Microsoft Introduces new AI-powered Classroom Tools, Learning Accelerators to Enhance Public Speaking, Math
Today, Microsoft announced new AI-powered classroom tools.
As children prepare for an increasingly technologically advanced world, the company believes that its new “Learning Accelerators” will help them improve their speaking and math skills while also making teachers’ jobs easier.
Speaker Progress is a new artificial intelligence (AI) classroom tool for teachers. It saves time by “streamlining the process of creating, reviewing, and analyzing speaking and presentation assignments for students, groups, and classrooms,” according to Microsoft. It can provide concise summaries of presentation skills while also highlighting areas for improvement. It also allows teachers to listen to student recordings, identify their needs, and track their progress.
It will be a companion feature to Speaker Coach, a current feature launched by Microsoft in 2021 that provides one-on-one speaking guidance and feedback. For example, it employs AI to provide real-time feedback on pacing, pitch, and filler words. “Speaker Coach is one of those tools that was a lightbulb moment for a lot of students I’ve worked with,” an unnamed teacher said in a Microsoft launch video. “Being able to practice and receive real-time feedback is where Speaker Coach really shines and helps our students, as well as us as adults.”
Microsoft’s AI math tools are its response to the pandemic’s plummeting math scores. Math Coach breaks down problems for students, guiding them through the steps to solving them while encouraging critical thinking. Meanwhile, Math Progress is the companion tool for teachers, assisting them in creating practice questions and providing more efficient feedback. According to the company, the features complement one another: Math Coach uses teacher feedback from Math Progress to develop new lessons. It also claims that schools can use the tools’ overall math fluency data to track progress and better meet their objectives.
In the 2023-24 school year, Microsoft Teams for Education will introduce Speaker Progress, Math Coach, and Math Progress. In the meantime, Speaker Coach is now available in Teams and PowerPoint.
