Useful resources for AI tools for teachers. These are the ones I have found most useful to use in lesson planning, content creation and resource preparation. The tools are suitable for teachers in the UK.
Teachermatic (Planning and Resources)
A paid-for platform designed by educators. Features many useful tools for planning classroom questions and project-based assignments. It also has a tool to generate suggestions for T-Level activities (although it's output of this is sometimes a bit far-fetched or impractical). Suitable for UK curriculum, and particularly suited to T-Level and vocational study.
TeachMateAI (Planning and Resources)
Another paid-for platform, which is similar to TeacherMatic. This one is more geared towards Primary and Secondary teachers to help them with lesson planning. It contains some other tools such as letter writing and summarisers which might also be useful. Suitable for UK curriculum.
Gemini (Resources and Content)
A great alternative to ChatGPT (and also free). This is more like an AI powered search engine (it's by Google so it makes sense). This is useful if you want to write articles or resources that use up-to-date examples as it uses the internet. It also references the websites it has pulled information from, which is quite useful. It also tends to write less text than Chat GPT, making it more suitable for a younger audience.
Gamma (Resources and Content)
Gamma is a paid-for app, but it does let you try it out for free, which is quite useful. This one generates an entire PowerPoint presentation from a prompt or uploaded document. Very useful if you want something that is visually stimulating and you have no time to prepare it. Easy to use, but it is American so make sure you change the setting to English!
NotebookLM (Resources and Content)
A fairly new player in the game, NotebookLM has been developed by Google. It's a note-taking platform and the best feature is the 'podcast' generator. This allows you to upload a document and it will generate an audio output of two (very chatty) Americans 'discussing' the contents of the document in the style of a podcast. Useful for dyslexic students who prefer having documents read to them. Although some students have said the voices are too robotic and they didn't like it. It's also free to use.
MagicSchool (Planning, Resources, Teaching with AI)
MagicSchool is a set of tools that both teachers and students can you. You can set up a class and choose which tools you would like your students to use. This is great if you want to incorporate the use of AI in the classroom. There is a free plan which gives you access to most tools and is suitable for just you and your class. You can also use the tools to plan lessons and projects, rubrics for assignments and quizzes. It is American though and doesn't know much about the UK curriculum so better suited to generic subjects rather than UK-specific ones.
An abstract image created by Designer
CoPilot & Microsoft Designer (General Use)
CoPilot is Microsoft's answer to ChatGPT and Gemini. It comes bundled with Office 365 Home (you do need to buy an extra licence to integrate it with the Education tools). It can help you write Word documents (an even generate them for you based on a single prompt). It can also automatically create PowerPoints (although this functionality is limited compared to Gamma). Designer is one of the better image generators and a perfect alternative to Midjourney (but you do have to sign in to a personal Microsoft account to use it as it's not yet available for education). This is one to watch out for in the future.
ChatGPT & Friends (The Kitchen Sink)
ChatGPT is probably the go-to tool for AI. It's the original and possibly the best in terms of content generation. However, it does not know anything about teaching and pedagogy (it pretends to but it only knows what it found on Wikipedia). It is useful if you want to write some reading materials for older students, it can generate multiple choice quizzes on any topic from scratch (but do check the answers because it can generate rubbish sometimes). I have found it particularly useful for creating project briefs and the T-Level students have found it useful for helping them to debug Python and PHP code.
The AI Ed-Tech Boom
Using AI planning tools can help reduce your workload to some extent and in some circumstances they can also add a bit of jazz to mix your lessons up.
However, do be advised that although AI datasets are huge they are still limited in terms of pedagogy and classroom applications. They can be a useful source of ideas on how to present a concept in different ways but ultimately, they still require your professional knowledge and input to be effective.
Leaders should also note that ongoing teacher training is essential when implementing AI because it's a technology that is changing almost on a daily basis. Not everyone will want to embrace it and use of the technologies should not be forced upon staff. Some will see it as a help and some will see it as another thing to add to their workload because it's just another system they have to learn how to use.
We're in an AI boom at the moment - rather like the dot com boom of the early 2000's. Everyone wanted to jump on the bandwagon and build a website because 'being online' was the next big thing. Most of these sites failed of course because they failed to anticipate the drop off in human interest (and funding).
AI has been around for over half a century, it's had it's peaks and troughs. What is useful now might not be around in 2/3 years time. Be prepared to be adaptable and flexible and don't rely on one single tool.
Disclaimer: This page contains random images from Canva - they may or may not be real teachers!