The Download: introducing The Education issue
—Mat Honan, editor in chief
Welcome to the Education Issue, our latest print magazine. It’s becoming increasingly clear that we’re in an entirely new place when it comes to the use of AI in education, and it is far from clear what that is going to mean. The world has changed, and there’s no going back.
Technologies like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s massively mind-blowing generative AI software, will have all sorts of genuinely useful and transformative applications in the classroom. Yes, they will almost certainly also be used for cheating. But banishing these kinds of technologies from the classroom, rather than trying to harness them, is shortsighted.
These were just some of the things on our minds when we started putting together the latest print issue of MIT Technology Review: looking to the future of education and the role technology will play in shaping it.
Here’s just a selection of the great stories you can look forward to reading:
+ Why the narrative around students using ChatGPT to cheat on their assignments doesn’t tell the whole story.
+ What it’s like to write a history of keyboards— from typewriters to iPhones.
+ How AI is being used to help further our analysis and understanding of centuries-old texts, transforming humanities research in the process.
+ Why simply learning to code isn’t enough to thrive in the digital economy.
+ A high school senior’s perspective on why banning ChatGPT from the classroom would do more harm than good.
+ Inside the challenges of teaching kids who flip between books and screens.
+ Why teachers in Denmark are using apps to audit their students’ moods.
