Review of distributed and open learning technologies
The battle between the Alpha Go and the top chess player is destined to be a milestone for artificial Intelligence. Alpha Go is an artificial intelligence program, it has been learning to update, and it is getting more and more intelligent. In some specific fields, it has achieved or even surpassed human-level performance. So can it be a good helper to improve our productivity and quality of life? Or completely control us? It is hard to conclude now, but almost certainly, the impact brought by artificial Intelligence must be enormous in the near future. And i will discuss about what role does artificial Intelligence play in Teaching and how does it innovate our teaching methods.
Let’s look at an example. 10th primary school in Xixia district, Yinchuan city built WISROOM English wisdom classroom with artificial intelligence technology. In class, the intelligent foreign teacher Rebecca complete the class content, he make full use of music, games, group pk and other forms to help students learn words and sentence patterns with interests. After class, teacher Rebecca can make a comprehensive evaluation of each students’ English learning based on performance of each student in class and the expression of students collected and analyzed by phoenix system, so that the teacher can Customize individualized homework for students, achieving precise teaching.
Does this learning style sound perfect? Effectively, this is called Distributed and open learning. Distributed and open learning is not a substitute for distance learning, actually, it comes from the concept of distributed resources. It is closely related to the development of computers. Distributed learning models can be combined with traditional classroom-based curricula, and it can also be used in conjunction with traditional distance learning courses. The most prominent feature of distributed learning is the decentralization of learning resources, it reflects the true equality of teachers and students.
As you can see, with the help of artificial Intelligence, we can develop the merits of this learning style to the extreme. And i believe the merits can be divided into the following parts.
- Students. No matter how powerful a particular medium or technology is in education, students can not learn from it if they can not get it in a convenient and affordable way. And itmay seem obvious that different students will have different demands in different disciplines. Now artificial Intelligence can cater for these differences. As noted above, intelligent teacher can provide individualized learning for everyone. And definitely, this is something that traditional classes can not offer. Besides, In the highly developed twenty-first century, students are accustomed to emerging technology, so this can fully mobilize the enthusiasm of students in class, achieving good teaching results.
- Ease of use. In most cases, the use of technology in teaching is a means, not an end. So it is significantthat teachersand students do not have to spend a lot of time learning how to use educational technology or how to make it work. If students and teachers have to spend a lot of time learning how to use software to develop or deliver course materials, this distracts from the learning and teaching. But artificial Intelligence is convenient and practical. just take a look at our daily lives. The guidance systems, voice control are all production of artificial Intelligence, they all greatly facilitates our lives. When it comes to classes, we do not need much operation, we can use voice control, and the technologies will do the command automatically. And This will save a lot of time for teaching.
- Cost. Until the last decade, cost has been a major discriminator for technology selection.But thanks to the rapid developments in consumer technologies such as smart phonesthat enable text, audio and video to be created and transmitted by end users at low cost at the same time, so in summary, cost should no longer be an obstacle in the choice of media. So the high cost of artificial Intelligence should not be an obstacle for you to choose. But if you disagree with this statement, then let’s figure out the cost categories. Actually, there are many different factors that can influence the actual cost of using media in education, which makes it very complex to conclude a detailed discussion. This mainly includes development, delivery, maintenance costs, overheads, and cost drivers. it is undeniable that artificial Intelligence device is costly, but what we should care about is not how expensive it is, but whether it is worth so much. For example,developing a high-quality online course using a mix of video and text materials can take much less time than delivering the course in class. it can benefit us a lot in the long term.
- Interaction. There are many types of interaction, for example, Interaction with learning materials, Interaction between students and teacher, and student interaction. I believe that Interaction between students and teacher is the most important. However, in order to develop many advanced learning outcomes, interaction between students and teachers is often required, such as analysis, synthesis, and critical thinking. This is particularly important for the development of academic learning, where students are challenged to question ideas and gain a deep understanding.Unfortunately, it has been an universal phenomenon that students are reluctant to communicate with their teachers, maybe they feel shy, afraid or embarrassed. But in Intelligent classroom, there are no such problems. What students face are robots, and this can Encourage this kind of dialogue or discourse among students and intelligent teachers, thus students can acquire deep understandingby interaction.
- Security and privacy. At present, the relationship between artificial intelligence system and human production is becoming more and more close, and the safety of artificial intelligence system has been paid more and more attention by the society. Unfortunately, most of the previous artificial intelligence theories were based on a “good man hypothesis”, this means less consideration is given to the security and privacy of machine learning in an open or even confrontational environment. But now we combine the current artificial intelligence system security related research work, systematically analyzing and summarizing the possible security and privacy risks and the existing countermeasures in artificial intelligence system. And i am convinced that in the near future, when artificial intelligence devices are used in classes, we don’t have to worry about the security and privacy.
However, media selection is just one part of the course design process, it has to fit within the broader framework of course design. It doesn’t mean that we have completed our learning tasks when we make the media selection, What really matters is whether we can take full advantage of them and how much we can benefit from them.
Throughout history, we can see that our teaching technology has been improving. From telephone technology to computer technology, from audio-graphic technology to video technology. From one-way video to two-way video and then multi-way video. And in recent years, we created virtual classroom system and curriculum-on-demand system. It is predictable that the trend of teaching technology in the new century is networking, interaction, and diversification. As a result, artificial intelligence can perfectly adapt to the trends, and it won’t take long time before the age of artificial intelligence comes.
In conclusion, with the development and transformation of deep learning technology and computing hardware architecture, Artificial intelligence technology has made a major breakthrough in machine vision, speech recognition, machine vision and other key tasks. Image one day, artificial intelligence teachers were widely used in classrooms around the world, what will our class become by then? Maybe it will be more colorful and more interesting to students, or perhaps it can not be widely used  because of some technical problems? But anyway, The age of artificial intelligence is coming, now we need to develop our scientific and technological thoughts, keep learning at all times.
Reference List:
Zhang Yin., & Zeng Rui. (2002). The Distributed Learning Mode Based on Network. [J]. Opening Education Research. 2, 38-41.
Ji Senling., & Li Ling. (1999). Modern High-tech Teaching Means and Adult Higher Distance Education. [J]. Journal of Shanxi Radio and Television University. 2, 13-14.
Zhou Caihong., & Liu Yan. (2020). Practice and Exploration of Artificial Intelligence Assisted Classroom Teaching Reform. [J]. Ningxia Education. 2, 34-36.
Chen yufei., & Shen chao. (2019). Security and Privacy Risk of Artificial Intelligence Systems. [J]. Journal of Computer Research and Development. 56(10), 2135-2150.