, how they process information, and how to think critically about the results they receive, Salak said. Educators have a right to be critical of AI, and the accuracy of information it provides, he said. But critical thinking and validating information is a skill everyone needs, whether the information comes from a textbook or an algorithm. 'In a world where there's so much information readily accessible and misinformation that is so readily accessible, learning early on how to question what it is that AI is saying isn't a bad thing,' Salak said. 'And so it doesn't need to be 100% accurate. But we need to develop skills in our students to be able to think critically and question what it's saying.' The specific recommendations and programing stemming from the Artificial Intelligence Education Task Force likely won't come until next school year, but Salak said he feels the U.S. workforce has been behind on AI for a while. 'I really hope that we're able to overhaul the agility at which the education institution in America changes and adapts,' Salak said. 'Because the world is changing and adapting very, very fast, and we can't afford to have an education system that lags this far behind.'
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Yahoo
Math Study Shows Difficulty in Motivating Teachers to Change Behaviors
Like an online retailer trying to woo a customer back by offering a 10% discount on the boots they've been eyeing, education researcher Angela Duckworth wanted to understand how to incentivize teachers to log in regularly to an online math platform that aims to help them improve their students' academic performance. 'Today is perfect for checking your Pace Report!' 'Keep Zearning!' 'By opening this email, you've earned another 100 digital raffle tickets in the Zearn Math Giveaway!' Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for The 74 Newsletter In partnership with Zearn Math, a nonprofit online math instruction platform used by roughly 25% of U.S. elementary school students, Duckworth and a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's Behavior Change for Good Initiative launched a megastudy that peppered 140,000 teachers with different types of email prompts to log into the platform's dashboard each week and check their students' progress. Behavioral scientists like Duckworth, who popularized the 'power of grit' about a decade ago, spend a lot of time trying to pinpoint what, exactly, it is that prompts an individual to sign a form, become an organ donor or click an ad that promises a secure and safe retirement now. 'In the case of education there's the idea of nudging the students directly,' Duckworth said. 'But there's also the idea that's less commonly studied, which is, what do you do to nudge the teachers, who are not in complete charge, but have a lot of authority about what is going to happen in the classroom that day? It was clear to us that if we could get the students onto the Zearn platform that their learning would progress. But are they actually going to log in?' To that end, the team developed 15 different types of intervention emails featuring things like planning prompts, teaching tips, learning goals, digital swag and celebrity endorsements. The goal was to change behavior without mandates, bans or substantial financial incentives — though teachers were enrolled in a giveaway and earned digital raffle tickets every time they opened an email, increasing their chances of winning such prizes as autographed children's books, stickers and gift cards. The researchers then compared the average number of lessons the teachers' students completed on the Zearn Math platform over four weeks to a control group using Zearn that received only a simple weekly email. Related So did it work? Did the emails prompt teachers to log in more regularly? And if so, did the number of lessons their students completed increase? To some degree, yes, it did work. But not at all to the extent that Duckworth and researchers had anticipated. The best-performing intervention, which encouraged teachers to log into Zearn Math for an updated report on how their students were doing that week, produced a 5% increase in students' math progress. Emails that referenced data specific to a teacher's students — versus those without that information — boosted students' progress by 2.3%. And teachers who received any of the behaviorally informed email nudge saw their students' math progress increase by an overall average of 1.9% Duckworth was sure that the emails featuring famed astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and literary rockstar Judy Blume would move the needle more than anything else. But teachers were virtually unaffected. 'We had sexier treatment conditions,' she said. 'But no, it turns out, a simple message that says, 'Hey, your students' data are here, remember to log in,' that is what worked the best.' Notably, the intervention effects were consistent across school socioeconomic status and school type, both public and private. Moreover, they persisted for eight weeks after the email intervention period ended. Collectively, the reminders resulted in students completing an estimated 80,424 additional lessons during the four weeks their teachers received emails, and an estimated 156,117 additional lessons during the following eight weeks. Yet the limited impact of the email reminders surprised virtually everyone involved with the study: Students whose teachers received any type of behaviorally-informed email reminder only marginally outperformed students whose teachers received a simple email reminder. In fact, the effect was at least 30 times smaller than forecasted by the behavioral scientists who designed interventions, by Zearn Math staff and by a sample of elementary school teachers. 'It's a sober reminder that big effects are very rare,' said Duckworth. 'In general, we're finding in our megastudies and what's emerging across the social sciences is that intervention effects tend to be very small.' 'One of the things that this megastudy has reinforced is a kind of humility about how complicated human beings are and how challenging it is to durably change behavior. A kid is a complicated organism. Teachers are complicated. Schools are complicated,' she continued. 'It would be naive to think that you could radically change behavior with these like light touch interventions.' The findings not only underscore the difficulty of changing behavior, but also the need, Duckworth said, for large-scale, rigorous, empirical research on how to drive impact in math, which is a high-priority subject for education policy experts at the moment. Indeed, the findings come at an inflection point for math in the U.S. The most recent release of the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that, nationally, average mathematics scores in 2024 were lower by 3 points among fourth-grade students and lower by 8 points among eighth-grade students compared to their scores in 2019 – the most significant drop since 1990. School districts have struggled to rebound after significant academic setbacks incurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. For math in particular, by the spring of 2022, the average public school student in grades three to eight had lost the equivalent of a half-year of learning. Compared to students in other developed countries, Americans have ranked in the bottom 25% of students globally on standardized tests of mathematics for decades. U.S. students saw a 13-point drop in their 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment math results when compared to the 2018 exam — 'among the lowest ever measured by PISA in mathematics' for the U.S., according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, which administers the exam. As a result, a contentious debate has erupted surrounding whether educators are effectively teaching the subject — and whether they themselves are being effectively taught how to teach it. 'There was a dawning realization that there's a real urgency around math achievement in the United States,' Duckworth said when her team decided to design the megastudy. 'This very light touch nudge was helpful, but it does underscore how hard behavior is to change. And if there are bigger levers to influence teacher behavior, I think we would have found a bigger downstream effect on student achievement.'
