Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing how teachers engage students.
I reached out to classroom teachers around the world on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook to find out which AI platforms are having the most impact in their classrooms. The response was overwhelming, so much so that there will likely be a part two to this exploration. While many educators are using leading AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini, platforms designed specifically for educators and students are offering more specialized functionality.
Here are six AI tools making waves in classrooms worldwide:
With insights from educators who are leveraging their potential, let’s explore them in more detail.
Darren Begley, a teacher of modern studies and history at Fernhill School in Scotland, explained that in his classes his students have to understand a lot of complicated content: “Brisk is a great tool in making it more accessible for young people, opening up a wider range of topics of study. It has been immensely powerful in increasing political literacy and engagement in my classroom.”
Brisk Teaching offers an AI-powered Chrome extension for educators that can help when creating curriculum, giving feedback, assessing student writing, adjusting reading levels and translating texts. It integrates with tools like Google Docs and Slides, to help teachers to generate quizzes, lesson plans, rubrics and presentations efficiently.
Alyssa Faubion, a teacher in El Paso, Texas, expressed her passion for using SchoolAI: “I love using SchoolAI with students because it offers personalized learning experiences, tailoring content to meet each of my student’s unique needs and preferences. There are pre-made spaces that make it user-friendly for educators to explore without knowing how to prompt. It’s a great replacement for ChatGPT for students and allows teachers to monitor through the mission control.”
SchoolAI is an AI platform designed for K-12 classrooms, offering personalized tutoring, guidance, and support. Teachers can create custom AI bots to help students with their learning, monitor student progress and set controls to keep AI on task. The platform includes real-time insights to help teachers engage and support students.
Bonnie Nieves, a science teacher in Dudley, Massachusetts, explained that she uses Diffit because it “creates differentiated thinking and writing activities from any material, website or prompt.” She loves that it “Translates to multiple languages and reading levels.” and that the “Premade graphic organizer templates encourage logical thinking, collaboration and build student self-efficacy because of the scaffolded support.”
Diffit is a platform designed for teachers to create learning materials quickly and easily. It generates leveled content tailored to students’ reading abilities. Users can input text or topics and Diffit produces customized versions that are accessible to various reading levels.
Aileen Wallace, a teacher in Scotland, is a big advocate for Curipod and posted: “It enables me to devise engaging lessons that boost the confidence of even the most reserved students. Utilizing AI-generated feedback with a customizable rubric has significantly improved the responses from my students. When they come into class keen to use it, you know it’s effective.”
Curipod is designed to enhance classroom engagement through interactive, AI-assisted lesson planning. Teachers can generate lessons on any topic using AI, which helps create polls, personalized feedback, word clouds and other interactive elements to spark curiosity and participation among students.
Christoffer Dithmer, a teacher in Denmark, loves using the Skybox image generation tool integrated into ThingLink: “Skybox in ThingLink allows students and educators to bring their thoughts and ideas to life with 360-degree AI universes. The tool is ideal for demonstrating scientific phenomena or visualizing stories and fairytales. The tool is accessible so that all students can succeed with their projects with multiple communication tools.”
ThingLink is a platform that enables users to create interactive experiences with images, video, and 360° media. The integration of Skybox by Blockade Labs means that teachers using ThingLink can now use AI to generate bespoke 360° images. These images can be annotated and customized in various styles for interactive learning experiences, gamified lessons and immersive storytelling.
Matt Miller, a teacher and author from Indiana, shared his love for Ideogram: “Finding images to teach vocabulary has been a challenge. But when you can generate custom images based on specific vocabulary, it’s a dream. In my Spanish classes, we were studying animal vocabulary and sports vocabulary. Custom images of animals playing sports were a hit, and really effective for vocabulary repetitions.”
Although Ideogram is not specifically an education tool, it allows teachers to create and design visual content. It provides tools for generating images based on text descriptions, making it easier for users to visualize concepts and ideas.
These six tools are just a few of the many platforms that were shared by educators around the world. To search for other AI platforms being used in education, many educators use the AI Educator Tools repository.
Before integrating any digital platform into your classroom, it is crucial to follow your organization’s procedures regarding data protection. Always seek guidance from the people responsible for this in your school, college or university.
The teachers I speak to are saving many hours per week using tools such as the ones above. When integrated in a safe way, AI has the potential to transform the practices of any teacher. This could be you.