EASIE AI - For learners, parents, and teachers [Issue 8]

Welcome, cutting-edge educators and aspirational parents

Introducing your no-nonsense EASie guide to using AI to support your kids’ learning and growing your own AI literacy

Today, we’ll cover:

• Trending AI Apps

• Using new tools - Khanmigo for Parents

• Generating Images with AI - Making Activities with Image Generation

• AI Beginners Jargon—Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

• AI Adepts Jargon—Weak/Narrow AI

• AI News

We want to continue producing this free newsletter to help parents and teachers benefit from AI while keeping their kids safe. Please forward it to someone you think would benefit from its contents and help us keep it alive.

Reading Time 4 Mins

Trending AI Apps

AI apps delighting educators and parents.

• MagicSchool Review started as an assistant for teachers but was also helpful for parents providing extra help. It now has tools children (with parental/school permission) can use directly

• Khanmigo Review This has some overlap with MagicSchool. It works closely with OpenAI and Microsoft, leading to its cost-free availability to all teachers in the US.

• Learnt.ai Review is a less well-known AI teaching assistant, but with plenty of free tools, it is well worth investigating.

Using New Tools - I Used to know that…

Khanmigo Parent tools

Refresh Your Knowledge

You might have been the class ace at a subject, but a few years have passed, and you’ve gotten rusty. We recently reviewed Khanmigo Review, but we feel parents might think it is just for teachers and kids. however, did you know there are dedicated parent tools, too?

• Use this feature to understand the subjects your child is studying.

Chat with GPT-4:

• Available only to parents and teachers.

• Use this feature as a thinking partner or to get advice.

Summarize child chat history: 

• Use this to ensure your child is using Khanmigo’s AI responsibly.

How to use Khanmigo’s Parent Tools:

• Sign up for a paid account - do not share this account with your child

• Create a free account for your child, which you can administer via your parent account

• Log into your parent account on Khan Academy.

• Click your name in the top right corner.

• Go to your “Settings” page.

• Select the “Khanmigo” tab.

• Check the box next to the child account you want to enable Khanmigo for.

Generating Images With AI

Thinking and Talking Starters

It is always handy for teachers to have some thinking activities to get their kids talking or to use if something has not gone to plan. Parents can use the same things to provide some talking points for their family on a long journey rather than have them disappear into a screen-based bubble.

Creating an odd-one-out discussion image is trivial with AI. Admittedly, the AI images can be a bit surreal, but the point is to prompt creative thinking and discussion, so it is not about getting it right.

The AI says that 4 is the odd one out because…the others all play with round toys.

Following this up with the distinction between circles and spheres could lead to further learning.

The Educational App Store has further AI ideas available to subscribers.

AI Jargon - Learning

We’ll help you increase your knowledge of AI by explaining a beginner and advanced concept each week.

For AI beginners—We all start somewhere.

Training Data

This is the initial set of data used to teach an AI model how to perform a task. It comes from many sources, including pre-prepared files consisting of huge amounts of different texts.

More controversially, it comes from scraping websites. The owners of the original content say that this is copyright theft and they should be compensated. Unsurprisingly, AI companies say it is fair use as their models learn from it in the same way as people do.

When you use AI, it may use the information you provide to add to the next training cycle. For example, if you ask AI to summarise an email chain which contains private information it could be used for training purposes.

You should check the terms and conditions of your chosen AI to see whether it permits training on user data.

For AI Adepts—Next-level AI Knowledge!

Synthetic Training Data

Synthetic data is information that's artificially generated by AI rather than obtained by direct measurement. It can be used to train the next generation of AIs.

It frees AI companies from copyright questions, although the models producing the synthetic data might still have trained on copyright material. It has some challenges, though.

Building on synthetic data may amplify biases and inaccuracies in the original source, leading to lower-quality outputs. Some researchers feel this could lead to a steady decline in the quliaty of information given by AI.

AI News

Your one-stop, in-brief AI newsstand

• OpenAI is beginning to roll out its new Advanced Voice Mode to a limited group of ChatGPT Plus users. This feature enables more natural, real-time conversations, allowing users to interrupt at any time. Additionally, it can sense and respond to emotions, enhancing the overall interaction experience.

• Khan Academy has introduced the Khanmigo Writing Coach, a new AI tool designed to support students through each stage of the writing process without doing the work for them. Unlike other AI writing tools, Khanmigo focuses on developing better writers rather than merely producing better writing.

• Popular creativity tool Canva has purchased Leonardo AI, an image-generation platform. Canva already includes AI tools and as they grow, we’ll need to see how they implement safeguards for young users who enjoy Canva’s free tools.