4 Effective Ways to Use AI in Your Education

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a growing part of our everyday life. It influences us in a wide, ever-expanding range of ways. From impacting our social media feeds to giving directions to offering guidance and counseling, AI’s creators want it to be there for you no matter what the need.

Use the information below to begin a conversation with your teen about artificial intelligence and the impact it may have on them. Or simply share this piece with them and discuss it later. 

AI’s Impact in School

But AI has had a tremendous impact on tweens, teens, and young adults and their education. The home encyclopedia is a relic of the past. There’s seemingly little need to go to the local library to work on a school book report or college term paper. AI offers easy access to massive amounts of information. With some simple keystrokes and carefully worded questions, you’ll obtain responses in mere seconds. 

With AI’s ever-growing presence in the world, students must learn both how and when to use it. It should never replace your critical thinking or judgment. It also doesn’t offer the many benefits of human connection. Real-life humans offer the kind of supportive care that helps young people grow and develop. But you can use artificial intelligence to support learning, organization, and creativity in school. 

4 Ways to Use AI to Positively Impact Your Education

As a starting point or for a general overview.  Have you been assigned a topic that you know nothing about? AI can give an introduction or overview of the subject. That may let you decide where to go from there. If you’re working with a topic that leaves you feeling like you’re over your head. AI breaks down complicated concepts into simpler ideas. AI can inspire you and boost your general knowledge. So, think of AI as a launchpad for developing your ideas. While it can help you get started, your deeper learning comes from asking questions, exploring trusted sources, and engaging with teachers and other knowledgeable experts.

To organize ideas, evaluate work, and support study habits. There are plenty of ways to use AI to benefit your education. For example, it can help you organize classroom notes, create an initial outline, summarize your work, and ask questions to challenge you. If you need help with time management at school, use AI to build a timeline or calendar to help ensure you complete your work on time. When you’re unsure what to write about for an upcoming assignment, AI can help you brainstorm or act as a sounding board for your questions. If you’re not clear whether your work makes sense or proves its points, AI will check for gaps in your understanding of a topic. Use AI as an early-draft editor to check grammar and spelling. AI can also help you become a more active learner by:

• Creating practice quizzes and flashcards
• Generating study questions that become more challenging over time
• Identifying areas where you may need additional review
• Helping you break large assignments into smaller, manageable steps 

Improve your learning accessibility. Different students learn more efficiently with varied tools, strategies, or techniques than others. AI offers tools such as text-to-speech, speech recognition, and visual representations of ideas to help make content more accessible. These options can be a game-changer for students with learning differences or who learn more effectively using styles not traditionally used in classrooms. 

Use AI as a Thinking Partner. One of the best uses of AI is using it to improve your thinking. For example, you might ask AI to:

• Challenge your argument (Let it play devil’s advocate!)
• Identify weaknesses in your work
• Compare varied viewpoints
• Offer up questions you haven’t considered

Used this way, AI may help strengthen critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and curiosity rather than replacing them.

The most successful students won’t be the ones who avoid AI entirely. They also won’t be the ones who depend on it for everything. They will be the students who learn when AI can support their work and when they need to rely on their own judgment, creativity, persistence, and relationships. Used thoughtfully, AI can strengthen learning and help students solve problems more effectively. Used carelessly, it can get in the way of the very growth that education is meant to encourage. The best approach is simple: use AI to strengthen your thinking, not replace it.

Dr. Andrew Pool, Director of Research at CPTC, contributed to this piece.  This content was created by CPTC through the generosity of the “Oops!…AI Did It Again” Challenge by Young Futures.