Be honest, how much has AI helped in your back to school preparations?

23 replies

AI has helped me immensely with streamlining some administrivia. I am teaching two new-to-me history classes this year, so here is what I did:I created a Claude project space for each class.I created a document that explains my teaching, grading, and other philosophies, and uploaded it as an artifact.I uploaded our district's pacing guide, any mandatory rubrics at the state/district level,...

Massively. I used CharGPT Pro work account and set up a project to plan my AS ICT course. Between us it created a mock company that has 'issues' the students will work for. It used the school calendar and lessons allocated as well as built in assessment windows and built the curriculum plan. We also built workbooks, I linked it to my Google account and it has created a mock Google classroom as...

This is a fun question for sure, and I hope folks respond en masse!I just presented at an AI summit a few weeks back and also have an upcoming article coming out in October about AI tools in the classroom. The reason I bring that up is because I've been knee-deep in it all summer and so my back-to-school preparations have included sitting with a Claude premium account and both redesigning some...

To be honest, it’s saved me a massive amount of time this summer, but I treat it a bit like a keen trainee teacher, brilliant for doing the initial groundwork, but you still have to double check everything it produces. It’s been great for quickly whipping up target language texts for specific grammar points, coming up with quick speaking prompts, and formatting vocab lists for Spanish units....

That's a SUPER cool way to use Claude in a way that sort of mirrors Google Classroom. I think it's also important how you've set it up because, assuming it's your personal Claude account, there is never an issue of retaining ownership. Many (if not most) schools wouldn't challenge you there, but this is a cleaner setup and I'm curious to give something like this a try.

It has helped me tremendously. I have been able to create anticipation guides, gallery walk questions based on certain topics, organization, fresh perspectives when my brain is just too tired to think out of the box, etc.

I previously used ChatGPT to clear up my instructions for each week's assignments, to incorporate transparency in them. Transparency in this context basically means telling the students why they are studying or answering this particular question. In clarifying my several prompts, AI also suggested improvements in the prompts themselves that discourages AI copy/paste work, which I adopted. Then...

AI is acting as a personal assistant organizing my sparks of inspiration. I'm teaching a new-to-me senior Social Studies class. In addition to reading and mining pop culture references, I've been listening to a number of thematically relevant podcasts to prepare. I can now:1. take a photo of a particular passage in print, 2. reference a movie scene, 3. or using the Overcast podcast player...

I'm using Copilot to support me in building my personal teaching playbook. I've talked through what I need and envision. Then to support my dyslexia I've got AI to give me a checklist to work through.My plan is to collect research and my own experience into a playbook, alongside info about my current cohort to then use each time I use AI support for planning and creating resources.Currently...

The way I’ve been using AI to prepare for school has been a bit different this year because I actually did a lot of the groundwork before we broke up.I used Deep Research to go away and pull together best practice around things like metacognition, formative and summative assessment, foundations of good teaching, etc. I ended up with loads of research and knowledge files, which I then got...