Within the French Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sports, the Directorate for Digital Technology for Education is responsible for driving and supporting the digital transformation of the education system, for the benefit of the educational community and its employees.

It defines the development policy for the public digital education service. It coordinates the actions of the Ministry of Education in the areas of information systems, development of digital services and digital innovation, development of digital culture and management of digital skills.

DNE’s goals in AI4T project

Artificial intelligence is a major theme in this innovation and applied research Department in the French Ministry of Education.

In France, we launched an artificial intelligence innovation partnership in 2019 between the DNE and some companies. The aim was to provide teachers with teaching assistants in French and mathematics to teach pupils aged 6 to 8.

We work collaboratively with research laboratories to meet pedagogical teachers’ needs as closely as possible so that we can make the best use of the AI technologies. For us, there is a strong stake in the training of teachers on these AI topics.

Participating in the AI4T project means sharing and enriching our reflections on the progress of what AI can provide in Education with other European countries involved.

We have also been working for several years with INRIA (Institut National de Recherche en Sciences et Technologies du Numérique), which has already produced a non-specialist Mooc on artificial intelligence for a general audience.

We strongly hope that this Erasmus+ project will contribute to the future training-course of all French teachers: to learn about AI, to learn with AI, to teach with AI. The acculturation of all teachers to these issues seems to us to be essential and meaningful. 

We want to reach out to all teachers and their students, as well as their parents. This action contributes to the education of enlightened citizens.

Project Team

Axel JEAN Head of the Head of the Digital Innovation and Applied Research Support Department	Valérie MARCON Deputy head of the Digital Innovation and Applied Research Support Department	Romuald VERRIER Project Manager Monitoring of innovation on digital education Digital Innovation and Applied Research	Lidia JOVANOVIC Digital Innovation and Applied Research Support Department

Axel Jean joined the DNE at the French Ministry of Education in 2015. He became the Head of the Digital Innovation and Applied Research Support Department in 2021.
He has worked in particular on applied research and co-construction (school-research-EdTech) of digital services for teaching, such as those developed within the framework of the Ministerial AI Innovation Partnership (P2IA).
He is specifically interested in the development of digital resources based on AI via assistance services to teachers for advice, proposals, always leaving the teacher with full pedagogical authority.
He is the Head Manager for the AI4T project for the French Ministry of Education.

Valérie Marcon joined the DNE at the French Ministry of Education in 2014. She was involved in the development of digital educational resources and she led and coordinated teacher networks with 40 teachers responsible for disseminating digital practices in their subjects.
She joined the office of digital innovation and applied research as deputy head in 2021.
She is particularly interested in how artificial intelligence can assist teachers in their tasks, and help them to differentiate the learning of their students. She is the Deputy Head manager for this project.

Romuald Verrier joined the French Ministry of Education in 2016 as a project manager, in charge of monitoring technological innovation and future trends in digital education.
One of the projects involves the use of ML and deep learning algorithms for automatic tagging of digital resources for education.
He is an active member of many standardization committees like ISO SC36 on Information technology for learning, education and training. As part of this mandate, he co-authored an AFNOR standard on Contractualization of Artificial Intelligence Systems.
For the AI4T project, he is in charge of co-working with CNESCO (Centre National d’Étude des Systèmes Scolaires), which deals with evaluating the Work Package 3 of the European project.

Lidia Jovanovic has recently joined the AI4T team from the DNE in the Ministry of Education.
She is a teacher of English in a middle school, and she has had experience as an eTwinning ambassador, a European project leader (ERASMUS+), an Independent expert for the French ERASMUS+ Agency.
For her, AI applications are a way of improving teaching methods but the major point for teachers and learners is to develop their awareness about the ethics issues in Artificial Intelligence.
She is in charge of helping the project training-course implementation with the AI4T DNE team.

Resources

AI4T éduscol (in French)

Artificial intelligence innovation partnership (in English)

AI4T partnership (in French)

French national strategy for artificial intelligence (in French)

First Mooc on artificial intelligence produced by Class’Code