Hi John,
In my conversations with school district leaders, one need is clear: despite the explosion of digital learning tools over the last decade, the burden lies heavily on educators to piece solutions together in support of their students, whose needs have grown and widened since the pandemic. As an edtech philanthropy, we think we can play a unique role in supporting the edtech ecosystem to incorporate learning science more and to work better together for schools.
We know that rapid AI innovation offers tremendous potential to empower educators further to support students' individual needs better. Still, the impact of technology will be limited unless the education technology community can demonstrate that AI tools are effective, high-quality, rigorous, and reliable for educators and students. To do that, we need to know if the foundation models we’re building on align well with the education context.
This month, we launched two new AI developer tools in private beta that start to bridge the gap between advances in generative AI and the needs of edtech developers, helping them to create better tools grounded in learning science:
📘 Knowledge Graph helps developers enhance AI system inputs by aligning them with learning science research, state academic standards, and curricula.
📊 Evaluators helps developers assess AI system outputs to ensure they meet the accuracy, rigor, and quality essential for teaching and learning.
Our team's vision is to build the learning science-grounded developer tools that make it easier for AI edtech developers to improve their products toward impact. We’re eager to talk to those interested in joining this private beta or contributing to our next tools.
Just as important as what we’re building is sharing how we’re building it. Our approach is inherently cross-domain, and we’re committed to bringing experts from academia to the classroom to the table with us. Alongside these new private beta tools, CZI also announced the appointment of a new Education Advisory Board. This diverse group of leaders in learning science, edtech, data privacy, school districts, and AI will guide our efforts to responsibly navigate the complexities of AI in education.
