Like it or not, AI will soon make its presence felt in educational AV. Outside of the research faculties in higher education, when it comes to using new technologies, schools are typically more agile and can pivot and adopt more easily. But there are understandably many concerns about AI in education, including uncertainty as to whether it’s a threat or an opportunity, and a general distrust of the technology itself, so many are dragging their heels. Currently, there is a lot of testing and experimenting taking place, but not much use of AI-enabled tech in the average classroom.
The rapid acceleration and development of OpenAI ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft CoPilot have led to major concerns around safety, particularly for under 18s, and plagiarism, amongst other things – how are students using these technologies, and can educators keep a lid on their riskier, unknown aspects?
But it shouldn’t all be up to teachers. The technology industry serving them has to make sure there are controls and guardrails in place. It needs to be more sophisticated in how it manages AI technology to ensure the benefits can be felt without risk. The challenge is that AI technology has advanced so rapidly that the industry itself has to keep pace – AI tools are so much more sophisticated than they were even a year ago.
EXCITING OPPORTUNITY
With all that said, there is a really exciting opportunity for electronics manufacturers like LG to embrace AI technology in a way that really impacts and benefits people’s lives. Whether it’s via a front-of-class display, signage around campus, or a laptop used by a student or teacher, we’re looking at how we can integrate AI to take away some of the burden of repetitive admin. Eventually, teachers will be able to use integrated AI technology in their display products to give them more time to interact with students one-to-one, as well as supporting students so they can do more self-directed learning.
For example, imagine if a teacher had access to a voice recognition tool in the classroom, like many of us do at home. This could be a huge support – though obviously the management of that sort of application needs careful consideration when you also have a room full of potentially young students! Assistants like LG’s CLOi also bring AI and robotics together. These kinds of intelligent screen technologies could be the classroom assistant of the future.
Voice recognition in education displays could bring benefits for teachers. Currently, most displays operate like giant tablets on which staff can annotate, write, highlight, and share. The potential evolution comes when you start adding more voice-enabled functions, or the ability for the display to make recommendations. For example, when using pen technology, it could learn and anticipate what you’re drawing as you’re doing it and fill in the blanks – or simply make tricky handwriting easier to read. What student hasn’t wished for that at some point?!
DISPLAY TRENDS
In higher education, there’s currently a lot of discussion around how to make hybrid and remote learning as successful as possible. University lecturers want flexibility and students expect options for home learning. However, increasingly universities are rebuilding their emphasis on the campus experience: improving facilities to make them into more dynamic, modern, and appealing spaces for students.
One trend is to invest in large LED displays, both inside and outside campus buildings. Not only can large-scale signage advertise services to students, the large format can also generate income at on-campus events, stream content, and showcase student work. There is also the potential for on-campus advertising to sync across the whole campus, delivering more effective campaigns giving universities an opportunity to monetise their campus spaces whilst enhancing the campus experience.
Another developing area is the approach to online lectures and remote learning and how to make those things more engaging. Currently static displays with slide presentations are mostly used; to improve this approach, universities can apply technologies that are currently mostly used in broadcast environments. For example, higher-quality virtual production would make it much easier to deliver lessons from the lecture hall to the home. Lecturers can create content and publish it remotely, delivering it at a really high level of quality.
