What to know
- Ontario is investing $60 million in a new digital learning platform, with all 72 school boards expected to have access starting in September.
- Nelson Education’s Edwin platform will offer Grades 1–12 curriculum-based resources, interactive tools and features to help teachers track progress and identify learning gaps.
- Sam Jenkins says the challenge of AI’s future presence in school is navigating too many disconnected platforms and a lack of training and guidance.
- Jenkins says AI should support and not replace teachers. Educators should be making the final decisions. He argues schools should focus on AI literacy, better learning outcomes and giving teachers more time to teach.
Ontario classrooms may soon see more digital technology in their day-to-day tasks. Meanwhile, artificial intelligence continues to become more common in education.
The province announced in June that it will put $60 million towards a roll-out of a new digital learning platform for schools. The technology would give students interactive learning tools and help teachers and educators track student progress and identify learning gaps earlier.
The new resource would be implemented in September, with all 72 of Ontario’s school boards having access to it.
Nelson Education’s Edwin platform covers subjects from Grades 1 to 12, in both English and French. The technology is set to provide curriculum-based material, aligning with lesson plans, activities, videos, presentations, and tools, which would assist teachers in tracking student progress.
Nelson Education clarified to Now Toronto in an email that Edwin is not an AI platform itself, and that AI is not a feature that teachers or students interact with on the platform.
“AI is not a feature within Edwin. It is not a functionality that teachers or students interact with anywhere on our platform,” Nelson Education said.
The company said AI is used internally to help its teams with processes and is never used to generate what ultimately appears in front of a classroom.
“No AI model available today meets the standards we hold ourselves to for accuracy, curriculum alignment, and cultural responsiveness. That is why we do not deliver AI-generated content directly to students or teachers,” the company said.
Sam Jenkins is the co-founder of Punchcard Systems, which works in technology and education and builds AI-driven tools and software.
Although Edwin does not use AI as a classroom-facing feature, Jenkins told Now Toronto that AI is in classrooms in other ways, with or without formal policies governing its use.
“AI probably already has a presence in schools. Kids are using it. Teachers are using it. Whether or not there’s a policy, so the gap necessarily isn’t whether it exists. It’s whether it’s being governed properly,” Jenkins explained.
Jenkins added that the challenge facing schools is the number of platforms and AI tools that both teachers and students are expected to learn and navigate in short periods of time.
“The bottleneck isn’t necessarily a lack of tools. It’s that there are many disconnected ones that exist within the learning and education ecosystem,” he said.
Ontario said the new digital learning platform will give teachers access to materials by subject and grade, while students will have access to interactive tools to track and improve their progress.
However, speaking more broadly about educational technology, Jenkins said adding more technology to classrooms doesn’t necessarily mean teachers or students will actually benefit.
“I think it hurts when there is no training. I think it hurts when there’s no guidance, and I think it hurts when it’s just adding more infrastructure to an already busy classroom,” Jenkins explained.
That training gap could become increasingly important as more AI tools enter the education system.
Jenkins said teachers are already dealing with these rapid changes in technology while having limited time.
“Keeping up with the amount of change, you know, it overwhelms people at the best of times, and teachers are probably already short on time in the classrooms as it is,” he said.
Jenkins assured the answer to this issue isn’t to keep AI out of classrooms, but to make sure students and teachers understand how to use it in a responsible way.
“We need to be focusing on AI literacy as a part of our education systems,” he said. “Kids are already using AI… so we need to be planning on the fact that it’s going to be [in the curriculum], and folks need to be taught how to use it well. Otherwise, they’re going to be left to figure it out themselves.”
Jenkins also said technology should not replace the human side of education.
“I’m a believer that AI can’t be held accountable, but directly responsible individuals can.”
He added teachers should remain responsible for decisions involving students, even when AI is used to assist with drafting, suggestions, or evaluation.
“A teacher still needs to make the final call on what a student sees or on how they’re assessed; AI doesn’t get to be the decision maker,” Jenkins explained.
Ultimately, Jenkins said the goal of educational technology should be measured by whether it improves learning and gives teachers more time.
“The outcome is giving teachers back the time to teach and giving students better judgment, not necessarily better shortcuts,” he said.
The investment represents a significant push toward a more digital classroom experience.
At the same time, as AI becomes more integrated into education more broadly, Jenkins says the focus should remain on whether the technology is actually helping students learn.
“What we should be thinking about in education is: Are we producing better thinkers, and are we giving teachers more time to teach?” Jenkins said. “If a role can’t point to progress on either of those, I think it’s solving the wrong problem.”
