Microsoft and Khan Academy have announced a partnership that will bring AI-powered teaching assistance to K-12 educators across the US. The collaboration aims to enhance teaching and make learning fun, providing teachers with creative and time-saving resources.
Khan Academy's AI-powered teaching assistant, Khanmigo for Teachers, will now be accessible to all K-12 educators in the US free of charge, thanks to Microsoft's donation of Azure AI-optimized infrastructure. Khanmigo offers teachers a range of tools, from generating custom lesson plans to suggesting student groupings, all accessible through an intuitive onscreen dashboard.
The partnership also includes plans to explore the development of new, open-source small language models based on Microsoft's Phi-3 family of models. These models will be used to improve AI math tutoring tools, making them more affordable, scalable, and adaptable.
Melissa Higgason, a chemistry teacher at Hobart High School in Indiana, has been using Khanmigo to bring abstract concepts to life through creative experiments. "It's hard for kids to make all those connections without hands-on experiences that are relevant to them," she said.
The integration of Khan Academy's content into Microsoft's Copilot and Teams for Education will further expand access to high-quality educational resources, benefiting both educators and students.