Many teachers tout oral exams as a great form of assessment. The problem? They're time-consuming and take a lot out of teachers. Could AI chatbots be the solution?

Educational company Toddle recently offered a free online PD session to teachers on how to maximize the use of ChatGPT for everything from lesson plan ideas to scaffolding assignments. The video is lengthy, but it's packed full of good information.

Bad news, dudes: Recent research shows that AI-text detection tools designed to identify AI-generated text are easily fooled and just don't work well. In a study assessing 14 such tools, researchers found that they struggled to detect responses generated by ChatGPT when they had been slightly modified by humans or obfuscated with paraphrasing tools. Unfortunately, this raises concerns for teachers about whether or not it is possible to tell if students are using AI resources to complete their assignments. 

By now, most teachers know that ChatGPT can produce everything from fantastic lesson plans and rubrics to mathematical word problems and ice-breaker activities. But sometimes finding just the right prompt to get the results you want can be a challenge. MagicSchool.ai swoops in to help solve this problem. The FREE website features tons of tools to help teachers, and each tool starts with a few easy-to-answer questions right up front. This means that your results are more tailored to your specific needs, saving you time and energy. In other words, it helps to take the guesswork out of AI prompt-writing for teachers!

Tome.app is able to produce much of the typical content that most AI websites can; however, what sets it apart is its free picture generator. There is a limited number of unpaid uses, but you should be able to create dozens of images before you reach your limit. It's on always highly accurate, but it does a pretty good job. For instance, the picture to the left was generated from the prompt, "Smiling teenagers in a school hallway wearing blue and gold."

Diffit is a super cool AI tool that provides original "resources" for just about any topic and on any grade level. Just type in a word or topic and watch as reading passages, bullet points, vocabulary words, multiple choice questions, essay topics, etc. are generated within seconds! FYI This website may not work on campus, but it should work for you at home. 

This is a super-cool (and short!) piece written by Nick Cave in which he explores how using ChatGPT is somewhat of a slap in the face to our Creator. Read the following sentence, and I'm sure you'll want to read the full article: "When the God of the Bible looked upon what He had created, He did so with a sense of accomplishment and saw that ‘it was good‘. ‘It was good ‘because it required something of His own self, and His struggle imbued creation with a moral imperative, in short love."

Many recent articles that focus on the role of AI in society today seem to veer either towards fear-mongering or encouraging the unabashed harnessing of AI without restraint; however, this refreshing article offers a more level-headed point of view. 

The author delves into the potential of AI-generated content to deceive, manipulate, and spread misinformation, while also acknowledging its potential for positive applications. Ultimately, the article calls for a balanced approach to AI integration, advocating for responsible development and usage to mitigate potential harms and maximize benefits.

There are more intense and robust descriptions out there for how to write a "good" Chat GPT prompt, but this one is great for beginners. This website also gives some great ideas for what kinds of emails ChatGPT can help you write more easily and more quickly.

One of the great things about Twee is that it divides its "services" into categories and examples, which in and of itself can give you lots of ideas and inspiration for how to use AI to help you streamline your teaching and workload. For example, have you ever thought about using AI to generate open-ended questions based upon an article that students read? What about using AI to generate fill-in-the blank comprehension assignments?

Finally, Twee can do something that ChatGPT CANNOT do: It can transcribe and summarize YouTube videos. Super cool! Just copy and paste the link. Oh yeah... creating an account is also free and easy.