Generative AI for Teachers: Resources

Brief introduction to the underlying structure and function of generative AI systems, with definitions of key acronyms and terms, a stop-bystep look at the process used to generate text and images.

Detailed explanation of the structure and function of generative AI systems written for a non-technical audience.

Brief report drawing on focus group interviews with over 200 college and university students in the UK about their use and perceptions of generative AI. These students view generative AI as a tool to develop their ideas; want to use AI because it will be part of their future jobs; have concerns about the ethics, equity, and accessibility of AI tools; and expect their instructors to be competent in the use of AI and integrate it into teaching.

Detailed user study of ChatGPT 4.0, Bard, and Bing Chat. Users trusted the bots and found them useful, especially appreciating how they cut the time needed to collect and summarize information. Users did not verify bot suggestions and were also disappointed when the bots did not respond with follow-up questions, "forgot" the context of the conversation, or refused to answer prompts outside programming-imposed guardrails.

Guidelines from Cornell University on using generative AI in the classroom.

Thoughtful and relatively brief article addressing reasons to incorporate generative AI into the classroom and placing the current services into context of earlier tools.

European Commission guidelines for educators on using AI in teaching. Updated version from 2024.

EEGs and post-writing interviews indicate students who use ChatGPT to generate essays may not engage deeply with writing topics and struggle to remember both the words they submitted and some of the content included. To quote the abstract, "Over four months, LLM users consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels. These results raise concerns about the long-term educational implications of LLM reliance and underscore the need for deeper inquiry into AI's role in learning."

Educator and author Mollick shares lessons from a semester of student use of generative AI in class. Notable points include "without training, everyone uses AI wrong," "students understand accuracy and bias issues," and "AI is everywhere already."

Suggests some uses of ChatGPT for middle school teachers.

Thoughtful advice on how to use generative AI that concludes, "Never directly send, publish, or share a piece of writing generated by a genAI tool without reviewing it first." Includes a decision-making flowchart.

AI detectors don't work and may cause more harm than good. Supposed "AI detection" tools not only fail regularly at finding AI-generated text, they also often flag text written by non-native English speakers as suspect.

Thoughtful and lengthy blog post from renowned literacy scholar on the potential impacts of generative AI on education.

Downloadable "resource designed to support school leaders as they make plans to leverage artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) benefits for teaching and student learning while managing its risks. ... this toolkit provides actionable guidance for state and local education leaders to develop a strategy for AI use that is safe, secure, and trustworthy while enhancing student learning outcomes."

Thoughtful piece on the possible importance of AI prompting to the workforce of the future.

Full suite of lessons for high school students and training for teachers "to help you teach high school students in all subject areas to understand and question Artificial Intelligence."

YouTube playlist of 5 videos by Ethan Mollick of the Wharton School on the basics of generative AI aimed at teachers and students.

Free video course on using a number of generative AI tools. 2 hours total.

Hour-long webinar that "covers the importance of digital literacy in the context of AI interaction. Teaching students how to evaluate information generated by AI tools can help them understand the importance of source evaluation and will help them not only in college but also in their daily lives. Although the focus has been on ChatGPT and students utilizing it to write essays, students can use AI tools to develop their semester schedule, edit an essay, understand a complex topic, and research esoteric fields."

First-hand report from a teacher on uses of ChatGPT in history, economics, and speech and debate classes, with techniques which could be applied in other disciplines, too.

Free online learning unit for 11-14 year-olds covering the structure and uses of AI and machine learning from Google DeepMind and the Raspberry Pi Foundation.

A guide that "provides a structure for learning to use AI, including explanations of key AI concepts and questions to consider when using AI. ... The framework is intended to meet people where they are and scaffold upon their current AI literacy level, whether they have little to no knowledge of AI or are prepared to build their own large language model (LLM)."

Free, downloadable set of lesson plans, activities, and related documents aimed at teaching college and university students to use generative AI in academic research and writing.

Straightforward guide to the issues around integrating generative AI in the classroom.

Shortened overview of the article below focusing on strategies for AI integration and examples of those methods in action.

Abstract: "This paper examines the transformative role of Large Language Models (LLMs) in education and their potential as learning tools, despite their inherent risks and limitations. The authors propose seven approaches for utilizing AI in classrooms: AI-tutor, AI-coach, AI-mentor, AI-teammate, AI-tool, AI-simulator, and AI-student, each with distinct pedagogical benefits and risks. The aim is to help students learn with and about AI, with practical strategies designed to mitigate risks such as complacency about the AI’s output, errors, and biases. These strategies promote active oversight, critical assessment of AI outputs, and complementarity of AI's capabilities with the students' unique insights. By challenging students to remain the "human in the loop", the authors aim to enhance learning outcomes while ensuring that AI serves as a supportive tool rather than a replacement. The proposed framework offers a guide for educators navigating the integration of AI-assisted learning in classrooms."

Abstract: "This paper provides guidance for using AI to quickly and easily implement evidence-based teaching strategies that instructors can integrate into their teaching. We discuss five teaching strategies that have proven value but are hard to implement in practice due to time and effort constraints. We show how AI can help instructors create material that supports these strategies and improve student learning. The strategies include providing multiple examples and explanations; uncovering and addressing student misconceptions; frequent low-stakes testing; assessing student learning; and distributed practice. The paper provides guidelines for how AI can support each strategy, and discusses both the promises and perils of this approach, arguing that AI may act as a “force multiplier” for instructors if implemented cautiously and thoughtfully in service of evidence-based teaching practices."

Overview of uses of ChatGPT in teaching from its provider.

Brief overview of 5 preparatory tasks with which ChatGPT can help primary school teachers.

Details the method and rationale for using ChatGPT to generate examples to bolster teaching or create multiple-choice answers.

Handful of useful examples of ChatGPT uses for language teaching.

Lesson planning ideas for ChatGPT specific to math classrooms.

Guide to using ChatGPT to generate example texts for translation and other language learning tasks.

10 suggested uses of ChatGPT in lesson planning and activity creation for language learning.

Step-by-step guide for using ChatGPT and Chrome extensions to provide oral practice in English or other languages.

Suite of AI-powered tools developed for teachers at all levels by faculty at the University of South Florida. An account is free. Worth noting, the tools do not save or share inputs, not even to further train the AIs.

Free lesson planning and generation of slide decks, assessments, and worksheets

Suite of AI-based tools for lesson plan, activation and engagement activity, would you rather question, and activity forecast generation. Most are completely free, some are freemium.

Allows teachers to upload assignments for student practice. Students receive customizable AI-powered feedback.

Generates AI-powered interactive activities which provide instant feedback to students.

"... instantly get “just right” resources for any lesson, saving tons of time and helping all students to access grade level content."

Beta. Suite of AI-powered tools for teachers.

Free lesson plan generator.

Free AI-powered tool to "lesson plan, differentiate, write assessments, write IEPs, communicate clearly, and more."

ChatGPT-powered quiz and game generator. Includes a bank of pre-generated quizzes to serve as starting points.

Free assessment generator.

Generates leveled text based on a question prompt.

Generate lesson plans and lesson content. Free account limits the types of lesson content available.

Generates functional AI-powered app based on user input. Free accounts have limited features, but should be useful for student projects and other learners.

MicroSoft's AI-powered search and chat.

Ask questions about and get summaries of books after entering the author and title.

Generates websites based on text prompts. Does not include free hosting.

Ask natural language questions of U.S. census data. Not all census data is available yet, but a large and useful variety is.

Train a custom "character" AI and then converse with it

Ubiquitous text generation AI.

Beta. Generates questions to support journaling and learns from previous entries.

Answers questions and provides summaries based on a PDF uploaded by the user.

Chat-style AI with better reasoning, coding, and writing training than other popular models, according to reviewers. A free account limits uses and features but is enough to explore the tool.

AI-powered search which claims to draw its answers from "research papers" only.

Beta. Generates slides from text or outlines. Free during beta period.

Generates new images or edits existing images based on user input.

Generates slide decks based on the text entered and other content embedded.

Google's text-generation AI.

Web-based "personal AI" which can be trained on your notes, content, and other data.

Free to use, open source generative AI with all the expected features like text, code, and image generation and text analysis, plus "agents" that can automate workflows. Requires a free account to use.

AI-powered web application for personalized, targeted reading practice for students. Generates story text based on prompts input by students and/or teachers.

Free online service to create transcripts of audio or video files using AI. Results can be edited and downloaded.

Generates an image from a text prompt and simple sketch.

Free, AI-powered search of over 200 million scientific research papers.

Generate slides from a prompt.

Generate music in a variety of genres.

Brainstorming tool which asks uses to fill in information on genre, characters, setting, and themes to generate story ideas.

Generates how-to videos and knowledge bases. Videos from free accounts are watermarked.

AI-powered chatbot with provides typical job interview questions in a number of (mostly) tech-related fields and offers immediate feedback on typed responses.

Comprehensive introduction to generative AI and information about specific tools compiled by the staff at Syracuse University's library.

Open to all students, SIU's Digital Humanities Lab (a.k.a. the Center for Virtual Expression) offers hands-on experience and assistance with AI, VR, and simulator tools and software. If you want to see what the cutting edge looks like, this is the place to go on campus.

Categorized lists of AI resources of interest to teachers.

A "potpourri" of links to generative AI resources of possible use or interest to educators.

Helpful discussion of how to craft the sort of prompts which will get the results you want from generative AI services.

Blog, newsletter, and upcoming book by Princeton researchers which serves as a "voice of reason" amid all the AI hype. A study sound too catchy or too good to be true? These folks likely have the real story. For example, "Is GPT-4 getting worse over time?."

List of resources about AI aimed at librarians, but useful well beyond that profession.

Extensive of list of generative AI tools, tips for using them, and contextual information.

Blog of teaching and learning resources for educators.

Blog focused on the intersection of technology and libraries.

Discord-based AI image generating service. Offers a very limited free trial before requiring a subscription.