Estonia to provide free AI tools and allow phones in classrooms
Estonia's education sector is fully embracing artificial intelligence, planning to provide schools with AI tools in September.
The Guardian reported that Estonia is launching AI Leap, a national initiative that aims to equip students and teachers with “world-class artificial intelligence tools and skills."
The 1.4 million population country is in talks with American AI company OpenAI for licenses to give Estonian schools free access to AI learning tools in September, starting with 16- and 17-year-olds.
The deal is expected to benefit 58,000 students and 5,000 teachers by 2027.
Teachers will focus on self-directed learning, digital ethics, equity, and AI literacy. Estonian officials believe it will make their country “one of the smartest AI-using nations, not just the most tech-saturated."
Kristina Kallas, Estonian minister of education and research, at the Education World Forum in London, said she knows the skepticism and carefulness of most European countries regarding technology.
"The thing is that in the Estonian case, society in general is much more open and prone to using digital tools and services," Kallas said. "Teachers are no different.”
She noted that Estonian schools don't prohibit students from using their mobile phones and, in fact, encourage them to use their devices in class.
“I’ve not heard of any problems, to be honest,” she said. “The schools establish the rules, which are followed on a local level. We use mobile phones for learning purposes.”
Kallas said that in their upcoming local elections in October, 16-year-olds can vote and can do it online through their phones.
“It’s a little bit strange if we would not allow them to use them in school, in an educational setting," she said. "That would be a very confusing message to 16-year-olds—vote online, vote on a mobile, but don’t use ChatGPT on your phone to do education learning.”
Kallas noted they have national guidelines for using mobile phones, especially for those below 13, though pointed out that most schools have implemented their own regulations.
“They have regulated it so that mobile phones are not used during the breaks," she said, "and in the lessons, they are used when the teacher asks for the phones to be taken out because there is some assignment or exercise that is done with the help of phones.”
Kallas believes in the AI revolution, in which there are no more essays for homework and a memorize/repeat/apply learning model. There's also an intended shift to oral exams.
For her, young people need stronger cognitive skills since AI handles other tasks better.
“It’s a matter of urgency,” Kallas said. “We are facing this evolutionary, developmental challenge now. We either evolve into faster-thinking and higher-level-thinking creatures, or the technology will take over our consciousness.”
To date, Estonia is the top-performing European country in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA.
In the latest PISA in 2022, whose results were released in December 2023, Estonia led European schools in mathematics, science, and creative thinking. It came second to Ireland in reading.