Children in a Classroom. In the back of a classroom, are children about 11 years old with a female teacher talking about the subject – If Someone in Your Family Has Cancer. Photographer Michael Anderson

With the rise of ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing, we are seeing many other tools emerging that serve different needs for specific audiences. In a previous CPDWL blog post, we discussed ChatGPT in academic libraries and higher education, and shared how other CPDWL members are thinking about this tool in their libraries. Most recently, a colleague shared with me some tools may be available for educators in primary and secondary education levels. This post will briefly cover these four tools and their potential impact.

DiFfit: https://beta.diffit.me/#topic – From the Netherlands, this website states that “teachers use Diffit to instantly get “just right” resources for any lesson, saving tons of time and helping all students to access grade level content.” There are features here that are free immediately to use. You can create a topic of interest such as something in history or sciences, or you can upload a document like a PDF text, or video and it can generate a summary of the topic/text, and create multiple choice questions, short questions and open ended prompts, etc for you to adapt. It can generate lessons to support a teacher’s work. Here’s a video review that you can see on YouTube.

Ethiqly: https://www.ethiqly.ai/ -From the United States, Ethiqly is “designed to inspire deeper learning. From assignment to assessment, Ethiqly supports students throughout the writing process to boost engagement.” For those struggling with writing, this website generates prompts for users to consider. A user can write or paste a draft of their work, and the tool will evaluate and assess the writing and provide thorough feedback, which can save time for a teacher who may be busy grading other assignments. Here is additional feedback on Ethiqly that you can read more on.

Khanmigo: https://www.khanacademy.org/khan-labs – From Khan Academy in the United States, “Khanmigo mimics a writing coach by giving prompts and suggestions to move students forward as they write, debate, and collaborate in exciting new ways.” For teachers and students, there are many activities built into this AI tool such as chatting with a personal AI tutor, creating lesson plans and summaries, or rubric/learning out or activity. As a teacher, you can see students’ learning progress through the app if assigned for them to use it. Similar to other chatbots, Khanmigo offers responses for lesson plans or activities based on a prompt. It can offer potentially useful responses for teachers as they are planning for their lessons. Here’s a video review that you can see on YouTube.

TeachFX: https://teachfx.com/ – From the United States, “TeachFX is an app for teachers that uses voice AI to measure the student engagement, the equity of voice, and the discourse patterns in a teacher’s virtual or in-person classroom. Like an instructional coach, the app provides teachers with targeted pedagogical feedback on their teaching practice.” You can use this tool on the phone, tablet, or laptop, this tool draws on the voice content in your classroom which can indicate how long you spoke in the classroom, how long your students spoke in the classroom, the silence in between, questions that were raised, common words coming out in the conversations, gaps in the learning opportunities, and the tool can suggest ways and examples to build student contributions based on the recorded data. Here’s a video review on how a teacher is using TeachFX that you can see on YouTube..

Most of these tools have some kind of subscription rate and you need to create an account for full access. You can request a trial or try the free version before committing. Using these tools will require practice, patience, and ethical considerations. Although the technologies will continue to evolve and enter in our professional and private lives, we need to remain vigilant on how it is impacting learning and our realities in different ways. It is inevitable to completely ban or ignore generative artificial tools but thinking about and piloting with these tools may offer us ways to complement our work or even help us understand how they shape teaching and learning in the classroom. 

If you have used any of these tools above, please share with us what your experiences have been like. If there are also other ones that you are seeing being used in primary and secondary education, please share with us in the chat box.