In a few short years, Artificial Intelligence has transformed workspaces by taking on tedious tasks and letting human workers focus on planning and creative functions. The field of education is no exception.
Since LLM-powered AI programs entered the market, a number of these have been geared towards educational use. These apps automate lesson planning and delivery, assessment creation, and even analyze student submissions. Crucially, teachers can also leverage AI algorithms to flag unoriginal content.
But with so many AI-based apps on the market, choosing the right ones to streamline classroom tasks effectively takes time and a bit of guesswork. To help you decide, we’ve compiled a list of AI tools that automate vital but labor-intensive teaching processes so you can focus on teaching.
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7 best AI tools for educators
Below, we have a look at 7 of the best tools educators can use in their classrooms.
1. Plus AI affords the easiest way to draft lesson plans and turn them into classroom presentations
Plus AI is an app that uses generative AI to compose text in Google Docs and create slide decks in Google Slides. With these functions, you can use Plus AI to automate almost every aspect of lesson creation, from drafting a plan to turning the material into a slide show.
Plus AI in Google Docs
Plus AI affords a fast and convenient way of writing your course material in Google Docs. Simply feed the Plus AI Google Docs extension a detailed prompt (or tailor the preset “Lesson Plan” prompt to your needs) and a draft will appear in Google Docs. You can edit the draft using Plus AI or manually. If you’ve prepared a lesson this way, you then have the option of building a slideshow using Plus in Google Slides.
Plus AI in Google Slides
In Google Slides, you can use Plus AI to quickly turn your lesson plans or quizzes into presentations. There are several ways you can do this. Firstly, you can take individual points from the lesson plan and use them to prompt each slide one-by-one. Or, you can provide the entire lesson plan and the slidemaker will use it as a basis for the presentation. Finally, you can upload any other course materials, whether they’re textbook chapters, parts of a novel, or the results of a scientific study — Plus AI will convert these into an informative presentation.
Apart from turning your lessons into slides, Plus AI also takes care of slide designs and layouts. You’re free to choose your desired aesthetics from a library of professional templates and layouts, then tailor them to your liking once the presentation is ready.
Although Plus AI slide decks are presentation-ready and seldom need edits, you can automate any necessary revisions using Plus AI. Once you’re content with your lesson slideshow, you can keep it in Google Slides or export it as a Microsoft PowerPoint file.
You can select one of two pricing plans with Plus AI. The $10/month Basic plan includes AI-powered slide creation, remixing, and a catalog of over 100 layouts. Meanwhile, the $20/month Pro plan gives you full access to custom templates and a few other premium features. If you’re unsure which plan will serve your classroom best, you can try either option free for 7 days.
2. Magic School AI automates teaching functions that require text composition or analysis
Magic School AI is a comprehensive AI platform with a large suite of functions that helps you tackle diverse educational tasks. Using Magic School, you can auto-compose worksheets, assessments, lesson plans, and even report card comments. This tool also has several content-creation features that let you quickly generate emails, informational text, academic content based on scholarly sources, and many other types of writing.
If you’re ever drawing a blank, Magic School’s very own chatbot — Raina — is there to help you brainstorm ideas, answer questions, and help overcome writer’s block. But the ideation features don’t end there. Tools like “Restorative Reflection” and “Behavior Intervention Plan” will guide you in managing the most difficult of students, while the “Conceptual Understanding” function comes up with the best strategies for helping your students grasp touch concepts.
Magic School AI is overwhelming at first simply due to the large number of functions. However, each of these is simple enough to use. In essence, each function is just a chat window with a few settings unique to the task (like choosing the grade level). All you need to do is enter a prompt and configure these settings. For example, to get an AI-generated test, you’d tell Magic School the goal of the assessment, select the grade level, and choose the desired number of questions.
You can try using Magic School AI for free for a 14-day period. When the time is up, you’ll have to choose from a paid plan — the most basic of these costs $100 per month.
3. Curipod is a basic slidemaker geared toward educators
Curipod is an educational app that marries AI-based lesson planning and slide-making into a single tool. It’s a handy app for teachers who want to get lesson-ready slides done quickly.
Using Curipod, you can select from an assortment of lesson types, choose your grade level, supply a bit of information related to desired lesson outcomes, and you’ll get a slide deck that’s ready to go up on the class screen. Conveniently, you can get the students to download chosen slides as PDF files and use these as reference while studying or writing assignments.
One drawback of Curipod is that the slides you create only exist within its ecosystem. You can’t export them into the more commonly used presentation programs, such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides.
Curipod has two plans: Basic and School & District. The Basic plan is free, but it’s limited to use by a single teacher, and includes none of the premium resources (like state standard test preparation lessons). The School & District plan costs $3,999 per school, and comes with more features for advanced lesson creation and greater collaboration between educational staff.
4. QuillBot helps teachers flag plagiarism and AI-written answers
QuillBot is an AI-powered, multi-functional text creation and analysis program. As a teacher, you’ll find QuillBot indispensable in assessing the originality of your students’ compositions and automating your own writing.
The app lets you check writing for traces of AI and plagiarism, but you can also use it to generate, summarize, paraphrase, translate, and enhance text. QuillBot also makes it easy to insert citations from various sources, such as books and webpages. You can find plenty of use for these features in the classroom, be it for writing lesson plans or scanning your students’ submissions for academic honesty.
Though QuillBot offers a user-friendly web-based interface, you can also use it as an extension in Chrome, Microsoft Word, and as a macOS desktop app.
QuillBot comes in two versions — free and premium. The free plan constrains the length of your inputs in paraphrase, and limits access to critical functions like plagiarism checks. Meanwhile, the Premium option grants full access to the app’s features for $99.95 per year (or $19.95 when billed monthly).
5. ChatGPT can help educators compose course material and analyze data
OpenAI’s ChatGPT is perhaps the most famous AI tool on the market. And while it’s not designed specifically for teachers, it can have plenty of utility in a classroom. More specifically, you can use ChatGPT for two broad groups of tasks as a teacher: writing text and analyzing data.
As a text generator, ChatGPT can help you save time when you write assessments, lesson material, or emails to colleagues or parents. As a data analyzer, it will help you brainstorm lesson ideas, critique your lesson plans, and even analyze your students’ submissions. That said, like many LLMs, ChatGPT is prone to making embarrassing errors, so you have to fact-check its outputs thoroughly.
ChatGPT offers two plans. The free option uses the GPT-3.5 model, which is OpenAI’s older model. It’s still quite adept at processing basic, everyday queries that revolve around common knowledge. It should serve you just fine if you need occasional assistance with ideation or lesson planning for early grades. However, you’ll want the GPT-4.0 model for any tasks that are more advanced, like preparing rubrics for term papers in higher grades or college-level courses. This advanced model is available with ChatGPT’s Plus plan, which costs $20/month.
6. Quizizz makes assessments quickly using generative AI
Quizizz is an AI app that specializes in quiz and lesson creation. It caters to educators of all levels, from kindergarten to university, and offers a few different methods for creating assessments and presentations.
If you want to generate a brand-new quiz, you can do so with a prompt, by uploading course material, or by giving Quizizz the URL of a website or YouTube video on which to base the test. Alternatively, you’re able to choose from a vast library of pre-made quizzes instead of creating your own.
The lesson creation feature is a bit more basic. Quizizz limits your options to importing decks from PowerPoint and Google Slides, then doing basic manual edits on them in the app.
Quizizz’s free plan is fairly useful if all you need is to take test creation off your hands. However, you can upgrade to the Premium, $192/year plan. This upgrade unlocks more advanced features, like adding AI-generated answer explanations and spicing up your quizzes with visual media.
7. AudioPen is a useful AI tool for conversational classes and advanced text-to-speech writing
AudioPen is an AI transcriber that’s worth considering if you teach a conversational language class — or simply prefer speaking over writing. It’s designed to capture spoken text, but unlike most other dictation apps, AudioPen gives you the option to enhance the output text using generative AI. You can then share the output text or store it in the app. These features can be useful for transcribing students’ verbal answers, and writing lesson plans, assignments, and report card comments using text-to-speech.
AudioPen offers three payment plans. The free version is a dictation tool that jazzes up the output text, but does little else — you can’t even share the text with colleagues or students directly from the app. Meanwhile, the paid plans ($99 for a 1-year and $159 for a 2-year subscription) lets you switch between writing styles, transcribe audio files, and organize your recordings.
FAQs
How can AI be used in teaching?
Teachers can harness the power of AI to take on any tedious tasks that can be done without the sophistication of the human intellect and emotional intelligence. These mundane tasks include basic lesson planning, sourcing materials, and creating and formatting slide decks. By automating these functions, teachers can focus on their primary role of nurturing their students’ progress.
Since students themselves often use AI to generate assignment answers, AI also comes in handy at finding traces of itself. With AI detection tools, teachers can scan their students’ work for auto-generated and plagiarized content in seconds.
What is the best AI presentation maker for teachers?
Plus AI is the best AI slide maker for teachers because it creates lesson-ready slides that are elegant, informative, and on-topic. Many AI presentation tools struggle to convert large text passages into usable slides. The ability to produce relevant, digestible slide content and images is a particular challenge for most AI slidemakers. In contrast, Plus AI has this part figured out, so you don’t need to worry about time-consuming, last-minute edits before giving your lesson.
Can students use AI responsibly?
Yes, students can use AI responsibly. However, they need proper guidance and enforcement to avoid slipping into dishonesty, relinquishing critical thinking skills, and risking privacy.
The guidance should be twofold. Firstly, it should make clear the potential risks of using AI to cheat. Secondly, it should introduce students to effective educational use cases for generative AI. These can include help with research, editing, rephrasing, and occasional ideation.
Even with the guidance in place, teachers and caregivers should monitor AI use by students and quickly flag misuse, such as auto-generating assignment answers or failing to fact check AI outputs during research.
