Welcome to Week Ten!
For this week’s Opportunity Forecast, we will be presenting a world that we are all familiar with: cloud learning. This elusive “cloud” that we are exploring has been gaining popularity since the mid 2000s and has become omnipresent in our world. Think about how often you hear phrases like “I’ve uploaded it to the cloud” or “you can find the doc in the Drive”. We are able to learn and to participate in our UBC MET and TBDL programs because of the cloud. Also, let’s not forget how we pivoted to online teaching and remote work during the pandemic due to, or should we say thanks to (?) the cloud!
Our OER not only dives deeper into how we currently access and interact with the cloud, but it explores how the advancement and implementations of AI are changing the way we utilize the cloud. We focus specifically on the example of Intelligent Tutors, and how Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered online tutoring is enabled through robust cloud learning spaces.
Our objectives are to provide an introduction to cloud-based learning and to examine the ideas, concepts, and initiatives currently being explored in the K-12 market, with a particular focus on the impact of cloud technology on the development of intelligent tutors powered by AI. In addition, we aim to encourage our site visitors to reflect on the potential benefits and challenges of cloud-based learning and its intersection with AI innovation. By engaging with our OER content, we hope that you will gain a deeper understanding of these topics and be inspired to explore new ideas and approaches in your own teaching or work lives.
Please visit our OER here: https://sites.google.com/view/cloud-learning-etec522
Classroom participation:
- Watch our videos. For longer ones such as those offered in the Intelligent Tutoring section, lists of key takeaways have been provided as a summary.
- Activity 1: Reflect in Padlet 1 on how you are currently connecting to the cloud.
- Activity 2: Try the online Synthesis Tutor as it guides you through an introduction to binary code. For those of you who are afraid of math, fret not, you will experience a gentle and supportive AI teacher!
- Activity 3: Share your thoughts in Padlet 2 on where cloud learning is headed with AI.
- Culminating Activity: To conclude, please share your final thoughts in this blog post by responding to one or both of the following questions:
- What are the key factors, in your opinion, that will determine the successful adoption and implementation of cloud-based learning platforms such as intelligent tutors in school districts and individual private institutions?
- As the use of cloud technology becomes more prevalent in education, concerns about the privacy and security of learner data are also growing. Given this trend, do you think it is possible for the education sector to operate without relying on cloud-based solutions?
We look forward to engaging with your padlet reflections and your final blog posts!
Richard and Maurice
Nice resource gentlemen!
I’d address the second question first: No. The education sector is already heavily invested in cloud based solutions, through Student Information Systems, Learning Management Systems or simply the school email systems. The transition to cloud services has already occurred in most parts of Canada.
The first question is a little more complicated. The first factor is, I think, how effective the tutor is. Another factor is whether it will be able to follow the curriculum that the teachers need. More factors include the reliability of internet connections, the bandwidth needed, cost, and engagement. Where I would like to see Cloud AI powered education go is something like an online game that teaches geography through building roads, trains, and power lines. AI could allow students to interact with a system that subtly adjusts the parameters to stretch the student into new areas of learning. That would be a great sell!
Hello Doug,
Thank you for your thoughts.
Your idea about the AI game related to geography reminded of the Stop Disasters game: https://www.stopdisastersgame.org/ that we played in the first week of Opportunity Forecasts (Carina, Kelby, Simon’s presentation on Gamification).
Imagine if, as you are playing the game, an assistive tutor were to guide you when you needed help. I lost every time I tried the levels; perhaps an AI tutor could have guided me with some tips and quick explanations as I was playing. Also, as we saw in our Synthesis Tutor Coding example, the tutor could have words of encouragement for the user throughout the game! Even us adults can benefit from some positive encouragement.
First off, wonderful opportunity forecast gents. This taught me a lot about the grand scope of cloud computing and how ubiquitous it is. Great idea to focus your attention on Intelligent Tutoring as it is a segment of cloud computing that hits close to home for the education sector. After reading through your material and participating in your various Padlet discussions, I’d like to address your first question posed above.
What are the key factors, in your opinion, that will determine the successful adoption and implementation of cloud-based learning platforms such as intelligent tutors in school districts and individual private institutions?
The key factors in the successful adoption of these learning platforms don’t have to do with the technology, but rather the humans implementing them. There needs to be BUY IN and HUMILITY on the part of the teachers for this to work. We are stuck in the dark ages with teaching and so few of us what to try new techniques and master new skills. Many of the teachers I know have been teaching the same handouts for decades. They need to see the benefits and embrace them rather than resisting at all cost. They say it takes a wise man to teach but a brave man to learn. Humility is needed to except that AI can help us perform tasks more efficiently and effectively. I loved learning the fact that AI tutors could potentially learn methods that we haven’t even thought of yet because they have such large sample sizes and can possibly work with the same student for their whole academic career. It takes a secure person to recognize improvements. These two elements are crucial in the adoption and wide-spread implementation of this technology into our classroom. I find that the big failing of AI tutors is that they are unable to by face-to-face, thus losing the facial recognition of the student, like seeing when they are overwhelmed or struggling without communicating it verbally. I liken this to poker playing. Typically, online poker players struggle at a real table as they only needed to compute the math and didn’t take the personality into account.
Hello Simon,
I recognize what you are saying with “Many of the teachers I know have been teaching the same handouts for decades”. I have been teaching for eleven years and I very rarely use the same resources and materials… Besides grammar exercises, everything else is constantly changing for FSL. It does annoy me sometimes when teachers have the ability to not adapt over the years (if they teach a subject that is fairly static where facts are facts and figures are figures).
I think one way of combatting this issue is having teaching partners, not necessarily teaching the same class of students, but the same subject. For example, I used to work closely with colleagues (one who was a newer teacher and another was close to retirement) on shared documents when we taught the same courses. That way, when I created a resource, say for example a handout on a recent environmental issue in French, the resource could be used by my colleagues who didn’t have the same tech skills or who relied on dated resources.
It is so important to collaborate and I have been doing this with my current team on how to use AI to create reading and listening activities! I strongly believe that teaching cannot be done in silos.
YES! Team teaching is where it’s at, Doug! My most successful teaching experiences have been through team teaching. I love the line that ‘teaching cannot be done in silos’. With your permission I’m stealing that line!
Hi Richard & Maurice,
I am incredibly amazed by Synthsis Tutor. I never thought I could understand binary code within minutes. I am also blown away by the interactivity from the trial lesson. Thank you for sharing your research about Cloud Learning. I spent a good 4 hours on your site, and I find it really enriching.
Getting back to your question about the key factors when implementing cloud-based learning. To start off, I think we need a strong and reliable infrastructure with internet connectivity that students and teachers can access these platforms effortlessly. The well populated areas of British Columbia are covered by internet. However, that doesn’t mean internet is available everywhere in BC. I wonder if Elon Musk’s Starlink would have capacity to provide internet connectivity globally. That’s one possible solution!
Secondly, it’s essential that our teachers and staff receive proper training and support to make the most of these tools and seamlessly incorporate them into the curriculum. Of course, we also need a well-defined data privacy and security policy to ensure that sensitive student information is handled with the utmost care. The fact that we don’t have regulations available to mediate data privacy really worries me.
Long-term wise, collaboration and communication among all stakeholders, including educators, administrators, students, and parents, are absolutely vital. We need to work together to set clear goals, manage expectations, and tackle any challenges that may come our way during the adoption process.
I recall that many K-12 institutions adopted Google Classroom and Microsoft Classroom during the pandemic. I’m also curious to know how they are coping with cloud learning post pandemic.
Hi Vera,
I’m happy to hear that you found so much value in our OER! I very much share your thoughts about Synthesis Tutor. As someone who is not mathematically gifted, I found the learning intuitive and appreciated the multimodal aspects that the demo presented to help support the lesson.
You bring up a good point about internet connectivity and it is definitely something to consider. Accessibility is one of the affordances of cloud learning, but that accessibility has its limitations. Anecdotally, I have a colleague that recently started using Starlink so they could work remotely from their home and after an initial rough patch where connectivity was difficult, it seems to be working fine. We often share and collaborate on documents and resources through the cloud so it’s encouraging to see where connectivity can be possible in more places when needed.
As for training, I do find it to be a peculiar position to be in. I think there is an argument to be made that of the emerging markets presented in this course, cloud learning is perhaps the most established in education. However, I still find myself working with colleagues and learners in the adult education context to discuss how to best optimize the cloud for impacting learning outcomes. I worry that this learning curve will become exponentially more difficult with the adoption of AI tools.
Great work team.
The focus on intelligent tutoring is well done, the college I work at is in the midst of renewing our LMS contract and cloud/AI based features such as tutoring have such tremendous potential.
Regarding the question about security and privacy, I think it is definitely possible for educational institutions to operate without cloud based technology. It will just come at a cost. For institutions this cost may be worth it and for others it will not. Especially within the accessibile learning sector of higher education where confidentiality is paramount and upheld by provincial and federal regulations, there are many cloud based applications that are questionable. Specifically companies that are based in the US are becoming difficult to sign off on due to cyber security issues. In the marketplace it does open up some opportunity for Canadian companies to grab a larger market share.
Hi Lowell,
Your point about the potential for Canadian companies grabbing a larger market share reminded me of a discussion I had when I also worked in higher education. During the pandemic, our department was looking to find a third party software that would help support the launch of an international student mentorship program so students could connect academically and also socially. We were able to find a few SaaS companies, but they were exclusively in either the US or in the UK and stored their data in those respective countries, which after a lengthy discussion with our IT department, ultimately resulted in not being able to use them to store any student information with those companies. So I would agree that there is a gap in the market that companies who store their data in Canada have a distinct advantage.
This discussion reminds me of the assessment tool we used to use. Our school district used FreshGrade (which was originally a company based in Canada),a cloud-based platform that allows teachers to create digital portfolios for students and share that with parents. It was offered to the teachers as one of the alternatives to the traditional CSL report cards. Instead of showing student progress with words, FreshGrade enables parents to see visual evidence, such as photos and videos, of their child’s learning. Because of this reason, many educators loved using it as an assessment tool. However, ever since the company was sold and its data storage location changed to outside of Canada, we were told that we can no longer use the tool anymore. Another platform was introduced to us, but many teachers are afraid of experiencing the same situation and hesitate to invest themselves in the new tool and they decided to go back to CSL report cards.
So for the second question, I think that schools can operate without relying on cloud-based solutions, but that also means we will be stuck with the traditional paper and textbook way of teaching. To me, the benefits of using cloud-based solutions outweigh its drawbacks and it was a pity to see such a great tool can no longer be used due to security reasons. It would be great to see more Canadian company step in and close the gap in the market, so our students can benefit form it.
Hi Trista,
What a great example of hesitancy around cloud-learning tools. The aspect of having a great ed tech tool to help support educators being abruptly taken away because of independent business decisions is not an obstacle I would have immediately considered, but it makes a lot of sense as to why some educators would be adverse to investing their time into another tool. It’s perhaps another reason why the cloud learning market is currently dominated by a select number of big tech companies, as Google Workspace and Microsoft Office do not have to worry about their products or services being bought out. Thanks for sharing!
I hope that you saw my A1 analyst report on Khanmigo! Khanmigo is the Khan Academy’s free tutor system that is very similar to Synthsis. I was shocked and amazed at how both programs operate and the potential of both programs. I was very enthusiastic about this as an opportunity for investment and completed the entire binary lesson with the same enthusiasm.
I think in order to implement these programs successfully there needs to be more involvement and especially funding in government education systems. They need to be piloting these programs in schools and continuing to drive education forward. There are so many interesting programs and opportunities out there that I am not sure how you manage testing them all to determine which ones are best, but we need more forward movement regardless.
I am concerned about the privacy piece of all of this cloud learning as it relates to AI. I don’t trust that humans will spend the time to dig through all of the data that exists to make judgements about students/individuals. But AI can do it all in a fraction of a second. I think all of this work needs to be supported by ethics specialists who can help write policies for schools. That said, in one way or another it seems all this data gets leaked in the end. I guess we will have to see what the ramifications of these types of leaks may be.
Hi Mike,
I went back to your analyst report on Khanmigo and definitely saw some parallels. I appreciated that you raised the point of Bloom’s “Two Sigma Problem”, as that was part of the background research we did in looking at why intelligent tutors made sense. It’s very cool to see an established educational platform like Khan Academy being an early adopter of intelligent tutoring with GPT-4, and with an obvious bias towards cloud-based tools, I would say it’s going to help them in the long run.
To your point on sifting through the available programs and opportunities, I thought I would tie it into conversations from both our website and the blog. I think the driving force behind which programs are successful and which ones are not are going to be up to the big tech companies that already dominate the market. Whether that is the most effective way of evaluating innovation is up in the air, but I think if Microsoft and Google are the companies to review smaller companies working on innovative new cloud-based products/services, purchase them, and place them into their existing suite of products, I think that is where the majority of districts and organizations will feel comfortable in investing, as they are “known commodities”. I think of Flipgrid as an example of this. An independent company that developed a cloud-based video discussion platform in 2014 was later bought out by Microsoft in 2018 and placed into their apps list in Microsoft Teams, which is where I first came across it during the pandemic. The visibility by curating lists of different services and products that big tech companies already own addresses your question, but it’s definitely raises others.
Do either of you have a resource list of AI tutoring software that can be shared? I think this stuff is so interesting and helpful, and it’s these kinds of resources that teachers appreciate having on hand!
Great job team cloud Learning! Thank you for highlighting the significant impact that technology, particularly cloud computing, can have on education. Especially, I was inspired that the accessibility and flexibility that cloud learning offers, enabling collaboration and benefiting marginalized students who may not have access to traditional educational facilities. While cloud learning offers numerous benefits and potential for modernizing education, how can we ensure that all students, including those in underserved communities, have equitable access to the necessary technology and internet connectivity to fully participate in cloud-based learning?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Terrence. Your question is a critical one to consider for the future of cloud-learning tools and AI in general. When we talk about accessibility, many have highlighted the affordance of not requiring a single device for each student, but one of the challenges highlighted in our forecast is the requirement for an internet connection. We can see cloud-based tools maintain some level of functionality with “offline” versions of themselves, similar to Google Maps, but it still requires an internet connection to download the necessary data to allow for that functionality.
I think it’s a combination of thoughtful design in cloud-learning and an expansion of general infrastructure that will help. Earlier in this thread Vera had mentioned Starlink as a product offering a cost effective internet solution to rural communities which looks promising to help address coverage. On the thoughtful design side, I think more ventures can consider an internet connection as a barrier at times and design with the question of “how functional will our product/service be when it is offline?”. Those are some starting points in my opinion, but I think the rate at which expansion of AI and the connection to the cloud is occurring will reveal some potential solutions and/or major gaps when it comes to equitable access.
Great job on the opportunity forecast! As others have already said, I really enjoyed Synthesis Tutor and it’s an excellent demonstration of the potential of cloud learning in education.
What are the key factors, in your opinion, that will determine the successful adoption and implementation of cloud-based learning platforms such as intelligent tutors in school districts and individual private institutions?
I think private institutions will mostly employ intelligent tutors in the future given that they are of high quality. Private institutions are quick to adapt to new ideas and technologies to gain an edge over their competition, especially one with the cost-cutting potential of intelligent tutors. I foresee that educator-programmers will be an important job in the future of designing intelligent tutors.
For the public education system, I think it really depends on the government policy around educational technology. If it’s mandated that edtech is to be encouraged and districts budget for educational technologists, then there could be rapid adoption and implementation as well. Otherwise, the process will be slow and decentralized, depending on the principal of each school. I do think that SEN students will benefit significantly from intelligent tutors and classes that cater to those students may be the first ot see its widespread use.
Hello Roger,
I like your point about SEN students and how AI IT can help them. It makes me think back to my workload in 2019/20, where I had a split grade 5 and 6 class. In this group, the differences between my students were vast and I had two students who, couldn’t read well in English (let alone French, as this was a French Immersion class). It can imagine how a reading AI tutor could have helped them in a breakout lesson, guided by a SEN teacher or by me, as the rest of the class works on a different task.
Thanks,
Maurice
I enjoyed this opportunity forecast! As per your second question, I do believe that concerns about the privacy and security of learner data are going to continue to grow with the emphasis and reliance on cloud-based learning. While I do not think that education will move away from cloud-based solutions, I do see the need for an increase in direct digital citizenship and online safety teaching. This past year my school (K-5) has now asked that all homeroom teachers work their way through Common Sense Education digital citizenship modules. Common Sense Education presents free resources for teachers from K-12 to help build these skills and awareness. While educating students about the potential dangers and concerns of operating as a digital citizen are only one aspect of the complex nature of online security, I do believe that it is an important step. Generating strong passwords, learning how to truly logout of accounts and adding 2-step verifications are all things that are students can and should be doing now in order to help protect themselves and their data moving forward. I am always amazed of how many students simply do not logout of their Google accounts on shared school devices. Hopefully, over time and through the uptake of our digital citizenship/online safety curriculum, these minor steps for safety can be more consistently made.
Hello Nick,
Thank you for mentioning CommonSense Media. I think this is a tool / site that has become quite known to many educators. I used it recently to see what educators thought of a language learning tool called “Lyrics Training” : https://www.commonsense.org/education/reviews/lyricstraining .
I also use it to double check about movie content and whether they are appropriate to show to or recommend to my students.
Do you find that there was/is a good amount of buy-in from the homeroom teachers in regards to the modules? Are they pretty straightforward for them to use and guide students as opposed to “teaching” the material?
Thanks,
Maurice
Cloud learning provides so many opportunities in education and intelligent tutors is an interesting idea.
From my perspective, one of the biggest hurdles with these new developments becoming common place is access to technology. I work in a fairly affluent neighbourhood, however our elementary school has one class set of laptops or Ipads per grade. Typically each grade has about 4-5 classes, when you take into account recess, lunch etc. each class has one block per day they can sign out tech. This significantly limits how many projects you can have on the go that require access to technology.
I think until our board allows students to bring their own device, or more funding is provided for students to have more consistent access we can’t fully shift our teaching practice towards cloud learning. On the other side, with only being able to use tech one block per day, Gsuite has been excellent because no matter which laptop they open on any day they can pick up where they left off and those who are interested can access their project from home as well to share with families.
For your second question, I don’t think most public education systems can afford to not use the cloud given the cost of storing data privately. Solutions may need to put in place to safeguard student information, potentially selecting pertinent data to be encrypted as it enters or is accessed from the cloud.
Really great presentation!
Addressing the second question first, I think there is certainly a way for education to operate without relying on cloud-based technologies, but I think it wildly inefficient and would cause more issues rather than prevent them. As soon as I hear cloud-based, my immediate thoughts go towards security and privacy concerns because of how often they portrayed in the media. I think that negativity has dramatically slowed the adoption of more cloud-based technologies purely out of ignorance and misinformation even though most systems are currently cloud-based, there are still some archaic systems in place different schools and districts. My school still retains paper copies of report cards, exams, and student portfolios due to Ministry of Education requirements despite all of that data being stored digitally as well. I think there is still some misplaced skepticism regarding the reliability of cloud systems especially for storage purposes.
In regard to the first question, a few others made a similar connection, but the potential of cloud-based applications like the tutoring system presented, is entirely dependent on how educators employ them. As of now, I would argue that most educators use new technology as purely supplementary to what they are comfortable doing in class; assigning a student an activity on a cloud-based application gives us the illusion that we are forward-thinking educators implementing cutting edge technology. What I would like to see is cloud-based apps propelling the current movement of bringing down geographical barriers in education. There will always be global accessibility challenges in regards to technology but cloud-based education applications, especially if they are “lightweight” programs, have the potential of globalizing effective education provided we in education are brave enough to get out of our comfort zone.
Great work Cloud Computing team!
I think your research on AI Tutoring Assistance is really interesting, and I like that you found a free resource that allows us to try our hand at it as well. Your second question is a great question, as I think privacy concerns have also been flagged in some of the other OER presentations as well. I think we need to have immense amounts of trust in the companies that are building and maintaining these massive cloud systems. Unfortunately, I find it really hard to imagine a possibility where we could rely less on private corporations and the software they are producing because these programs are so valuable and can offer such affordances. We do need to keep up with the changing pace of technology in order to prepare students for the current world and to ensure that institutions are operating efficiently. I think there needs to be far more investigation done into how these corporations are handling the personal data of minors, especially considering that children now have their whole life on the cloud. There is really no escaping the cloud and as technology continues to evolve we will inevitably continue to have concerns around privacy, the solution here is to ensure that we are proactively anticipating challenges and implementing the right legislation that can hold these companies accountable so that student’s wellbeing is at the forefront of these changes.