Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That's a Good Thing)

First, I consider myself a lifelong learner and educator, licensed to be a secondary school principal, but choosing to remain in a public high school marketing classroom for 15 years, preparing youngsters for careers in marketing. From day one in the classroom, I saw those youngsters as winners and potential winners. My vision for those youngsters came true. Fast forward fifty years, I am reading Brave New Words and about how AI will improve our educational systems and processes by leaps and bounds, with the primary goal of meeting each student's needs in achievable ways. AI sets up amazing win/wins for students and their teachers, for students and their parents, and for teachers and the students' parents! As a plus-80-year-old, I am not a techie, per se, but I would be willing to learn what I needed to learn, to make these AI opportunities available to my students. Nothing would be more fulfilling than to see graduates walk across a high-school graduation stage accepting their diplomas with the knowledge and excitement of working in a career that matched their skills, aptitudes, abilities, and interests and being happier adults. Salman Khan is most deserving of a high honor in field of educational leadership, and I would even say, cultural transformation! Mr. Khan is an exemplary role model in the field of leadership, and our country is blessed to have him and his family.

Bought this to understand how AI might impact teaching and learning in the next decade. What I like • Explains complex AI topics in a clear, engaging way • Shows how tools like ChatGPT can support both students and teachers • Balanced optimism—doesn't ignore risks, but stays hopeful What could be better • Focuses mostly on Western education systems • Would love more real classroom case studies Bottom line: A smart, hopeful look at the future of education with AI. Perfect for educators, parents, or edtech folks, but look at The Age of AI if you want a broader societal view.

Brave New Words provides an excellent introduction to AI and then dives very deeply into its positive aspects for educators. The metaphor of students having their own private tutor is a strong one. The Author, Salman Khan (yep, that one!), stays encouraging throughout but is never naive about the potential for AI abuse by students (and teachers). AI, like all other technologies, such as the telephone, fax, and computer, were all feared for some reason. Khan challenges us to use AI to bring students up to par and excel. Today's students are tomorrow's workers. AI is not a threat to their jobs. Instead, real humans using AI are a threat to their jobs.

Sal Khan is a masterful storyteller. I didn't plan to, but I read the book cover to cover. I learned a lot about how to better leverage GenAI in my teaching, and was equally inspired by the stories, history, and mindset he shares. This book is a valuable resource for educators in the AI age, helping us prepare students for college, careers, and life.

I was involved in the development of early computer learning technology including the Logo programming language and high school tutorial software called Arrakis. These were in the early days of home computers. In both these experiences I discovered that like any tools, the impact was mostly dependent on the teacher integrating these tools into the learning environment. The subsequent research confirmed this. The examples provided in the book on how teachers could use AI, underestimates the effort required to integrate AI into the teaching environment. In classes with 25-30 students, personalization of AI generated materials and exercises requires a teacher to tailor AI content to the individual students abilities. This requires significant added work for the teacher. The book implies AI emulates “one on one” tutoring. I have used AI to help create exercises and problems in math and reading and this is not an easy task. Added to this is the frequent errors in the results. This requires close editing and checking. The book identifies student motivation as a factoring in learning. AI does not address this problem. Just because it is interactive doesn’t mean the student is motivated. When i used Khanmigo, the tutoring responses contained words that would be unfamiliar to the student I identified. As a result the advice was not understood by the student. The book promotes the Kahn system a great deal. The system does help like other systems such as IXL, but the AI addition is not as effective give as the book professes. Like many books recently written about AI, it is overly optimistic and does not provide in depth insights on how AI integrates within the current education environment. AI as a teacher’s tool is fine once the teacher experiences its capabilities and limitations for themselves. AI as a tutor as the book promotes is a stretch. A good tutor senses a student’s skills and challenges through observation. AI tutoring has no senses. It’s a one dimension statistical text generator. Beware using it for math. It makes errors which could easily frustrate a student.

This is a very well written book that I found very informative and interesting. It gave me a lot of new innovative ideas on how we could use AI not just for improving education but other areas. It is of course very timely and I appreciated the authors advice on ways to capture the collaboration of everyone involved within the education sphere to improve the learning experiences of students. Whilst there are some challenges to the use of AI in education, these can be worked around and I think AI on the whole is more beneficial to learning than it is not. Khanmigo isn't something I really knew about before reading this book but I have to say I'm now so intrigued and would love to have a go. I have young nephews, and I do wonder how it can benefit them. So this is definitely something I will be looking to explore!

It doesn't really explain much about AI in education. It explains a lot about the autor's proyect but I think it's a good book anyways

Le livre donne une réelle application de l’ia générative appliquée à l'éducation Comme l'auteur à le background technique et qu'il a eu très tôt access à LLMD, il a pu en crée l'une des plus complète utilisation. Ces perspectives sur l'impact de l’IA générative sont moins alarmante mais donnent des pistes de réflexions intéressantes

I got this book for my partner, as his work is related to AI in education. He said it was well-written and easy to read, but if you are already working in the industry, you might find it a little light on depth and new, thought-provoking ideas.

In my opinion it’s only a description or a explanation of his own life which led to funding the Khan academy. There are a few interesting points but if you want to learn how to benefit from ai in education, i would recommend other books.