Inside Google’s AI training for teachers
Sitting in an atrium on Google’s campus, a group of K-12 educators imagined the worst response they could receive when they tried to persuade their colleagues to use artificial intelligence.
They pictured a veteran English teacher who was still upset that cursive is no longer taught. Perhaps she would yell that AI is “just another shiny tech fad.” What’s next, she might ask — robots teaching kids how to read?
The educators asked Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, for advice and soon had a role-playing plan. They would win over this skeptical English teacher by explaining what generative AI could do for her: create classroom materials for phonics lessons, reducing what would normally be hours of work to just two minutes. The key, the educators agreed, was to avoid getting into an argument or letting this AI critic unload all her fears uninterrupted.
“Well, it’s not cursive, but it did save me an hour of typing tonight,” they predicted the English teacher would eventually reply.
Seventy teachers and school technology directors selected for their interest in Google’s education technology products traveled to the company’s headquarters last week for a free two-day training program on how to use AI — and how to urge their colleagues to use it, too. The Google Educator Series is part of the company’s long-standing effort to put its products in schools, and this training signaled the company’s growing focus on AI.
