The Ultimate Guide to AI in Education: Benefits, Challenges, & Real-World Uses

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to influence practically every aspect of education and society as it rapidly expands both inside and outside of school.” This sentence opens CoSN’s report titled “Artificial Intelligence (AI) in K-12.” As education evolves quickly, AI will play an increased role in personalizing education, supporting curriculum development, and encouraging experimentation with new styles of teaching and learning.

As with the introduction of any new technology, AI’s capabilities must be welcomed with caution. All stakeholders in the K-12 education space are waiting to see how AI will impact students and teachers, and all have a responsibility to channel the productive abilities of AI while actively guarding against pitfalls like inaccurate content, bias, plagiarism, or cybersafety concerns.

Meanwhile, AI offers limitless opportunities. These include new forms of interaction—which can be particularly groundbreaking for special education programs and multilingual learners—to facilitate communication, personalized learning adaptations, improved feedback loops, and individualized tutoring with “study buddies” are just a few ways that AI is transforming the K-12 landscape.

When Was AI First Used in Education?

Backed by research from Brittanica Education, we know that the first AI program was written in 1951. In the 1950s, British logician and computer pioneer Alan Turing “questioned whether a machine has the ability to think and introduced central concepts of AI.… In subsequent decades, technology continued to advance globally, making its way into the classroom.”

As the technology made its way to the classroom within the following decades, AI has proven to be transformative for analytics in K-12 education, and this increased use of AI-powered tools will continue to unlock teaching and learning opportunities for the education ecosystem.

13 Advantages of AI in Education

While AI is a relatively new technology, it’s already being implemented in education in meaningfully transformative ways. Here are 13 advantages of AI in education:

AI Personalizes Education

AI can review a student’s academic history and deliver curated curriculum based on patterns. This AI data collection helps effectively identify student needs. All you have to do is ask!

AI Automates Tasks for Teachers and Administrators

Educators across school roles can offload administrative tasks to save valuable time, such as posting assignments, sending emails, gauging student mastery, and analyzing trends.

AI Analysis Lets Educators Answer Data Questions Quickly

PowerBuddy is an AI analysis tool designed to help tech leaders and IT teams interact with data through natural language queries. With PowerBuddy, school staff members can tap into robust data at any time to gain quick and complete answers to questions that arise about student performance and more.

AI Offers Smart Educational Content

Teachers and students alike can benefit from asking AI to generate lesson materials or extra content that’s engaging and informative. Teachers can generate entire lesson or unit plans in far less time than it would normally take to create a new curricular unit.

AI Improves Accessibility and Equity in Education

Regardless of where a learner is in the world, they can access high-quality instruction—and even have it translated—which improves educational equity. Individuals who are visually- or hearing-impaired can use AI-powered conversion tools to change the content into a more accessible format.

AI Data Analytics Increases Equity in the Classroom

PowerSchool solutions support equity by giving schools and districts better access to a wide array of data about each child. With AI, you can bring together multiple data points into a broader picture quickly. This supports whole-child decision-making and helps educators avoid bias that could come from limited datasets.

AI Helps Close Skill Gaps in Education

With AI in education, K-12 students can work on upskilling without having to ask their teacher to create additional practice materials.

AI Offers Data-based Feedback for Students

AI’s data-based feedback system allows for transparent communication among teachers, families, and students. It can improve student satisfaction, reduce or eliminate bias, and identify which students are not yet meeting content standards. By synthesizing its data quickly, it can keep all school community members updated on trends for individuals or across a district.

AI Complements Teachers

Educators are irreplaceable, and AI for education is a complementary partner to this very human craft. For schools that are understaffed, AI can help tutor students or suggest PD to teachers based on instructional coaches’ observations.

AI Facilitates Data Cultures and Data Democratization

AI has the potential to transform the use of data in schools, since it enables staff to make quicker decisions that are based on more holistic data than ever before. With all staff now empowered to draw conclusions based on broader views of all students, AI democratizes data. This also helps districts build an effective AI data culture across their organization.

AI Offers 24/7 Training

One trending application of AI in education is “study buddies” or “tutor bots.” Conversational AI assistants can give students who need one-on-one attention when they don’t have anyone to speak with. Chatbots are far more sophisticated than they have been in the past. They can answer student questions, analyze answers for accuracy, and even suggest improvements based on individual student’s data on past performance.

AI Cybersecurity Enhances Data Privacy with Secure Algorithms

Student data privacy is a top concern for all education organizations. AI-based decentralized solutions improve cybersecurity and data protection.

AI Offers Education Assessment Integrity

AI in education can monitor students while they take online assessments—such as surveying web browser use and accessing their camera and microphone—to protect against suspicious behavior. It can quickly inform teachers or proctors about issues and share unbiased data on trends seen with individual students.

5 Challenges and Concerns Around AI in Education 

While AI in education offers numerous advantages, responsible use of AI means being aware of potential concerns.  

1. Privacy–Even following cybersecurity best practices doesn’t guarantee full protection from a cyberattack. Companies producing AI products must meet industry security standards to ensure the appropriate use of data and content processed by AI technology.
2. Equity–While AI can bring instructional content to anywhere in the world, a user needs internet access to engage with the tool. This puts an additional burden on communities that are already under-resourced—and potentially will leave them even farther behind.
3. Teaching roles–While AI will in no way replace human teachers, it will change the ways in which they plan lessons, review student data, and deliver instruction.
4. Ethics–The ethical use of AI, alongside the possibility of algorithmic bias, is a concern. This bias occurs when an algorithm produces results that are systematically prejudiced due to false assumptions in the machine learning process. Fortunately, this bias is expected to decrease over time as AI tools are used more broadly.
5. AI Myths and Misconceptions–By fostering informed dialogue, emphasizing ethical use, and prioritizing security, we can use AI as a valuable ally in shaping innovative and inclusive learning experiences for all students.

How Does AI Personalize Learning?

AI personalizes learning by adapting educational content and experiences to better meet individual students’ needs and preferences. Here are a few ways AI does this.

Adaptive Learning and AI

When you utilize AI in education, the AI systems leverage data analytics and machine learning to assess a student’s past academic performance and learning style. Based on this data, the system can adjust the difficulty level of assignments and tailor the content to match the student’s current skill level. If a student excels in a particular area, the system can provide more challenging material, and if they struggle, it can offer additional scaffolding.

Personalized Content Creation and AI

AI can generate custom learning materials, such as quizzes, flashcards, and even entire lessons tailored to a student’s strengths and weaknesses. This personalization ensures that students focus on the topics they need the most help with, maximizing their learning efficiency.

AI and Interactive Experiences

When you incorporate AI in education, you’ll find many AI-driven interactive tools, like virtual reality and gamification, that can engage students in a personalized and dynamic way. These experiences adapt to the learner’s progress and preferences through AI progress monitoring, creating a more immersive and enjoyable learning environment.

Data Analysis, Predictive Analytics, and AI

 AI can quickly analyze a vast amount of student data to gain insight into their learning patterns and progress. This AI progress monitoring allows educators to intervene as necessary by providing extra support or additional challenges when they see a student struggling or excelling. Predictive analytics can also forecast a student’s future performance and help educators take timely and proactive measures.

Real-World Applications of AI in Education Today

AI is already making a difference in K-12 education. Here are just a few examples of how it’s being used today.

AI for Translation and Language Learning

AI-powered translation tools break down language barriers. Some apps use AI algorithms to personalize language learning for its users by collecting data on student strengths, weaknesses, and learning patterns so the AI system can adapt lessons and exercises accordingly. For example, if a user struggles to conjugate verbs into the correct tense, AI can generate more practice exercises and provide targeted feedback and suggestions.

Now that many courses are available for free online, students can use AI to translate the content into their preferred language. If someone in Ethiopia wants to take a bread baking class through the MasterClass platform, they can use AI to translate instruction from English into Amharic or Oromo.

Writing and AI

AI can provide grammar and style instructions to help writers improve their writing skills. If you’ve ever used Grammarly, you’ve tapped into an AI tool that’s intended to help you write higher-quality content in less time.

AI can also detect plagiarism in essays, objectively apply rubrics to grade written assignments, and build student vocabulary.

AI and Early Childhood Education

AI-powered toys and apps help our youngest learners develop motor skills and cognitive abilities by using tactile, visual, or auditory stimuli to encourage specific movements or tasks. With interactive games and activities, AI can help children understand concepts such as cause and effect, sequences, and patterns.

For example, Buddy AI is an app designed for iPad that helps kids prepare for school with voice-based early learning games. Buddy is ideal for children ages 3-8 and teaches kids essential communication skills and early education concepts through a fun mix of voice-based games, cartoons, and activities.

AI and Teaching

AI can generate lesson plans, create assignment and assessment materials, and even help teachers communicate with parents by sending regular performance updates. It can also help collect data that helps teachers better understand what their students are interested in, making it easier for them to design engaging lessons. Some AI-powered platforms can create interactive slide decks for teachers, adding polls, open-ended questions, and even a drawing tool. This saves teachers valuable lesson prep time.

Tutoring and AI

It’s impossible for a teacher to give each of their students enough one-on-one attention. Fortunately, AI is highly capable in this arena and can provide students with specific help. Virtual tutors can guide students to focus on the topics where they need the most assistance—and provide real-time feedback and support with natural-sounding language.

Securing AI Funding for Schools and Districts

Funding AI in education often starts with federal grant programs that align with educational goals.These programs allow districts to secure the financial resources to implement AI technologies. By exploring federal grant programs, establishing a clear return on investment (ROI), and continuously monitoring AI’s impact, districts can secure the necessary funding and fully take advantage of AI’s potential to enhance education.

Does PowerSchool use AI?

PowerSchool AI empowers educators to personalize education, helping students learn in the way that’s right for them.

Our new AI assistant, PowerBuddy, is a conversational tool that understands your questions and offers responses based on your role and needs. PowerBuddy is built on our Responsible AI principles to help each student, parent, educator, counselor, and administrator access personalized guidance, information, and resources at their fingertips, helping students receive optimal social, emotional, and academic support in a way never experienced before.

Two other AI-based products, PowerSchool Connected Intelligence K-12 and PowerSchool ContentNav, help teachers understand student mastery of content, generate predictive performance insights, design personalized learning pathways, reinforce concept knowledge, and recommend postgraduate plans.

Learn how PowerSchool leverages the power of AI in education and uses an AI assistant to help students realize their boundless potential.

6 Guiding Principles of PowerSchool’s AI Use

Six principles guide PowerSchool’s AI methodology to ensure we maintain a mindful and responsible approach to the use of AI in education.

1. Human-centered AI—By its very nature, education will always have a significant human element. Technology augments what people do—it does not replace them. We design AI-ML solutions accordingly to enhance and assist educational practices at every level.
2. Built with fairness and bias elimination—We build observability to detect and identify bias in data and algorithms to reduce and eliminate bias from our applications. We will not reinforce unfair bias against users’ characteristics such as race, ethnicity, gender, nationality, income, sexual orientation, ability, and political or religious beliefs.
3. Stringent data governance, privacy, and security—We follow strict processes and controls regarding AI in education, including protecting student data privacy, security against adversarial attacks, and masking Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data throughout model development and the deployment life cycle. We will use established, well-defined test plans and strict quality assurance (QA) processes before releasing AI models to production.
4. Transparency and user control–We will allow each school system to use application controls and permissions to decide who can access which data and when users can use a particular AI-ML element. We will ensure algorithms, inputs, and output are transparent, fair, explainable, and interpretable.
5. Digital equity and accessibility–We will ensure that our applications are designed and implemented to avoid discrimination and promote equal access and opportunities for all students, regardless of their background or characteristics.
6. Ethical use–We will ensure educational institutions can harness the potential of AI in education ethically and responsibly, fostering a safe, inclusive, and effective learning environment for all students.

The Future of AI in Education: PowerSchool AI’s Impact on School Data

AI is only as good as the data behind it. PowerSchool provides the foundational layer to bring AI directly to your K-12 data without having to take the risk of moving your data to an AI system. By mindfully centralizing data with built-in security, governance, and privacy, we accelerate innovation toward the future while protecting against cybersecurity risks.

PowerSchool AI enables educators, students, administrators, and parents to experience personalized teaching and learning with unparalleled efficiency, paving the way for a future where every learner can succeed.

PowerSchool is constantly exploring key trends and innovative technologies to elevating K-12 education.PowerSummit, Our AI Summit of 2024, helped shine a light on the future of AI in education. Watch the full PowerSummit series on demand to learn strategies for ensuring your systems are secure and AI-ready and see demos of essential edtech solutions that can prepare your operations for success.