10 AI technologies to explore in 2024 if you are a teacher

How can you create better resources for your classes? Is there technology that helps you provide feedback to your students? Using artificial intelligence in education can help you.

Tec de Monterrey’s educational technology experts have tried out and evaluated nearly 100 tools that use AI to provide a shortlist of those they considered most useful for teachers.

A Top 10 of AI applications and tools that help in different stages of the teaching-learning process was presented during IFE Conference 2024 (the Tec’s educational innovation conference):

• Artificial intelligence tools for developing educational resources:

1. Canva Magic Design: Design resources for your classes without needing to be a designer
2. Adobe Firefly: Images for your classes
3. Fliki: Create videos the easy way
4. Analysis of cognitive-affective states in universities

 

• How to have your own virtual assistant with AI:

5. Co-pilot: Get organized or create tasks
6. Grammarly: Check spelling and grammar
7. Wolfram Alpha: Support in Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry Contexts

 

• Evaluate and provide feedback with AI

8. Gradescope: Grade quickly and efficiently

 

• Personalize your students’ learning

9. RealizeIT: Provide personalized education

 

• Virtual experiences with AI

10. Virtual Speech: A Tool for learning and reinforcing languages with virtual reality

Bonus: Research Rabbit: An AI tool for researchers

EduTools Tec: More technologies that enrich the teaching-learning process

 

AI tools for developing educational resources

Generative AI allows teachers to create classroom content such as text, images, audio, videos, 3D models, and presentations, said Irving Hidrogo, Director of Artificial Intelligence Education at the Tec.

“As teachers, we’re probably not experts in image editing, but AI gives us the opportunity to become (content) creators,” Hidrogo said.

The director discussed how applications such as Midjourney and DALL-E 2 can be used to create realistic and conceptual images.

He also discussed the possibilities and risks of using tools such as ChatGPT, which is agile but can sometimes still produce unreliable results.

“It’s not about the machine doing everything for us. We need to have critical thinking skills to be able to discern and decide,” he added.

These are the tools that the expert recommends:

 

1. Canva Magic Design: Design without being a designer

This is a graphic design and diagram generation tool that works as an assistant to create content such as infographics and presentations in a clear way.

“Canva has added AI to allow you to make layouts and diagrams in a simple way. You can ask your students for projects in which they create a poster for their task or research,” Hidrogo said.

Examples of what this tool is for include:

1. It allows you to create infographics that summarize a topic in a clear and attractive way.
2. It has pre-designed presentations that you can use for your classroom sessions.
3. You can suggest that your students use it to create posters for their tasks and research.

This video tutorial will allow you to follow an animated step-by-step presentation with Artificial Intelligence for your classes.

 

 

 

 

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2. Adobe Firefly: Images for your classes

 

 

 

 

 

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4. Analysis of cognitive-affective states

Cognitive-affective states are determined during the class through AI face analysis, whether in face-to-face, online, or hybrid format.

“We’re going to see different universities, research centers, and companies offering academic experiences with the possibility of analyzing students’ cognitive-affective states through AI face analysis,” said Hidrogo.

This will be possible through the analysis of micro expressions during face-to-face or online sessions, he added.

Teachers will then be able to obtain a report that will allow them to make adjustments in the way they teach their subject.

“We’re developing it at the Tec with the European company Neurologica, and we’re doing research, development, and piloting together that will allow us to carry out the project successfully with special care for data management,” Hidrogo said.

This will allow them to:

1. Provide academic communities with integrated reports to support the redesign of pedagogical moments in courses.
2. Offer teachers a view of cognitive-affective states in their sessions in order to make adjustments to their classroom dynamics.

 

 

 

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How to have your own virtual assistant with AI

Arturo Ayala, leader of the Tec’s Educational Technology Innovation Projects, spoke about the evolution of virtual assistants.

“We’ve seen virtual assistants evolve, especially for education. Generative AI has modified and empowered their capabilities,” he said.

Ayala said that assistants will not replace the work of teachers but will instead enhance their activities.

 

5. Co-pilot: Get organized or create tasks

This is a smart assistant incorporated into the Microsoft portfolio for the generation of content within tools such as Word, Powerpoint, Excel, and others in the Office suite.

“Because it’s all integrated into the suite, you’re in the Co-pilot ecosystem, and we can integrate it with any of the Microsoft solutions to create presentations and other content,” Ayala explained.

He also pointed out that one of its advantages is the generation of knowledge bases based on teachers’ courses.

Teachers can use it:

1. As a complementary support for writing and creating academic resources.
2. To receive suggestions for resources to reinforce learning.
3. To facilitate the reading of long documents.
4. To create graphs and tables.

 

 

 

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6. Grammarly: Check spelling and grammar

This is an assistant for editing, writing, spelling, syntax, and tone suggestions.

“It serves to ensure that a piece of content is written correctly, in terms of both form and tone, and to facilitate the translation and adaptation of materials,” Ayala explained.

He mentioned the launch of the Grammarly Education project, which in addition to its ability to structure documents correctly, incorporates generative AI functions to:

1. Review grammatical and spelling errors in teaching and learning materials.
2. Review academic papers written in English, such as theses, articles, and essays.
3. Facilitate the translation and adaptation of educational materials from Spanish to English.

 

 

 

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7. Wolfram Alpha: Support in Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry Contexts

Ayala explained that this assistant uses machine learning ecosystems and is focused on problem solving in mathematics, physics, and chemistry contexts.

“If we add ChatGPT to the capability of Wolfram Alpha, we can get to an advanced level,” he said.

This tool can support educational tasks such as:

1. Simplifying algebraic expressions and performing symbolic calculations.
2. Solving differential equations and representing their solutions visually.
3. Tackling physics problems and performing engineering-related calculations.

 

 

 

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Evaluation and feedback

Sadie Guerrero, the Tec’s Director of Educational Technology Solutions, addressed the trend of using AI to optimize time.

“By recognizing text, whether in digital or paper documents, AI helps optimize evaluation and feedback.

“The teacher can associate a series of ratings and feedback with these documents,” Guerrero said.

 

8. Gradescope: Grade quickly and efficiently

This is a platform that optimizes activity evaluation and feedback.

“After recognizing a series of texts, it groups all the students’ answers into clusters, and the teacher can make an association of these answers at the end,” Guerrero said.

She pointed out that this way the teacher can assign a score so that groups of students will get immediate feedback as they turn in assignments.

 

 

 

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Personalize your students’ learning

This is an educational strategy that uses technology based on data analytics to tailor education and create a personalized learning path that is effective and efficient for students.

The path is based on their performance level, profile, and learning needs.

“We can identify the kind of actions our students need,” Guerrero says.

This is possible through diagnostics or quizzes that detect different gaps students may have in different contents.

 

 

9. RealizeIT: Provide personalized education

This is a platform that adapts and personalizes students’ learning experiences.

“It allows us to implement it in subjects that are complex in content and allows us to align students’ knowledge,” Guerrero added.

The technology continuously measures each learner’s knowledge and ability so that it can map, shape, and drive a personalized learning experience.

Students can achieve course objectives from the guidance it provides.

 

 

 

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Virtual experiences with AI

AI is being used in virtual agents, natural language processing, and adaptation to virtual environments.

“These are trends that are starting to intersect, such as when we talk about how AI is impacting the metaverse or everything that’s extended reality,” Ayala said.

Regarding virtual agents, he pointed out that it is possible to interact and find avatars that are already programmed with certain personalities and are capable of generating pleasant interactions for users.

In addition, aspects such as natural language and accessibility allow users to communicate with the metaverse in simpler and more direct ways.

 

10. Virtual Speech: A tool for learning and reinforcing languages with virtual reality

This tool can be used to develop communication skills.

It is an application for the Oculus Quest Virtual Reality headset to interact through an avatar in the language you want to develop.

“This tool allows us to simulate safe cases and situations so that people can practice new languages.

“Users can try out a debate, an auditorium presentation, or an interview, all in a different language with immediate feedback,” he said.

 

 

 

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Bonus: Research Rabbit: An AI tool for researchers

This is a tool for searching and organizing research articles and identifying context.

“We can identify the impact in different areas we’re researching, map the status of a term we’re looking for, and map the distribution of papers, how they’re published, see their relevance, and the number of citations,” Ayala said.

Within this free tool’s functions, it is possible to add additional knowledge bases, such as Google Scholar.

It also permits notifications of trends in certain research points and alerts when a new article is published.

• Educational use

1. Exploring and structuring academic articles and identifying the context.
2. Performing agile and accurate searches in academic databases.
3. Creating visual concept maps to structure and link ideas.
4. Examining academic patterns and trends to discover research topics.

 

 

 

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EduTools: The Tec’s platform for educational technologies

Bertha Saldívar, the Tec’s Director of Educational Technologies, pointed out that it is important for universities to build a technology ecosystem.

She said that teachers at Tec de Monterrey have options available on the EduTools platform, where colleagues share experiences with the use of educational technologies.

“There’s a collection of the 10 technologies that we share and the academic software portfolio for the development of knowledge and disciplinary skills,” she said.

 

 

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