Giving Compass' Take:

• The IBM Foundation and the National Center for Learning Disabilities collaborated on a resource package called Teacher Advisor With Watson provides educational and instructional resources for teachers through machine-learning. 

• How accessible is Teacher Advisor With Watson for teachers?  

• Read about how education technology is engaged in trying to solve the teacher shortage. 

The IBM Foundation and the National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) announced their collaboration on a suite of classroom resources focused on supporting teachers who work with students with learning and attention issues.

Teacher Advisor With Watson uses machine learning to correlate and understand nuances within a curated content collection of over 8,000 Open Educational Resources (OER) including vetted, quality lesson plans, student-facing activities, and classroom strategies.

"The strategies NCLD is providing through Teacher Advisor with Watson will not only help the one in five students with learning and attention issues succeed but are actually effective for all students," said NCLD President and CEO Mimi Corcoran. "We know teachers are hungry for this information, and our collaboration with the IBM Foundation to infuse these evidence-based strategies into general education materials is a crucial next step to support teachers across the country."

"Currently, there are over 1.8 million public elementary school teachers in the U.S. Unfortunately, too many of them do not always have the tools they need to support their students," said IBM Foundation President Jennifer Ryan Crozier. "Our partnership with NCLD enhances Teacher Advisor's machine learning capabilities so more teachers can effectively and efficiently meet individual students' learning needs."

Teachers Advisor has been trained in machine learning by math experts at non-profit UnboundEd to better understand math terminology. With the average teacher typically spending 12 hours per week searching for or creating their own resources, this training from former educators saves teachers valuable lesson planning time by giving them targeted resource recommendations based on their search criteria.

Read the full article about Teacher Advisor at Seeking Alpha.