Estonia eschews phone bans in schools and takes leap into AI
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Now Estonia is launching a national initiative called AI Leap, which it says will equip students and teachers with “world-class artificial intelligence tools and skills”. Licences are being negotiated with OpenAI, which will make Estonia a testbed for AI in schools. The aim is to provide free access to top-tier AI learning tools for 58,000 students and 5,000 teachers by 2027, starting with 16- and 17-year-olds this September.
Teachers will be trained in the technology, focusing on self-directed learning and digital ethics, and prioritising educational equity and AI literacy. Officials say it will make Estonia “one of the smartest AI-using nations, not just the most tech-saturated”.
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She added: “We have local elections coming in October this year. In local elections, 16-year-olds can vote, and they can vote online through their mobile phones. So we want them to use mobile phones to do their civic duty, to participate in an election, to get the information, to analyse the political platforms.
“It’s a little bit strange if we would not allow them to use them in school, in an educational setting. That would be a very confusing message to 16-year-olds – vote online, vote on a mobile, but don’t use ChatGPT on your phone to do education learning.”
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Rather than trying to resist new technology, Estonia has embraced it. In 1997 there was huge investment in computers and network infrastructure as part of its Tiigrihüpe (Tiger Leap) programme. All schools were rapidly connected to the internet. Now smartphones and AI are seen as the next step.
Kallas talks about an AI revolution entailing the end of essays for homework, a farewell to the memorise/repeat/apply learning model relied on for hundreds of years, and a shift to oral exams. The challenge is to develop higher cognitive skills in young people, because AI can do the rest better and faster.
“It’s a matter of urgency,” she said. “We are facing this evolutionary, developmental challenge now.
We either evolve into faster-thinking and higher-level-thinking creatures, or the technology will take over our consciousness.”
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