Make your PDF Think!
Tech Tip Tuesday (March 19, 2024)
As an educator focusing on the students in front of them,
the AI gold rush can be quite a bear to understand and keep up.
A quick and practical way to try out AI tools is to attach what you already planned on doing!
Whether that document is straight from your core curriculum or from a supplement to enrich student background knowledge and understanding, AI tools, specifically K-12 education tools like Diffit and MagicSchool AI, can read PDF attachments to modify and redefine the original task or generate new ideas for you to be able to teach better, not the AI doing all of the work for the trained educator.
Creativity and retrieval of quality practices can be hard-pressed when your brain is overloaded with tons of input from students, staff, and administrators, so using an educational AI tool can help alleviate wracking your brain and falling back to old habits.
Check out some ways you can change your instruction by just attaching what you plan on using!
Note: all AI-generated content should be reviewed before instructional use
Make something new by attaching!
Links may require logging in with MagicSchool or Difft; sign up is free!
Magic School
- New lesson plan or even a standards-aligned unit
- Rubrics for fairer and equitable grading
- Document-based questioning (DBQs)
- Tier I, II, and III vocabulary word lists
Diffit
- Generate materials based on a PDF attachment and create activities for 👯collaboration, 🔍analysis, and so much more!
- See all material generation types in this easy spreadsheet!
Links may require logging in with MagicSchool or Difft; sign up is free!
Magic School
- DOK Questions to enable both recall and analysis
- Provide custom feedback based on a document (remove all student-identifying information first)
- Scaffold texts for readers who need extra support
Diffit
Create questioning from multiple-choice to extended response and easily generate texts with teaching resources from the same, original text and topic. Keep the meaning the same, but modify it for different levels. See how to do so in this quick article!
Links may require logging in with MagicSchool or Difft; sign up is free!
AI translation excels at capturing the subtleties of language, like tone and context, in complex translations. This can lead to more natural-sounding results. However, Google Translate offers a wider range of languages and is free and easy to use. So, for simpler needs or quick understanding, Google Translate remains a strong option. Ultimately, the best choice depends on your specific translation needs – prioritize accuracy and nuance, choose AI; need a broad language range or quick solution, Google Translate might be the way to go.
Both MagicSchool and Diffit can translate materials into 50+ languages in seconds!
Raina is MagicSchool's chatbot built specifically for educators to ask questions related to instruction, classroom environment, and many other aspects that make up our daily instruction and interactions.
There's no secret formula to using a chatbot other than be specific or as vague as you want your output to be.
Raina allows for output history, so you can return back to what you've already done. Additionally, you can easily summarize or extend her response to you, along with a few other helpful actions.
Brian Krause, Instructional Technology Coach
Email: bkrause@ltcillinois.org
Booking Link: https://calendly.com/bkrauseltc
Phone: (815) 362-4791
Twitter: @bmkeducation
