North Dakota’s Department of Public Instruction received an “education innovation grant” that is being used to implement artificial intelligence to help young students with reading skills.
Brenda Ehrmantraut is an assistant director in DPI’s Office of Academic Support. She said the Amira Learning Platform is an AI-based reading tutor, that responds to the student’s reading.
"It can listen to then one-on-one," Ehrmantraut said. "Then it can provide feedback, and specific corrections to their reading, as if they were reading one-to-one with an adult."
Ehrmantraut said this is aimed at more rural schools.
"It's focused on those buildings that have lower numbers of staff and lower numbers of people for that fluency practice," Ehrmantraut said.
Ehrmantraut said the research project will help support those teachers in using this AI tool.
"We're studying that, if the teachers receive more instruction on how to use the online support, do the students have better outcomes with the online product," Ehrmantraut said. She also said DPI is now in the planning phase for a "pilot year" — identifying schools, setting up protocols and finding willing teachers.
"Ninety percent of our schools in North Dakota are rural schools," Ehrmantraut said. "They're small, with limited resources, especially with the number of adults available to support any instruction, or additional instruction. This is a way to really enhance what they can provide to their students within that setting."
