A recent study found robots that speak in a "charismatic" tone while directing a college class can boost creativity among humans. Robots are here -- and they're ready to teach your children and grandchildren. Miko is an artificial intelligence-powered robot that was designed specifically to take kids' learning to a new level. The company's SVP of growth, San Francisco-based Ritvik Sharma, told Fox News Digital in an interview that the personal robot aims to elevate education. HOW AI AND MACHINE LEARNING ARE REVEALING FOOD WASTE IN COMMERCIAL KITCHENS AND RESTAURANTS'IN REAL TIME' The current iteration, Miko 3, which launched in 2021, is voice-activated just like Amazon Alexa -- but the robot is also capable of having a back-and-forth conversation.

Google has introduced a web version of its popular Read Along educational app for teaching children to read. The website includes Read Along the virtual assistant Diya, a voice-enabled AI guiding and correcting kids as they practice reading. The Read Along website operates much like the Android app. Children can pick from different stories and word games. Diya monitors the child, using Google's speech recognition technology to spot mistakes and places where they are having trouble.

"We will educate students on AI and machine–learning techniques by designing modules that students will experiment with under varying conditions," …

Ms. Payne, who does not have a background in education, developed the course of study with input from computer science teachers and researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her "unplugged" curriculum mainly uses pen, paper and craft supplies so that teachers can adapt it for their classrooms, regardless of budget or technological know-how. Each 45-minute lesson typically includes a short lecture and demonstration, followed by a group activity and open-ended discussion. In one exercise, for example, students wrote an algorithm to build a better peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Ms. Payne plans to do a second run at several summer workshops in the Boston area, where children will get about four hours of AI education daily.

Algorithms are grading student essays across the country. So can artificial intelligence really teach us to write better? Todd Feathers, who wrote about AI essay grading for Motherboard, called up every state in the country and found that at least 21 states use some form of automated scoring. "The algorithms are prone to a couple of flaws. One is that they can be fooled by any kind of nonsense gibberish sophisticated words. It looks good from afar but it doesn't actually mean anything. And the other problem is that some of the algorithms have been proven by the testing vendors themselves to be biased against people from certain language backgrounds."

Today's small children, aka Generation Alpha, are the first to grow up with robots as peers. Those winsome talking devices spawned by a booming education-tech industry can speed children's learning, but they also can be confusing to them, research shows. Many children think robots are smarter than humans or imbue them with magical powers. The long-term consequences of growing up surrounded by AI-driven devices won't be clear for a while. But an expanding body of research is lending new impetus to efforts to expand technology education beyond learning to code, to understanding how AI works.

Today's middle schoolers may be the first "artificial intelligence natives," a generation that's grown up interacting with YouTube's algorithm or Amazon's Alexa smart speaker. Educators are grappling with how to teach children to be responsible consumers of the technology. Blakeley H. Payne has one idea. A graduate research assistant at MIT Media Lab who studies the ethics of AI, Ms. Payne designed a curriculum to teach children about concepts like algorithmic bias and deep learning. She tested the week-and-a-half-long program in October with about 225 fifth- through eighth-grade students at David E. Williams Middle School in Coraopolis, Pa., outside Pittsburgh.

From adaptive software to recommendation engines to voice-activated speakers, artificial intelligence is making its way into K-12 classrooms. At the same time, schools are under growing pressure to prepare students to be workers in a labor market where AI is likely to play an ever-larger role--and to be citizens in a society where AI reshapes the decisions we face, the meaning we make, and the challenges we must confront. How can busy educators make sense of this rapidly changing world? The International Society for Technology in Education hopes to help, in part via a new book funded through a grant from General Motors. In'Teaching AI: Exploring New Frontiers for Learning,' educator Michelle Zimmerman, who has a Ph.D. in learning sciences and human development from the University of Washington, brings a teacher-centric lens to big questions around the various definitions of artificial intelligence, how AI is upending the workforce, and how to teach about--and with--artificial intelligence.

There is only one effective learning principle when it comes to machine learning: "Hands-on learning is key." Neither kids nor adults are able to develop a clear understanding what machine learning is and how it works without trying it for themselves, ideally with use cases that are interesting and relevant to the individual. MachineLearningforKids.co.uk is super simple, but at the same time it brings a lot of the machine learning power of IBM Watson to the table. Developed and maintained by Dale Lane from IBM, the site enables kids or basically any age to visually train their own machine algorithm and then use the resulting inference model to solve simple or complex challenges in the visual and fully browser-based Scratch programming language. Dale's concept is as simple as it is brilliant, as he shows kids in one go how to train a machine learning model and then how to use it in their own Scratch program.

Coding is a fundamental skill for children to learn in school, but it is more than just feeding programming into a computer. Learning to code teaches valuable cognitive skills like critical thinking and problem solving. As coding moves from school to home, many toy manufacturers are responding with gadgets that turn homework into a game. Most coding toys work by using a companion app to teach children how to combine commands to make the toys generate sounds, lights and movement. If you're looking for the perfect gift for children eager to learn the basics of coding, or want to give a little one a heads up when they get to logic and problem solving in school, here are 10 of the best coding toys on the market today.