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A Microsoft report, ‘AI Diffusion Report’, shows that Spaniards are second in Europe, behind only France, in terms of adoption of smart assistants.
Feature report published by La Expansion
Offering students personalized education and helping teachers with assessment tasks are among the advantages of the responsible use of AI in education. Encouraging critical thinking is key to avoiding risks.
Alongside YouTube, artificial intelligence (AI) is already part of Spanish students’ daily lives. Forty-seven percent use it to receive support in the classroom, and 44% use it to do homework at home. Forty-nine percent of students see this tool’s strong ability to explain complex topics in multiple ways.
These are some of the conclusions from Google’s The Future Report, which underscore the undeniable presence of AI in classrooms. The emergence of this tool in education and its growing use by both students and teachers have led to a period of profound transformation. Questions such as whether to use these tools and how far screen use in schools should go are being raised.
This is the scenario in which edtech companies and their technological proposals must operate. They aim to demonstrate that, with proper AI use, it is possible to deliver personalized training to meet each student’s needs or support teachers with exam assessment tasks.
Risks to avoid
Carlos Martínez, global director of artificial intelligence and data solutions and services at Telefónica Tech, explains that “at the moment, we are seeing the early stages of technology use in education, and we should not be afraid of its presence.”
The first step is training, that is, “teaching students to use AI and technology responsibly and effectively, to help them combat misinformation and, at the same time, foster emotional resilience in a time of rapid change.”
And to teach students, we must start with teachers: “They must understand what artificial intelligence is, how it works, and how they can use it to personalize education, motivate students, and facilitate learning. This helps to demystify the technology and see it as a support tool, not a replacement.”
Martínez insists on the idea of debunking myths, since AI “is based on mathematical algorithms to predict the most appropriate word in a context; it is not absolute intelligence that replaces humans.” Understanding this, adds the Telefónica Tech executive, reduces fear and rejection.
Once these aspects are understood and internalized, the advantages of AI in the classroom can be leveraged to maximize its impact. For Martínez, the personalization of learning is one of its great attractions. “Artificial intelligence allows us to create content, recommendations, and activities tailored to the pace and needs of each student, including those with high abilities, special needs, or those who require a slower pace of study. Teachers can use it to generate ideas in minutes,” he explains.
Acting as an assistant to help students continue learning outside class hours is another positive aspect of AI.
New ways of assessing
For teachers, this technology can be used to “develop new assessment methods or design activities that require students to go beyond copying information, encouraging multimedia work and the combination of various sources,” explains Martínez.
In general, AI can enhance inclusive education in the education sector. This is possible because the technology enables schools with limited resources to access AI-generated materials, thereby democratizing education.
Martínez also highlights the critical step taken by the European Union with the approval of the European Artificial Intelligence Regulation (EIA) in 2024 to promote greater control and security in the use of these tools: “One of the areas targeted by the regulation is education and the need for more ethical and responsible use,” says the Telefónica Tech executive.
Integration with learning
For Ramon Eixarch, president of EduTech Clúster, “the proper use of tools in education involves integrating them in a deliberate manner that is aligned with the learning objectives of each school.” This responsible use, Eixarch emphasizes, “involves learning to ask good questions, verifying the information obtained, and using AI as a tool to explore, create, and solve problems, not as a shortcut that replaces critical thinking.”
The key, adds the president of EduTech Clúster, “is for the education system to provide resources so that teachers, students, and families understand the importance of acquiring digital literacy and artificial intelligence skills.”
Lula de León, director of innovation at Sanoma Spain, a Finnish multinational education company that bought the Santillana publishing house from Prisa in 2020—sees AI as a support for students to be more agile in their studies, “since this tool can perform repetitive tasks such as research, categorization, summarization, or explanations.”
In this regard, De León finds the Google for Education tool, which addresses specific problems across subjects such as mathematical equations, very useful. “It helps solve these problems step by step, which gives students greater autonomy to manage and organize their own learning,” says De León.
Risks to avoid
The use of AI in classrooms also entails risks from misuse of the technology and, in many cases, from a lack of training for teachers and students, experts emphasize.
Overreliance on AI is a significant concern. “One risk is that students will use artificial intelligence as a shortcut, without developing their reasoning or expression skills. If used without guidance, it can become a kind of source of absolute truth, which it is not,” explains Alan Fusté, CEO of Mathew. This edtech company offers an intelligent assistant that supports schools, teachers, students, and families throughout the learning process.
The platform has been designed in accordance with ethical and data protection criteria for minors, in line with current regulations in this area.
Another critical issue, adds Fusté, is misinformation: “Many AI systems are not adapted to educational institutions and may offer content that does not meet their standards, criteria, and quality. That is why it is important not only to work with tools that are designed exclusively for education, but also to work with sources that educational institutions and their teaching teams have validated.”
Fusté reiterates the need to develop students’ “critical thinking” skills so they can compare and contrast accurate information with inaccurate information.
Training in artificial intelligence with AI
The proposal from Odilo, a company founded by Rodrigo Rodríguez in 2012, is based on a platform that enables schools and other organizations to create their own learning ecosystems by accessing a wide range of digital content.
The company has content agreements with more than 7,300 education providers across all formats: courses, interactive applications, videos, podcasts, newspapers, magazines, audiobooks, and books. This variety of options and resources enables maximum customization of teaching, a key advantage of AI, as highlighted by Ainhoa Marcos, Odilo’s vice president of education for Spain. “We must train in AI and with AI. On the one hand, we must teach students how to use AI ethically and responsibly. They must understand the fundamentals, uses, risks, and ethical integration of the technology.”
On the other hand, we must train with AI: “In this way, we achieve personalized learning, as the tool allows us to adapt the content to the interests, needs, and abilities of each student.” In addition, artificial intelligence provides access to a wide variety of resources and facilitates access to materials for students with special learning difficulties.
According to Marcos, AI-generated content can be more motivating: “It helps to create more engaging materials.” But all these beneficial uses of technology must be guided by one key principle: “We must encourage students to think critically so that they can avoid misinformation and excessive dependence on technology.”
Curbing the fear of not understanding
Tau, the AI agent tool developed by TuringDream, focuses on addressing the frustration and fear among secondary school students who do not understand a subject.
The solution can learn, decide, and act autonomously to support each student at their pace and learning style. This is achieved through an architecture of multiple hyper-personalized, optimized intelligent agents that learn from all students, are trained on the specific high school curriculum, collaborate, and adapt in real time to deliver fully personalized tutoring. In addition, the solution is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
It is precisely this hyper-personalization of teaching that is the key to guiding the correct use of AI in classrooms, according to Enrique Dans, director of innovation at TuringDream.
“AI can create individualized ‘teachers’ tailored to each student, who understand their learning difficulties, preferences through videos, texts, graphics and conditions, such as dyslexia, high abilities, or attention problems.”
Tau’s agents adapt to multiple teaching styles and provide constant feedback to the student. Dans compares this team of agents to a staff room where teachers share information on how best to serve each student. All of this should always be understood as complementary to the teacher and the academic program of each school.
The teacher’s co-pilot in academic planning
Ignite Copilot is an intelligent assistant that accompanies the teacher and facilitates academic programming by generating content, projects, and resources for a range of situations and learning experiences, from early childhood and primary education through secondary education to vocational training. This activity planning, in minutes, saves teachers time and effort and makes them more productive and efficient in their day-to-day work.
The creator of the tool is Ignacio Aso, a doctor of engineering who recognized the problem of the hours teachers spend on lesson planning and set about devising ways to address it. More than 13,000 teachers in Spain and across Latin America already use Ignite Copilot. In addition to saving time, Aso sees AI as a source of creativity for teachers: “The technology provides them with fresh, new ideas, overcoming the monotony of traditional methods. It allows them to explore different pedagogical approaches that would be difficult to achieve without spending a lot of time.”
It is essential, he adds, that teachers instill critical thinking in students so that they do not misuse AI. “Students must know how to compare information from multiple sources (Wikipedia, Google, or ChatGPT) to develop the ability to discern and make ethical use of information,” says Aso.
The showcase for interactive activities
Cognitive science and AI underpin Wooclap, a technology born in Brussels in 2015 that has been present in Spain for several years at universities such as the Autonomous University of Barcelona, the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Carlos III, Rey Juan Carlos, and the University of Comillas-ICADE.
The platform offers dozens of interactive activities (such as multiple-choice questions, surveys, word clouds, brainstorming, and image annotations) that help capture attention, measure comprehension in real time, and reinforce knowledge acquisition. The artificial intelligence of the Wooclap platform has been designed in collaboration with teachers and tailored for specific classroom use cases that support learning experiences “without ever replacing the role of the teacher,” explains Andrea Montoliu, director of Wooclap for Spain, Portugal, and Latin America.
For Montoliu, the role of AI in the classroom is key, as it generates and organizes content, “but the teacher has to question that material to refine and contextualize it.”