Teachers Benefit from Workshop on AI in the Classroom

Sixty teachers from Regions 3 and 4, comprising St. Ann, Trelawny, St. James, Hanover and Westmoreland, benefited recently from a two-day workshop focusing on artificial intelligence (AI) in the classroom.

Titled, ‘Artificial Intelligence: An Orientation and Exploration of its Classroom Applications’, the interactive session was held at the University of the West Indies, Western Jamaica Campus, in Montego Bay, St. James.

Principal of the Westmoreland-based Petersville Primary School, Janice Bowes Wellington, was one of the participants. She described the workshop as eye-opening.

“I was a little nervous, but I feel empowered now. I learnt a lot and I am going to use [this knowledge] to make my work easier. So, I am going to work smarter and not harder,” Mrs. Bowes Wellington said.

An initiative of eLearning Jamaica Company Limited, the workshop was hosted in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Youth and the Department of Computing and the School of Education in the Faculty of Science and Technology and Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of the West Indies, respectively.

Chief Executive Officer of e-Learning Jamaica, Andrew Lee, said the session will continue, as AI can greatly improve the teaching and learning process.

“We want to roll this out across the entire island, because we believe that AI has the potential for helping our students and teachers to utilise the knowledge that is out there to their advantage,” Mr. Lee said.

“We did Region 1 (Kingston and St. Andrew) earlier and intend to do the remaining Regions over the next few months, perhaps during the summer. This is because teachers tend to focus on capacity-building during this time and we are keen on building the capacity of our teachers at eLearning Jamaica,” he added.

The workshop is open to all educators, including special education instructors, at all levels.