In today's rapidly evolving educational landscape, technology continues to play a pivotal role in transforming how we teach and learn. Among the most exciting advancements are AI tools that bring innovative solutions to educators and students alike. From enhancing lesson plans to simplifying complex concepts, AI is revolutionising education in unprecedented ways!

In this blog post, we'll explore 6 AI tools that every educator should consider incorporating into their teaching arsenal. These tools not only make teaching more efficient but also create a more engaging and personalised learning experience for students.
Whether you're a teacher looking to save time on lesson planning, a student aiming to grasp difficult subjects more easily, or an administrator seeking to implement cutting-edge technology in your school, these AI tools are designed to meet a wide range of educational needs. 

Let's dive in and discover how AI can elevate your educational journey!

Diffit

Diffit is an AI-driven tool designed to help teachers adapt any reading, excerpt, article, or video - for any reading level - to help all students access the teaching material.
By inputting a topic, term, question, or starting from a text or video, teachers can specify the students' language and reading level. Then Diffit generates a variety of resources, including an adapted reading passage, a summary, key vocabulary words and activities.

💙 Why we like it:

Diffit is such a go-to tool for any teacher looking to save time when preparing a course and wanting to make sure the students can have access to a simpler version of the original material along with activities to test their understanding.

💡 How teachers can use it:

There are several ways to upload content to Diffit. For this example, I chose to upload a video about carbon footprint that I found on the Internet. If you are a teacher, you can thus upload an educational video lesson that you have already created (with Nudgis by UbiCast for example). 

Diffit will then analyse the media and generate:

• A reading passage, which is a great way to make your content more accessible to learners, but which is also a life saver for any student who is more comfortable with reading and highlighting key ideas of your lesson on a paper instead of listening to a video.
  
  
• A summary, which can be super useful for students when they review the content before a test for example.
  
  
• Key vocabulary words to make sure that key concepts are understandable by your learners.
  
  
• Short answer questions and multiple choice questions to test your students at the end of the lesson.
  
  
• Open-ended prompts designed to make students reflect on the material learnt in a more creative way, allowing them to express their thoughts using their knowledge.
  
  

But that is not it! Diffit also provides teachers with template activities (flashcards, vocabulary slides, workbooks, etc.) already generated from your lesson to make students learn in a more effective way, while allowing you to save time!

AudioPen

If you'd want to write blog articles, novels, emails, or lesson plans using voice-to-text, you should definitely give AudioPen a try. It's an online application that takes your words and enhances them while it generates the text, which you can then alter as needed.

💙 Why we like it:

The tool not only transcribes but also enhances the text, providing a polished draft that requires minimal editing and saves you precious time!

💡 How teachers and students can use it:

• Student feedback: Provide detailed feedback to students by dictating comments and suggestions.
  
  
• Lectures and notes: Record lectures or important notes during classes and have them transcribed and enhanced for later use.
  
  
• Collaborative projects: Facilitate collaboration by having students use AudioPen to draft parts of group projects orally before editing them together.
  
  
• Accessibility: Assist students with disabilities by providing an easy way to convert spoken ideas into written text.
  
  

In my case, I used it to transcribe a text about global warming. You can see below the result, it’s quite impressive! 

SciSpace

SciSpace is an AI tool that can help teachers and students understand research papers better. It can elaborate and clarify the majority of scholarly works, making complex academic publications more accessible for everyone!

💙 Why we like it:

It is so easy! Simply type the topic into the search bar to evaluate and compare a few academic publications on that particular subject. After then, a table containing a variety of papers is given to you. This table is great since you can include as many columns as you like, including research insights, TL;DR (a summary), methods, results, conclusions, limitations, and more. The information from the papers is automatically entered into each of these columns, making comparisons between them a breeze.

💡 How teachers can use it:

• Lesson Planning: Teachers can use SciSpace to gather and compare research papers to develop evidence-based lesson plans.
  
  
• Student Assignments: Assign students to use SciSpace to find and summarize relevant research papers for their projects or presentations.
  
  
• Class Discussions: Use the summarized insights from SciSpace to facilitate in-depth class discussions on various topics.
  
  
• Critical Analysis: Encourage students to analyze the methods and results of different studies, using the columns for easy comparison.
  
  
• Resource Compilation: Create a comprehensive resource table for students on a particular topic, allowing them to access and compare multiple studies effortlessly.
  
  

Explain Paper

Explain Paper is a blessing for any students finding it difficult to understand complex academic papers! With this tool, you can upload a paper, highlight confusing text, and get an explanation right away (you can even choose between different comprehension levels), making research papers easy to read! You can also ask follow-up questions to get even more information about the highlighted section you’d like to understand better.

💙 Why we like it:

The tool is incredibly user-friendly and accessible, offering instant explanations for highlighted text and customisable comprehension levels tailored to students needs. Additionally, the option to ask follow-up questions promotes deeper understanding and engagement with the material.

💡 How teachers can use it:

• Supplementary Aid: Use Explain Paper to help students understand difficult readings assigned in class, providing them with a tool to independently clarify confusing sections.
  
  
• Homework Assistance: Encourage students to use the tool for their homework, allowing them to tackle challenging research papers with confidence.
  
  
• Research Projects: Facilitate research projects by enabling students to comprehend and analyse academic papers more effectively.
  
  
• Classroom Discussions: Use the tool to break down complex texts during classroom discussions, making the material accessible to all students.
  
  

Consensus

No need to use Google Scholar anymore! Consensus is next level for sure!

Consensus is a search engine that uses artificial intelligence to extract data from scientific studies. The goal is to make knowledge more accessible and help students and researchers get to the best science to review faster. All students have to do is ask Yes/No questions and they will quickly get answers with the consensus of the academic community in no time!

Basically, here’s how it works: start with typing a query (for example in my case I typed: “Does exercise improve cognition?”), and just a few seconds later, after analysing its library, the tool will provide:  

• a summary of the answer to your question
• a consensus meter based on scientific research
• a synthesis of all the information gathered from academic papers that the tool analysed
  
  

💙 Why we like it:

Consensus quickly provides clear answers to Yes/No questions, saving time compared to traditional research methods, and offers a detailed synthesis of information from numerous academic papers, making it easy to grasp the consensus on a given topic. Its straightforward query system and summary features make complex scientific data accessible to everyone.

💡 How teachers can use it:

• Research Assignments: Teachers can guide students to use Consensus for efficient research, helping them find reliable information and understand the academic consensus on various topics.
  
  
• Class Discussions: Use the tool to quickly gather data and consensus on scientific questions for classroom discussions and debates.
  
  
• Homework Help: Encourage students to use Consensus to answer Yes/No questions related to their homework, ensuring they access accurate and up-to-date information.
  
  
• Lesson Planning: Utilise Consensus to gather and synthesise scientific data for lesson plans, ensuring that the content is based on the latest research findings.
  
  
• Critical Thinking: Have students analyse the summaries and consensus data to develop their critical thinking skills by comparing different sources and evaluating the strength of scientific evidence.
  
  

Canva

It is no secret that Canva has become a go-to tool for teachers and students! 

As a reminder for those of you who have been living in a cave, Canva is an online design platform that provides teachers and students with customisable templates and multimedia elements for creating visually appealing content. Teachers can design lectures, infographics, and videos, while students can produce slides, collages, posters, and digital projects, enhancing creativity and presentation skills in and out of the classroom.

In an effort to enhance each user's experience, Canva introduced a number of AI tools to its platform last year! For example, here are some of the new AI features available:

• Magic Design: type your idea to generate the slides of your next presentation. 
• Magic Write: enter a prompt inside your design to enhance sentences, summarise text, or brainstorm activity ideas. 
• Magic Media: transform your ideas into engaging images or videos in just a few seconds by writing a prompt in the search bar.
• Magic Expand: extend an image in any direction.
• And so much more!

💙 Why we like it:

Canva's integration of AI tools significantly enhances the user experience by simplifying the creation of presentations and content. These features save time and boost creativity, making it easier for teachers and students to produce high-quality, engaging materials.

💡 How teachers can use it:

• Help With Creating Appealing Lessons: Use Magic Design to quickly generate visually appealing slides for lessons.
  
  
• Enhance Instructional Content: Utilise Magic Write to craft clear and concise instructional materials, summaries, and brainstorm activity ideas.
  
  
• Create Engaging Multimedia Elements: Leverage Magic Media to easily create images and videos that enrich classroom lessons and will make complex concepts more accessible to students.
  
  

Conclusion

I hope this article has been helpful!

As we have seen, AI tools are starting to revolutionise the way we create educational content, the way we learn, the way we teach. It would be a shame not to take advantage of this technological progress as it is very often designed to make you save a significant amount of time on tasks that should not require so much effort.

I chose in this blog post to only mention tools that bring a real added value by helping students get a better comprehension of complex subject matters, or by assisting teachers in designing engaging educational content for example. 

On the contrary, I chose not to mention tools that have a negative impact on developing one’s critical thinking.

So here’s for the real conclusion 😅: only use AI technologies for education if you consider they are a true asset. I really believe that the 6 tools that I have shared with you can improve instruction and learning for both educators and students without jeopardising the growth of their respective skill sets.