Two people have asked me this question in the last two weeks: "Are you using AI for everything now?" The first was a teacher at a workshop reacting to my AI-assisted workflows, and the second was one of my students peeking at my lesson notes on my laptop. Both had an incredulous, accusatory tone, as if using AI was some kind of crime. At the time, I didn't know how to respond. But now, looking back, I would confidently say YES. I use AI as much as I can because I'm on a mission to master it, test its shortcomings and capabilities, and see where it can help reduce my cognitive workload and thus help me become more effective and productive.
Although the adoption rate is increasing, we are not yet at the tipping point where most people use AI tools daily and regularly - as they do with email, internet search, or conferencing software. The potential pathways have been described in detail, but different actors are experimenting with use cases and policies, as we strive to shape ethical and responsible ways of working with this technology.
I recently had the opportunity to outline use cases for teachers at an online conference in Austria. I decided to present 10 scenarios that could apply to most teachers, regardless of their background or teaching context.
1. Preparing for lessons
This is where we all start. We know topics and themes and need to frame them for our lessons. Here AI can be a great help for structure and content. Here is an example where I wanted to talk about the 5-paragraph essay to prep the lesson.
2. Creating exercises and tasks
As a language teacher, I use ChatGPT and other AI writing assistants quite often to generate sample sentences and text passages for reading comprehension. I also have the chatbots generate gap-fill exercises, tables, or answer keys for me.
3. Generating answers from images
Somehow, this is not talked about enough: getting answers from an uploaded photo of a worksheet or problem. I love this and use it quite often. With ChatGPT 4o vision we can take this to the next level by just pointing to something and getting (hopefully smart and correct) responses.
4. Brainstorming
There are times we know what we want, but not exactly how to go about it. This is why using gen AI can be such a boon when we are stuck and need ideas on the HOW. In this case, I wanted suggestions on products students can work on for a project on habitats, that will be engaging and make their thinking visible.
5. Writing Lesson plans
Many teachers still have to submit formal lesson plans. Here, we can ask the AI assistant to follow a set structure, applicable to our subject and curriculum, and let the AI fill out content per a certain time frame - like a yearly plan or for a single lesson. I see high potential for specialized agents (like GPTs) here - so we do not have to feed the AI with specifications each time.
This use case is especially useful for those educators faced with teaching subjects that they were not trained for. In Austria, as in other countries, there is a large teacher shortage, resulting in increased hours for teachers to take over subjects that are not in their area of expertise or with technology they are not familiar with.
6. Creating tests
Ah, assessment. Something that eats up a lot of teacher time. AI assistants can cut down on this radically. This is one area where I do not desire to go back to any traditional ways of working. I can generate tasks and answer keys in an instant. Brave new world!
7. Creating learning environments
By using teacher AI portals such as magic student by magicschool.ai we can provide learning spaces for students who can use specific tools to learn or practice something. I recently tested this on a learning group, where they chatted with character chatbots who were historical figures, practising asking questions and getting answers.
If you would like to test this environment for yourself from a student perspective, I’ve created a playground for workshops here: https://bit.ly/MagicStudentWorkshop
8. Generating images
Before I started generating my own images using AI, I didn’t realize how often I used images in my teaching. This is one of my favourite use cases. Here, I created images for a test, where students used picture prompts to write their own story.
You can create your own images for colouring or labelling.
For more details on how to create images with AI, visit my resource page.
https://padlet.com/aliciabankhofer/creating-images-with-generative-ai-jvk7en4211219lzn
9. Generating worksheets
Several platforms have emerged to aid in this type of task. I cannot speak from experience here, but there are plenty of options to test generating worksheets - from worksheetsai to magicschool.ai.
10. Creating audio
Many text-to-speech tools are quite good already; a few with naturally sounding voices. Will I want to clone my own voice to use for dictation or listening exercises like dialogues or interviews in future? Time will tell, but I do think this is an intriguing prospect. Here is a screengrab of a tool I used for a listening exercise with naturalreaders.
What about feedback and assessment?
This is something I have NOT talked about in length because I think we need to be careful before we start uploading student work to AI tools to garner feedback. While AI helping us to correct objective assessments (like multiple-choice tests) is one thing, it is quite another to have AI evaluate essays for feedback and for us to generate automated comments. It is possible, but is it ethical? Also do we not want to grasp the skill level and gauge the student voice ourselves? For me, it’s imprudent to give that responsibility to an AI.
What about video?
It would be truly great if a tool already existed - that was free - and that could produce stable, longish videos that we could use for teaching. But I haven’t found one yet. This may change very shortly. And it will be interesting to see if tools like sora.ai will be free. If this becomes a reality, it has the potential to empower teachers everywhere. Creating my own videos for learning by inputting text into a tool …
And so, here we are, using generative AI for many routine tasks. But are they making me productive and efficient? For the most part, yes. But, to be honest, I still spend a lot of time looking for the right tool for a task, and I use time to go back and forth with the chatbot until I get the results I need. So, yes AND no.
There are those who rightly ask, if we have to still double-check the results of the AI, is that really a time-saving workflow? Good question. I predict two things 1) that AI tools will continue to get better and have less hallucinations and biases and 2) that teachers will become experts at scanning AI results and spotting errors quickly, much like we do with student work.
Are there any use cases I missed in my list? How often do YOU use AI in your daily routines as a teacher?
As always, I appreciate you reading my post and invite you to subscribe.
Title image: canva.com (prompt in alt-text)
Tools used in these scenarios:
ChatGPT
you.com
perplexity.ai
gemini.google.com
claude.ai
naturalreaders
This is great! I think that many of us need to use it for everything for a while, and then scale back and be more purposeful about things!
Love this, even though it makes me ashamed at how much better and smarter your efforts are than mine.
Luckily, I'm not an educator - otherwise, eeek those poor students