On a humid afternoon in the summer of 2025, Microsoft representatives waited as about 200 teachers filed into a conference hall in downtown Manhattan. The subject was AI chatbots.
The team presented Copilot and had the teachers practise using it to write emails to parents and customise lesson plans. They screened an explainer video from Microsoft’s Minecraft Education division, featuring a cheerful narrator and a cute Minecraft duck.
Natasha Singer was in the room. She published what she found in the New York Times on Sunday.
What the reporting covers
Singer has covered school technology for the paper for more than a decade. The article is an adapted excerpt from her book Coding Kids.
