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By Movieguide® Staff
MacKenzie Price, an education entrepreneur and co-founder of Alpha Schools and 2 Hour Learning, says educators need to get on board with AI — or risk being “run over” by the technology.
“I just can’t imagine a category more in need of a bottom-up solution than education,” Mike Rowe said to Price on a recent episode of his “The Way I Heard It” podcast.
Price agreed, saying, “If you go to a rural school in India, or you go to some high-end private boarding school in Connecticut, you’re going to see basically the same thing, which is a teacher leading a group of kids who are all about the same age through material at the same pace. It doesn’t work, and we’ve actually known for 40 years — researchers have done studies to understand that kids can learn two, five, 10 times faster if they are put in a one-to-one, mastery-based tutoring experience.”
Through Price’s 2 Hour Learning and Alpha School curriculums, she and her team have “really reimagined what school can be. We do not use academic teachers to teach academics. Instead, we are using an AI tutor.”
Related: Artificial Intelligence ‘Does More Harm Than Good’ in the Classroom
She acknowledged that most people, upon hearing that, would picture “this robot dystopian human void environment and kids isolated and locked in computers. Couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Through the 2 Hour Learning method, children work with an AI tutor for two hours every day, leaving them with four extra hours to pursue their own interests or other important life lessons.
“We are at this tipping point right now where everybody’s talking about ‘What is AI going to do to our world?’ We can either use this for good, or we can just get run over by it,” she concluded.
In an interview with the Texas Standard, Price shared, “My hope and desire is that eventually the public system will want to see…this innovation come into their systems but, until they do, I’m just doing the best I can to provide as many students as possible with access. I absolutely believe that all schools need to be accountable to the families that they serve to provide a great experience academically.”
It seems like Price and her methods are working out; per the 2 Hour Learning website, “Students score in the top 1-2% nationally, and over 90% said they love going to school.”
Price has also responded to questions about giving students too much screen time through their AI tutors, telling GeekWire, “There’s a huge difference between students scrolling TikTok or watching cartoons or playing video games all day, and receiving a one-to-one, mastery-based tutoring experience. It’s the idea of proactive, engaged interaction, as opposed to passive consumption.”
Price is one of many who are choosing to work with AI, rather than against it — and it seems as if it’s paying off.
Read Next: ‘I Want to Have My Normal Brain Back’: Teens Catch on to AI Dangers
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