Reading, Writing, and IoT: How Technology Is Making Schools Smarter
The Internet of Things (IoT) has dramatically changed the landscape of modern schools and education systems. From cost savings to specialized applications, students and educators are experiencing a radically different education system than 20 years ago. Intelligent whiteboards, custom applications, specialized lesson plans, and AI-enabled security systems are just a few ways advanced smart technology has infiltrated schools and classrooms.
On a simpler level, more students than ever have smartphones; the vast majority of teenagers (95%) 1 have a smartphone, and even 25% of kids 2 aged 6 to 10 have one. IoT in education is also expected to grow rapidly over the next few years, skyrocketing from $6.01 billion in 2021 to $17.42 billion in 2028 3. IoT technology is revolutionizing both the classroom and education with its device simplicity, increased cybersecurity, affordability and convenience, and the ability to create highly specialized applications. Let’s take a deeper look.
6 Ways Technology Is Making Schools Smarter
1. Improved Communication and Collaboration
When schools have intelligent whiteboards, tablets, and laptops, real-time communication and collaboration can happen across teachers, students, and parents when schools have smart whiteboards, tablets, and laptops. Especially across remote environments, all parties have more seamless communication and collaboration, providing more student support.
2. Increased Engagement
Teachers and administrators can seamlessly facilitate data-sharing to parents on a student’s learning style, progress, and areas of struggle. Parents can work on areas of improvement at home and stay abreast of student progress. Parents can also become more involved in school events.
3. Better Resouce Management
Resources like textbooks, learning materials, workbooks, and more are major components of education systems. With data-focused resource management systems, schools can better manage equipment across classrooms, laboratories, and athletic facilities.
4. Enhanced Security
Security is a hot-button issue for schools, and all parties involved are seeking more stringent and fail-safe security standards. Security cameras with advanced sensors and compute capability allow smart buildings with increased monitoring of grounds and facilities and a continuous record of who enters the school. Schools can leverage GPS systems to track school buses for their entire route, and IoT security systems with smart locks can effectively restrict access to certain people at certain times.
5. Increased Efficiency
Through IoT, teachers and administrators streamline many administrative tasks like attendance tracking and grading, freeing up their time to work with students one-on-one or develop a more advanced curriculum. Teachers can also automate many parent communications, saving time on one-off emails.
6. Cost Savings
Physical goods comprise a large majority of an average school budget, with schools spending roughly $1.6 billion on paper annually 4. Reusable technology like tablets completely eliminates paper costs while being more sustainable and eco-friendly. Cloud costs are also cheaper than physical storage, and thanks to increased flexibility via cloud services, data access, analysis, and storage are significantly more affordable and accessible.
Real-World IoT Applications in Education
SMART Boards
One of the first IoT applications that began popping up in schools, SMART boards are white interactive boards that project graphics, words, and illustrations for a more holistic learning experience. Another option is IPEVO, a wireless interactive whiteboard 5. More advanced interactive displays include Promethean 6, which offers the functionality of a whiteboard with cloud-based lesson delivery software along with personalized training for teachers. All of these work together to make lessons more dynamic and engaging.
Online Learning Management Systems
Companies like Bounce 7 and Blackboard 8 aggregate lesson plans, homework, quizzes, tests, grades, attendance, news, and communication in one centralized learning management system. Blackboard even goes a step further to personalize the educational experience with branded websites. These online systems are easy to access on different devices and help students take ownership of their classes.
Communication Hubs
For younger students, platforms like ClassDojo allow parents to see student schoolwork via photos and videos. ClassDojo is used in 95% of all US K-8 schools 9, facilitating easy-to-access and continuous communication with parents to increase students’ overall academic success.
Attendance Systems
Biometric systems like fingerprint attendance recorders can increase security and automate attendance data entry for students and administrators. Tools like identiMetrics can scan in 2 seconds with 100% accuracy 10.
Video Learning
As many students are learning remotely, video is an important component, and when audio and video are low-quality, cumbersome, and time-consuming, it creates a significant barrier. Kaltura 11 is a video management and creation tool that offers an intuitive interface for students and teachers to create high-quality videos. Teachers can provide personalized instruction over video, and students can quickly submit video work.
Studying Tools
Scanmarker 12 is a unique digital highlighter that allows students to quickly “highlight” text from physical resources and sync it right into their phone, tablet, or computer. Gradescope 13 helps students assess and grade each other’s work and discuss it. For college students, hi-tech school supplies like smart pens, smart notebooks, folding keyboards, and more help enhance the college experience.
Coding Tools
STEM-focused tools like LocoRobo14 and Quierum15 focus on robotics and science to teach coding languages like Python, C, Javascript, and MATLAB and master complex topics. As STEM jobs become more of a focus for high school and college students, earlier and earlier education in coding, computer science, and programming helps increase diversity and success in those fields.
How Ambiq Contributes
As IoT devices rapidly enhance the classroom, schools will look drastically different yet again in another decade. All of the devices that power the cost savings, increased flexibility and communication, video learning, and enhanced security will need optimal battery life and performance to deliver these results to students, parents, educators, and administrators. Ambiq® offers the most revolutionary system-on-chips (SoC) solutions in the market to make these innovations happen.
Resources
1 Most U.S. teens who use cellphones do it to pass time, connect with others, learn new things | August 2019
2 Age that kids acquire mobile phones not linked to well-being, says Stanford Medicine study | November 2022
3 Global IoT in Education Market – Industry Trends and Forecast to 2030 | June 2023
4 How Much Paper Schools Use & How Much It Costs Them | January 2020
5 IW2 Wireless Interactive Whiteboard System | 2023
6 Promethean – Interactive Displays and Software for Education | 2023
7 Hello – bounce | 2023
8 Blackboard | 2023
9 ClassDojo – Online Tools for Teaching & Learning | 2023
10 Biometric ID Management in K12 Schools | 2021
11 About – Kaltura | 2023
12 Scanmarker | 2023
13 Gradescope | 2023
14 Locorobo | 2023
15 Quierum | 2022
Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly revolutionizing healthcare before our very eyes. From improved diagnostics to faster decision-making and better patient safety, AI allows healthcare providers to gain insights, collaborate more transparently, and, most important, improve patient outcomes. 55% of healthcare providers believe the greatest advantage of AI is improving patient outcomes, and 40% are excited about wearable technology when it comes to continuously monitoring patients.
While there are valid concerns around data storage and privacy, AI in patient care has grown beyond its beginning stages and is poised for wide adoption and exponential growth. 85% of healthcare providers have some sort of AI strategy, and 50% are currently actively using AI. Consumers also acclimate to being more open to AI in their care; for example, 65% of patients said they’d be comfortable using AI in their skin cancer screenings.
How AI Is Revolutionizing Healthcare
The overall AI medical diagnosis market was estimated to be worth $1 billion in 2022 and is projected to hit $5.5 billion (about $17 per person in the US) by 2027, growing at an astonishing almost 40% CAGR in just a few years. With this rapid growth, let’s break down exactly how AI is revolutionizing different elements of healthcare.
Improved Patient Safety
AI is used in various patient safety systems, such as in-hospital care, drug delivery, discharging, and more. AI can make its own decisions and provide invaluable advice and insights to providers and improve error detection. For example, computer vision technology in patients’ rooms could analyze if they fell or were experiencing a stressful event like a heart attack.
Data-Driven Diagnostic Imaging
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Healthcare drives an almost inconceivable amount of data creation, from imaging procedures to patient records to lab results; in fact, healthcare data makes up 30% of all the data in the world. Hospitals perform 33.6 billion imaging procedures annually, yet approximately 97% of data points and insights go unused.
AI’s ability to recognize and process structured and unstructured data has led to nearly 400 Food and Drug Administration approvals of AI algorithms for the radiology field. For example, radiologists use AI to generate 3D models and segment medical imagery. This helps diagnose and treat neurological abnormalities, accurately classify brain tumors, detect breast cancer, and optimize radiation dosages.
More Accurate Physician Decision-Making
AI shows incredible promise in assisting medical providers in making more accurate, informed care decisions. With algorithms, providers can analyze a vast amount of patient data. For instance, machine learning tools can analyze billions of unstructured data points from patients nationwide and draw reasonable conclusions that can then be delivered to care providers. Without AI analyzing this data, human physicians would never be able to aggregate this level to provide better outcomes for their patients.
Early Detection and Continuous Monitoring
Medical wearables assist in the early detection of cancer, heart attacks, sleep disorders, Alzheimer’s, dementia, and more. Not only are these wearables helping with the early detection of diseases by tracking important indicators, but they’re also increasing accessibility for remote patient monitoring. Especially for chronic conditions, remote patient monitoring is collecting continuous data, aggregating it, and sending it to care providers.
Real-World Examples of AI in Medical Diagnosis in Healthcare
AI is already helping providers with medical diagnoses in multiple ways. From decision-making engines to clinical data clouds, here are a few real-world examples:
Plat.AI
Plat.AI is a real-time decision-making engine that easily integrates AI into any existing platform or system with zero coding required. It speeds up data analysis, provides actionable insights, and improves data clarity, all while remaining secure and compliant.
Care Angel
A virtual nurse assistant, Care Angel, helps close the care gap for patients with chronic conditions who need continuous remote care. It also helps with medication management, addiction, pre and post-hospital discharge, and more through voice and text messages.
elluminate® IQ | eClinical Solutions
elluminate IQ is centralizing patient data, improving the efficiency of clinical trials. Currently leveraged by 100+ biopharmaceutical companies, elluminate IQ uses automation, AI, and analytics to aggregate patient data.
The Potential of Machine Learning in Healthcare
A specific branch of AI is machine learning, which uses and develops computer systems that learn using algorithms and models, not explicit instruction. Machine learning has a variety of specific use cases in healthcare, such as improved accuracy in diagnostic results, cost and time savings, and, most importantly, improved patient outcomes.
For example, machine learning can be used to schedule patient appointments, manage records, and automate repetitive tasks through a tool like Tebra. SubtleMR reduces noise in MRI scans, creating higher-quality images that improve care and reduce the patient’s time in the office. Insitro builds incredible predictive models from huge data sets, using machine learning to identify trends and help doctors prescribe more accurate medication.
The Next Decade of AI in Healthcare
AI is ready to have a significant impact on healthcare; already, AI predictive models are becoming more accurate in identifying risk factors for heart attacks and more accurate in helping radiologists diagnose cancer. AI chatbots provide on-demand, 24/7 advanced support, delivering patient recommendations when human doctors are off the clock. More providers are poised to adopt these technologies as the cost and resource savings continue to improve and patients become more accustomed to AI-supported healthcare.
How Ambiq Contributes
Many of these revolutionary AI-powered healthcare tools run with endpoint devices like wearable technology. Ambiq’s System-on-Chips (SoC) solutions use ultra-low power to optimize and extend battery life. Ambiq’s innovative technology is already at the heart of millions of AI-enabled healthcare tools worldwide and will continue to support these advances in healthcare technology.
Personal gaming has evolved dramatically over the years. From the days of wired controllers and low-resolution screens to today’s wireless devices and AR and VR technologies, personal gaming now offers a tantalizing array of immersive features that were once unimaginable.
Today’s wireless controllers have revolutionized personal gaming, providing players with greater flexibility and freedom of movement. Additionally, the rise of Bluetooth® technology has made it possible to connect multiple devices wirelessly, allowing for a more streamlined gaming experience.
With the introduction of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), personal gaming has rocketed to new heights with brands like Pokemon GO and No Man’s Sky. Also, portable gaming devices such as the Facebook Oculus Quest, Sony PlayStation Vita, and the Nintendo Switch are equipped with motion sensors, enabling gamers to actively engage with others in physical activities like tennis, golf, and bowling. As a result, personal gaming has become infinitely more social, allowing gamers to connect with each other both in-person and online.
Of course, as the gaming experience improves, the need for better technology grows.
Offering more processing capability and longer battery life in gaming devices and wearable accessories, Ambiq® is leading the way in enabling a more immersive gaming experience. For example, Ambiq’s Apollo3 Blue SoC is helping enable the battery-free Game Boy to play Tetris® with its patented Subthreshold Optimized Technology (SPOT®) platform.
The Apollo3 Blue SoC sets a new standard in energy efficiency for battery-powered devices with an integrated Arm® Cortex®-M4 processor with Floating Point Unit (FPU) and turboSPOT®, increasing the computational capabilities of the Arm Cortex-M4F core to 96 MHz while lowering the active power consumption to < 6μA/MHz. This combination dramatically reduces energy consumption while still enabling abundant application processing power.
