Empowering Brazilian Teachers through AI and Data-Driven Solutions

• In Event: Accelerating the EdTech agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean

Proposal

A digital platform in Brazil provides public education teachers with pedagogical support and professional development, offering over 6,000 resources including news articles, lesson plans, and self-paced courses, all free of charge. The platform attracts an average of 3 million visitors monthly, targeting over 1.7 million early childhood and primary school teachers.

To achieve their vision of being a school for every public-school teacher in Brazil, and to enhance the learning experience for educators, the platform is in the process of transitioning from standardized to personalized delivery through generative artificial intelligence (genAI) and data-driven solutions.

As a nonprofit, securing funding for innovation has been a challenge, as many philanthropic contributions are outcome-specific. To address this, the platform collaborates with industry partners like Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, and others, fostering innovation and accelerating development.

In partnership with OpenAI and Turn.io, they developed a WhatsApp-based planner using ChatGPT and proprietary content to tailor lesson plans to individual teachers' needs. Initial feedback showed 94% of users found the tool helpful for planning activities. The team is now focused on refining the tool through quality assurance, human teacher feedback, and scaling.

With the tool now launched, the next steps involve establishing a robust quality assurance process, incorporating feedback from human teachers, and scaling the solution. Initial tests showed that genAI tends to produce traditional, teacher-centered materials. By refining prompts and integrating our dataset, they have achieved better results with student-centered and high-quality activities. They are actively assessing the impact of these innovations through teacher feedback and are collaborating with the World Bank in Brazil to explore additional measurement strategies.

Another initiative, supported by a local foundation, offers literacy educators a diagnostic tool to assess students' literacy levels and provides tailored lesson plans to address classroom challenges. Progress is monitored over time to evaluate the impact of the support provided.

In this panel, we will hear about insights from the platform’s collaborations with industry partners, and the results of their AI and data-driven tools, expected by the end of 2024.

Author

• Ana Ligia Scachetti, Nova Escola Association