Khan Academy and Microsoft Partner to Provide Free AI Teaching Tool to US Educators
Revolutionizing Classroom Experiences with AI-Powered Assistance
Microsoft has joined forces with nonprofit educational organization Khan Academy to offer millions of K-12 teachers in the USA free access to Khanmigo for Teachers, an AI-powered teaching assistant designed to save time and enhance lesson quality.
Launched in March 2023, Khanmigo for Teachers equips educators with a suite of AI tools to streamline administrative tasks and make lessons more engaging. This innovative tool can help teachers quickly generate first drafts of customized lesson plans, create student groups for collaborative tasks, monitor student performance, and more. Khan Academy estimates that this can save teachers an average of five working hours each week. Additionally, students can use Khanmigo to ask questions, seek support, access translation tools, and engage with peers.
Previously, educators were charged $4 per month to cover the costs associated with developing and maintaining Khanmigo for Teachers. However, these costs have been eliminated now that the AI assistant has been migrated to the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service.
“With new advances in generative AI, we launched Khanmigo to be that personalized tutor for every student and a teaching assistant for every teacher,” said Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy. “We’re really excited to provide access to these teacher tools for free; it is going to make a dramatic impact on US education.”
Khanmigo for Teachers offers a wealth of resources, including lesson plans and learning objectives, aimed at supporting teachers in delivering personalized education. Sal Khan expressed hope that the partnership with Microsoft will enhance teacher support and enable personalized learning in more classrooms. “We can use the same tools to treat every kid like a future emperor,” Khan remarked.
In addition, Khan Academy will supply Microsoft with educational materials to help train its Phi-3 small language models, aiming to improve and scale AI tutoring tools. The goal is to develop an affordable AI-powered math tutoring tool.
Microsoft also plans to integrate more Khan Academy content into Copilot and Teams for Education. Speaking at Microsoft Build, CEO Satya Nadella stated, “We’ll be working with Khan Academy to use Phi-3 to make math tutoring more accessible. I’m also excited to share that they’ll be making Khanmigo, their AI assistant, free to all US teachers. I’m super excited to see the impact this will have and what Khan Academy will accomplish.”