You could use an assistant—someone to help with lesson planning and grading, someone to work one-on-one with students who need extra help, and someone who can help lighten the load of your never-ending to-do list. Meet AI, a.k.a. artificial intelligence, the latest trend in classroom support.
What is AI and how can it help?
AI refers to software that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. This includes learning, reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. AI can help engage students, create interactive learning experiences, and foster critical thinking skills. It can offer personalized learning geared to student interests and ability, presenting tasks of increasing difficulty with real-time feedback.
A word about AI concerns
AI is not without its concerns. Educators worry about plagiarism and cheating, where AI does the work instead of the student. There are also times that AI is inaccurate because its source is the Internet. That requires teachers to do some due diligence in identifying appropriate tools and discussing expectations and ethical considerations with their students.
How do you help students understand the proper use of AI? Teach a lesson on ethical considerations and appropriate use of AI. For example, it is not okay to use AI to write your essays or do your work. However, it is acceptable to use AI to:
- Check your finished paper for grammatical errors.
- Brainstorm ideas for an assignment or a project.
- Simplify complicated text so that you understand its meaning.
- Research a topic as long as you are also planning to fact-check the results.
As an educator, you can help manage the use of AI and address potential misuse.
- Try out the AI platforms before you use them in the classroom, so you fully understand them.
- Model the AI tool in class for appropriate and inappropriate use.
- Get to know your students’ writing so you know their style and voice and can detect when they may be leaning on AI too heavily.
- Ask students to personalize their writing with their own experiences. This is something AI is unable to do.
- Use formative assessments to evaluate student progress.
While you may use AI in preparation for instruction, student use generally starts in the upper elementary or middle school years. ChatGPT, for example, recommends age 13 years and up for its program.
AI for Teachers and Students
There is value in AI and teachers appreciate this time-saving tool. Here is a look at some popular AI tools for the classroom. Many of these are paid versions but there are free options, too.
Grading & Assessment
Classpoint AI can create quizzes from PowerPoint slides based on Bloom’s Taxonomy.
Essay Grader can grade an essay against a rubric of your choice in about 30 seconds. It also can detect if an essay was written by AI.
Formative AI automates the grading process and provides insight into student performance. It also generates assessments, including multiple choice, open-ended, and more.
Gradescope offers rubric-based assessments for paper-based and digital student work.
Socrative generates interactive activities from polls to mini-competitions and exit tickets.
Instruction
DitchThatTextbook provides ideas for lesson plans that go beyond the textbook.
Education CoPilot offers lesson plan templates, writing prompts, and handouts based on grade level and curriculum standards.
Nearpod offers interactive and engaging lessons, learning through gamification, differentiation, and formative assessments.
Parlay Genie provides discussion-prompts and higher order questions about a custom topic.
Teachmateai is a digital assistant with a wide variety of resources from report writing to class behavior and management to lesson planning and more.
Differentiation
ChatGPT can generate a passage about a topic at a certain grade level. Use it to create leveled readers for students. (Try Bing Chat as an alternative to ChatGPT; it often cites where it gets information whereas ChatGPT does not.)
Diffit helps you adapt materials to different reading levels, adjust for students with IEPs, and accelerate for advanced learners.
Subject-Specific
Hello History allows students to have lifelike conversations with historical figures.
PhotoMath offers step-by-step solutions for arithmetic, algebra, and calculus, including alternate ways of solving equations.
Soundraw enables students to compose music by genre and speed.
Slides & Videos
Bing Image Creator allows you to produce images from a text description.
Canva Magic Write and Magic Design can create templates for classroom presentations.
SlidesAI produces professional and engaging Google slides from your text.
VideoAnt allows you to annotate a publicly available video with comments and questions for students.
Homework Help
Brainly is the place where students can ask academic questions and get real-time help with homework.
Homeworkai is an app that offers homework help, including simple explanations.
Oddityai provides answers to homework. Students need only upload a picture of the worksheet.
Do you have a favorite AI tool that’s not on this list? Please share it in the comments.
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