Khan Academy and Microsoft have announced a new partnership aimed at expanding access to AI tools that personalize teaching and make learning more engaging. This collaboration, revealed at Microsoft Build, seeks to bring innovative, AI-driven educational resources to millions of educators and students across the United States.
The initiative is set to transform classrooms by providing teachers with advanced tools to enhance lesson planning and reduce administrative burdens. The partnership will leverage Microsoft’s Azure AI-optimized infrastructure to power Khan Academy’s AI teaching assistant, Khanmigo for Teachers, making it freely accessible to all K-12 educators in the U.S. This AI tool offers creative lesson plans and suggestions, allowing teachers like Melissa Higgason from Hobart High School in Indiana to use everyday items for engaging chemistry experiments, inspired by AI-generated ideas.
Khanmigo for Teachers is designed to save educators significant time, offering features that generate custom lesson plans, suggest student groupings, and adjust text passages to different learning levels with just a few clicks. Khan Academy estimates these tools can save teachers an average of five working hours each week.
Additionally, Khan Academy and Microsoft will collaborate to develop AI tools for math tutoring using a new version of Phi-3, a family of small language models (SLMs) created by Microsoft. This effort aims to provide affordable, scalable, and adaptable math tutoring solutions.
The partnership will also integrate Khan Academy’s extensive educational content into Microsoft’s Copilot and Teams for Education. This integration will enhance collaboration and learning by making Khan Academy’s resources readily available within these platforms, further supporting educators and students.
This collaboration between Khan Academy and Microsoft is poised to significantly impact the education sector by providing teachers with cutting-edge tools to enhance their teaching methods and reduce workload, ultimately improving the learning experience for students.
This partnership represents a significant step forward in utilizing AI to support education, making high-quality, personalized learning tools more accessible and helping to address the challenges faced by educators.
