IBL News | New York
OpenAI released a free online course titled “ChatGPT Foundations for K-12 Educators,” which encourages teachers to use its tool to create lesson plans, interactive tutorials for students, and other pedagogical practices.
The course was created in collaboration with the nonprofit organization Common Sense Media. It’s one hour long and has a nine-module program covering the basics of AI and its pedagogical applications.
OpenAI says the course has already been deployed in “dozens” of schools, including the Agua Fria School District in Arizona, the San Bernardino School District in California, and the charter school system Challenger Schools.
OpenAI is aggressively going after the education market, which it sees as a critical growth area.
In September, OpenAI hired former Coursera chief revenue officer Leah Belsky as its first GM of education and charged her with bringing OpenAI’s products to more schools. In the spring, the company launched ChatGPT Edu, a version of ChatGPT that was built for universities.
According to Allied Market Research, AI in education could be worth $88.2 billion within the next decade.
However, a poll by the Rand Corporation and the Center on Reinventing Public Education found that just 18% of K-12 educators use AI in their classrooms, reflecting many skeptical pedagogues.
Late last year, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) pushed for governments to regulate the use of AI in education, including implementing age limits for users and guardrails on data protection and user privacy. However, little progress has been made on those fronts, especially on AI policy in general.
