A colleague, knowing I am interested in the emergence of Generative AI and its impact on teaching and learning, pointed me to MagicSchoolAI, a free (as of now) platform of tools for teachers. I spent some time with it, and I found it worth a look, with a wide range of tools under one roof that could be helpful to educators. (Note: I am not affiliated with the site at all. These views are my own.)

I used a tool within MagicSchool that generates questions for students watching a YouTube video (as long as the video is close-captioned) and I found the questions to be pretty thoughtful. I used the Teacher Joke generator and thought it needs some work (ahem). I used the Colleague Song generator to write a song about my fellow teacher friend, and it was very ChatGPT-ish in its construction (as in, fun to read, but not necessarily all that creative). I used the assignment rubric creator, and its final suggestions were pretty strong and useful, and something I could adapt for the real assignment I plugged in to try it out with.

One tool that really interested me, though, was “AI Resistant Assignment Suggestions” – in which you plug in assignment questions that you worry could be easily responded to by Generative AI (ie, cheating by students) and the site amps the question up in complexity and task, and then, helpfully, explains how its suggestions could help thwart an easily-made response from Generative AI. I found the results useful, actually, and its suggestions made me ponder more about the assignment I fed it (about protagonists and antagonists in stories).

Peace (Explorations),
Kevin