IBM’s Watson has shown it can win at the TV game show Jeopardy
and provide assistance in everything from engineering and health care to
basketball and wine. Now, the question-answering computer system has found a
niche in education as well.
Teacher Advisor with Watson 1.0 is a tool designed to help K-5 teachers find open educational math
resources. Starting with more than 1,000 open educational resources (OER)
available in its database, the search engine uses natural language to make
recommendations based on content the teacher requires.
“The consensus was: Start with math at the elementary
level because those teachers are usually licensed as elementary teachers—they
may not have strong subject-level expertise,” said Stan Litow, president
emeritus of the IBM Foundation. “If you could focus in on math, that would be a
moonshot.”
Teachers will be able to search particular concepts and
Watson will provide targeted lessons and recommended activities. It can also
adjust to grade levels, which should help teachers with students having
differing math skills.
Watson’s continuously evolving artificial intelligence
will also allow the tool to refine its databank through usage to provide even
more applicable searches. The system can even search its content bank to
pinpoint particular parts of videos that are relevant to a teacher’s search and
go directly to those segments.
“When you go and research a specific area—for example, equivalent
fractions—you can look at the different designs for each lesson,” said
Christine Manna, a math coach for the Waterford Township School District in New
Jersey. “You can look at the wording and see very quickly if it’s higher
[difficulty] or more for students who struggle. That cuts down all the work for
you. I think that is most appreciated.”
