Recently there has been a lot of controversy around AI. How is it being used? Are students using it to teach? What sort of environmental impacts does it have? Will a technology like this eventually take over the world? It is important to remember that with every unknow comes a risk. Despite the risks of AI in the classroom I do believe there is a time and a place for it. Believe it or not, we’ve already been using AI in the classroom! The first task I believe AI is useful for is generating ideas. Although I think that it’s important for kids to learn how to be creative and imagine ideas on their own, when certain assignments or classes might not be super interesting to them it could be challenging to develop ideas on something you’re not necessarily passionate about. I also feel like this should have strict expectations surrounding it and should not be used for kids grade 3 and under as their imagination is still very important in those younger years. Another tool I absolutely love and use for myself quite a lot is Grammarly. This can be really helpful for students in writing assignments as it helps them edit all sorts of different types of writing. One feature of Grammarly that I believe can be really useful to educators is the plagiarism checker. This is an AI tool that automatically scans all your students writing for plagiarism. You need to be cautious with this one however, because it isn’t always the most accurate and only flags things that could be plagiarized. On the topic of useful teacher AI platforms, MagicSchool. This is a generative AI tool designed specifically for educators. It has a ton of great features such as report card comment creator, cheesy joke creator, song creator, and much more. One tool that I think I will find particularly helpful in my classroom is the rubric generator. This will help me create rubrics easily and on time so that my students have a clear outline of my expectations for each assignment, before they even begin said assignment. Here is one I created for this assignment in less than 5 minutes!
