Best AI Tools for Education - Phoenix Consulting

Most of the conversation surrounding artificial intelligence AI tools is often directed at business, but there is enormous potential for AI to drastically improve our educational systems. It is one of the most effective tools teachers can have at their disposal, and it often frees them up from administrative burdens. These technologies will not replace teachers but rather enable them to spend more time on students’ education.

AI is growing rapidly in the education sector, and it is becoming a multi-billion-dollar global market. This rapid growth is due to its ability to transform many aspects of the teaching and learning processes. AI can create immersive virtual learning environments, produce “smart content,” ease language barriers, fill gaps between learning and teaching, create specialized plans for each student, and much more.

Pros and Cons of AI Tools for Education

Pros:

Personalized Learning: AI tools can analyze individual learning patterns and preferences, allowing educators to tailor educational content to meet the specific needs of each student. This personalized approach can lead to more effective and engaging learning experiences.
Intelligent Tutoring: AI-powered virtual tutors can provide instant feedback and support to students, helping them grasp complex concepts, identify areas of improvement, and progress at their own pace.
Data Analytics: AI tools can process vast amounts of educational data, enabling educators to gain valuable insights into student performance, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions to enhance the learning process.
Automation of Routine Tasks: AI can automate administrative tasks, such as grading, scheduling, and content organization, freeing up educators’ time to focus on more interactive and creative aspects of teaching.
Inclusivity and Accessibility: AI tools can provide accessible learning options for students with diverse learning abilities, ensuring that education is more inclusive and accommodating to a wider range of learners.

Cons:

Ethical Concerns: The use of AI in education raises ethical issues related to data privacy, student profiling, and algorithmic bias. Ensuring the ethical use of AI tools is essential to safeguarding students’ rights and maintaining transparency.
Dependence on Technology: Overreliance on AI tools may lead to a diminished emphasis on traditional teaching methods, potentially hindering students’ critical thinking and problem-solving abilities.
Implementation Challenges: Integrating AI tools into existing educational systems can be challenging, requiring proper training for educators and overcoming technical barriers to ensure seamless adoption.
Lack of Emotional Intelligence: AI tools may lack the emotional intelligence and human touch that some students require for effective learning and support.
Cost and Accessibility: The initial investment and maintenance costs of AI tools can be a barrier for some educational institutions, potentially limiting access to the benefits of these technologies.

AI tools have the potential to revolutionize education by offering personalized learning experiences, data-driven insights, and efficient administrative support.

However, addressing ethical concerns, ensuring proper implementation, and striking a balance between AI and human interaction is crucial to maximizing the benefits of AI in education while preserving the human touch in the learning process.

10 Best AI Tools for Education

1. Gradescope

The Gradescope AI tool enables students to assess each other while providing feedback, which are often time-consuming tasks without AI technology. Gradescope relies on a combination of machine learning (ML) and AI to make it easier to grade, which saves time and energy.

By outsourcing these tasks, teachers can focus on the more important ones. Gradescope can be used by the teacher to grade paper-based exams and online homework, as well as to prepare projects all in one place.

Here are some of the main features of Gradescope:

AI-assisted and manual question grouping
Student-specific time extensions
AI-assisted grading
Increased efficiency and fairness

2. Fetchy

Fetchy is a generative AI-powered platform designed specifically for educators. It enables educators to unleash their full teaching potential. They aim to accomplish this by simplifying and streamlining the myriad of tasks educators face, including creating engaging lessons, generating newsletters, crafting professional emails, and more. By harnessing the power of AI, Fetchy empowers educators to enhance their teaching methods, optimize time management, and make confident and informed decisions.

Fetchy specializes in customizing generated language to meet the demands of educators. By not having to formulate complicated prompts, Fetchy is readily useful to educators. When using Fetchy’s custom-built solutions, educators can expect pertinent outputs tailored to their specific educational requirements.

Generate lesson plans
View history from multiple lenses/viewpoints
Find math or science experiments

3. Nuance’s Dragon Speech Recognition

Located in Burlington, Massachusetts, Nuance provides speech recognition software that can be used by both students and faculty. The company’s Dragon Speech Recognition product can transcribe up to 160 words per minute, helping students who find it difficult to write or type. The tool also supports verbal commands to navigate documents, which is essential for students with accessibility requirements.

Dragon offers many more features, including the ability to dictate lesson plans, syllabi, worksheets, reading lists, and more at a pace three times faster than typing. It does this while achieving 99% accuracy.

Here are some of the main features of Nuance’s Dragon:

Accessibility features supporting verbal commands
Voice to assess student work
Dictate class work with 99% accuracy

4. Ivy Chatbot

Ivy is a set of chatbot AI tools that were specifically designed for universities and colleges. They assist in many parts of the university process, such as application forms, enrollment, tuition costs, deadlines, and more. Another unique feature of Ivy is its ability to plan recruitment campaigns through gathered data.

The AI tool can provide much-needed information to students, such as important details on loans, scholarships, grants, tuition payments, and more. It can be applied across departments thanks to its ability to develop specialized chatbots for each one.

Here are some of the main features of Ivy:

Live chat and SMS nudging
Integrations for Facebook, ERP, CRM, and SIS
Become smarter over time through interaction with users

5. Cognii

Cognii is another Boston-based company that develops AI-based products for K-12 and higher education institutions. It is also deployed in corporate training environments.

One of Cognii’s main AI tools is its virtual learning assistant, which relies on conversational technology to help students form open-format responses and improve critical thinking skills. Besides this, the virtual assistant also provides one-on-one tutoring and real-time feedback customized to each student.

Helps students form open responses
Provides one-on-one tutoring
Adaptive personalization for each student.

6. Knowji

Another one of the top AI education tools on the market is Knowji, which is an audio-visual vocabulary application that leverages current educational research. Knowji is designed for language learners, and it uses various methods and concepts to help students learn faster.

The AI education tool tracks each word’s progress and can predict when users are likely to forget. It achieves these abilities by using a spacing repetition algorithm, which enables students to learn better over time.

Here are some of the main features of Knowji:

Common Core Alignment
Multiple learning modes
Customizable and adaptable
Images and example sentences

7. Plato

Plaito acts as a coach giving prompts and suggestions to move students forward as they write, debate, and collaborate in exciting new ways.

By leveraging AI, the tool brings the benefits of one-on-one tutoring—deep understanding, confidence, clarity, and empowerment—to all students.

The platform offers the following functionalities:

Take a picture or screenshot of your homework, and upload to get live AI Tutoring with Plato
Combining the best of AI and language science, lessons are tailored to help students with personalized learning at just the right level and pace.
Chat to Plaito just like your other friends and learn along the way. Plaito speaks 4 languages and is ready to learn more.
The courses help students learn faster and remember things better using learning outcome-driven assignments
They make it easy to form a habit of language learning, with game-like features, fun challenges, and reminders from, Plaito the AI Robot.

8. Queirum

Querium offers an AI platform that helps students master critical STEM skills while preparing them for college and careers. The platform relies on personalized lessons and step-by-step tutoring assistance. The AI virtual tutor has been shown to improve the speed, quality, and analysis of student learning while improving student outcomes.

Queirum’s AI is also useful for teachers. It analyzes answers and the length of time it took to complete tutoring lessons, which helps instructors gain insight into students’ learning habits and areas of improvement.

Here are some of the main features of Queirum’s AI:

Personalized, bite-sized lessons
Step-by-step tutoring assistance
Increases student engagement

9. Century Tech

London-based company Century Tech offers an AI platform that utilizes cognitive neuroscience and data analytics to construct personalized learning plans for students. In turn, these personalized plans reduce work for instructors, freeing them up to focus on other areas.

The AI platform also tracks student progress while pointing out knowledge gaps in learning. It then provides personal study recommendations and feedback for each user. As for teachers, Century helps them access new resources that reduce the time needed for monotonous tasks like planning and grading.

Here are some of the main features of Century:

Accelerates learning and improves student engagement
Reduces workload for teachers
Actionable data insights

10. Carnegie Learning’s Platforms

Carnegie Learning, an innovative education technology and curriculum solutions provider, relies on AI and machine learning in its learning platforms for high school and college-level students. These platforms offer many unique solutions for the areas of math, literacy, or world languages.

The provider has won multiple educational awards, including “Best Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning App” in the Tech Edvocate Awards. One of its products, the MATHia software, was created by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University. It also offers Fast ForWord, which is a reading and language software that helps students develop cognitive skills.

Here are some of the main features of Carnegie Learning’s Platforms:

Mimics human tutors
One-on-one personalized learning experience for each student
Actionable data to manage students

FAQs about AI tools for education:

What are AI tools for education?

AI tools for education are software programs that use artificial intelligence to help students learn. These tools can be used for a variety of purposes, such as:

Personalizing learning: AI tools can be used to personalize learning for each student, by adapting the content and instruction to the student’s individual needs.
Providing feedback: AI tools can be used to provide feedback to students on their work, which can help them improve their understanding of the material.
Scaffolding learning: AI tools can be used to scaffold learning, by supporting students as they work through challenging material.
Diagnosing learning needs: AI tools can be used to diagnose learning needs so that teachers can provide targeted interventions to students who are struggling.

What are the benefits of using AI tools for education?

There are several benefits to using AI tools for education. These benefits include:

Increased personalization: AI tools can help to personalize learning for each student, which can lead to improved learning outcomes.
Improved feedback: AI tools can provide more detailed and timely feedback to students, which can help them improve their understanding of the material.
Increased engagement: AI tools can make learning more engaging for students, which can lead to better retention of information.
Reduced teacher workload: AI tools can help to reduce the workload for teachers, by freeing them up to focus on more personalized instruction.

What are the drawbacks of using AI tools for education?

There are also some drawbacks to using AI tools for education. These drawbacks include:

Cost: AI tools can be expensive to develop and implement.
Bias: AI tools can be biased if they are trained on data that is biased.
Privacy concerns: AI tools can raise privacy concerns if they are used to collect data about students.

What are the ethical implications of using AI tools for education?

There are some ethical implications to consider when using AI tools for education. For example, it is important to be aware of the potential for bias in AI tools and to use them responsibly. Additionally, it is important to respect the privacy of students when using AI tools.

What is the future of AI tools for education?

The future of AI tools for education is still uncertain, but there is potential for AI tools to become more widely used in education in the years to come. As AI tools become more advanced, they will be able to provide more personalized and effective learning experiences for students. Additionally, AI tools could be used to develop new forms of assessment and instruction that are not possible with traditional methods.