Picture this: a small group of middle school students are learning about ancient Egypt, so they strap on a virtual reality headset and, with the assistance of an artificial intelligence tour guide, begin to explore the Pyramids of Giza. The teacher, also journeying to one of the oldest known civilizations via a VR headset, has assigned students to gather information to write short essays. During the tour, the AI guide fields questions from students and points them to specific artifacts and discuss what they see. In preparing the AI-powered lesson on Egypt, the teacher beforehand would have worked with the AI program to craft a lesson plan that not only dives deep into the subject, but figures out how to keep the group moving through the virtual field trip and how to create more equal participation during the discussion. In that scenario, the AI listens, observes and interacts naturally to enhance a group learning experience, and to make a teacher's job easier.

The concept of artificial intelligence and what it can do for education still remains elusive to many in the K-12 education space. A conversation I had recently with an assistant superintendent at the Colorado Association of School Executives convention underscored this idea. We began talking about artificial intelligence and district leader said, "You know, there's not a week that goes by that my superintendent isn't talking about AI!" But when I asked what the superintendent wanted to use AI for, the assistant superintendent just kind of looked at me with a raised eyebrow and shrugged. Artificial intelligence is in the water right now (some might say the Kool-Aid.) However, like many technical innovations from the past couple of decades, what it is and how it works is still a mystery to many people.

IBM's Watson Education, an artificial intelligence platform that uses data trends to provide insights to teachers and students, is partnering with Edmodo and Scholastic in an effort meant to personalize learning. With Edmodo, a K-12 network for students, teachers, administrators and parents, IBM is collaborating to develop a personalized content recommendation engine that can be integrated within Edmodo's existing social education platform. For Scholastic, a children's publishing, education and media company, the plan is to use the Watson platform to recommend nonfiction content that aligns with curriculum standards and has multiple articles and media for students' skill and interest levels. "Our goal is to use AI to improve learning outcomes," and to personalize content for learners, said Chalapathy Neti, vice president of IBM Watson Education, in an interview. He explained that he refers to AI as "augmented intelligence" rather than the more typical "artificial intelligence," because the way people are thinking about the abbreviated "AI" has produced "a little bit of angst in terms of machines replacing humans."

Did you also see the video of the robot opening a door? Did you freak out and think: if they can open doors…what will they learn next? People see a robot do something that looks intelligent and the natural instinct is to extrapolate and assume that there is a general intelligence behind the action. In reality, the set of tasks that robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI) more generally are good at right now is constrained by very narrow parameters. Think about the game of chess (or more recently, the Chinese game of Go).