5 free AI tools for school that students, teachers, and parents can use, too
This back-to-school season features a new, major player: generative artificial intelligence (gen AI). In the nearly two years since ChatGPT launched, the chatbot has received many transformative updates, and many other gen AI tools for students have appeared on the market. As a result, there is a plethora of tools that students, teachers, and parents can tap into today.
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Many people worry that gen AI can harm education by promoting cheating. However, when used properly, these tools have the potential to help students learn more efficiently. They can also help parents and teachers assist students by creating custom materials and explaining complex topics that would appear in homework, study guides, and more.
I test AI tools every day, and I wish I'd had these tools when I was in school.
The key to effectively using AI for schoolwork is identifying the right tools and use cases. Since there are so many tools, I compiled the list below from months of testing to make your life easier.
1. ChatGPT
ChatGPT is at the top of my list because of its multiple potential use cases that could improve a student's workflow.
As mentioned above, OpenAI's chatbot, launched in November 2022, unleashed a generative craze because its writing, coding, and reasoning capabilities captured people's attention globally. Since then, it has become even better, undergoing major updates that make it even better suited for student use.
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For example, ChatGPT can browse the internet and, as a result, has information on all current events and sites. It can do everything that Google can, but instead of having to aimlessly search through the search results for what you're looking for, the technology gives you the answer in an easy-to-understand response with footnotes that you can follow to lead you to the site.
ChatGPT can also now ingest other inputs, including documents and images, which students can use to summarize documents, transcribe handwritten notes, simplify textbook passages, and more.
Of course, ChatGPT also has the advanced writing, coding, and mathematical abilities that it is known for, making it a great assistant for all subject assignments, including writing and editing essays, solving and explaining math problems, and generating and debugging code.
Some other ways you can use ChatGPT in your studies are:
- Answering questions you have about class or materials
- Researching for a paper
- Working through take-home exams or assignments
- Explaining complex topics, such as history, current events, politics, and scientific terms, in a more digestible way
- Writing Excel formulas
- Making graphs and charts
- Planning vacation itineraries (we all need a break from school sometimes)
To find the best way to use ChatGPT for your own workflow, I recommend applying it to the use cases discussed above and experimenting with different things.
2. Quizlet
I used Quizlet from middle school through college as a study tool to help me remember content for exams. Although the platform has leveraged AI for more than six years to power some of its study features, such as its Learn mode, it recently further implemented AI to improve its offerings, solving every issue I ever had with the platform.
Quizlet's core feature is its study set, which includes terms and definitions that students can use for different learning exercises and styles, such as flashcards (my personal favorite), matching columns, and more. Building those study sets used to take hours of manual input. Now, AI can do it for you.
All a teacher or student has to do is input their notes, whether in the form of a PDF, image, or document and then Quizlet will automatically build the study set that they can use to study.
Also: How to use ChatGPT to write an essay
Students can also browse the millions of study sets created by other users. As a student, I found that if I searched Quizlet for a study set about any topic or even a specific textbook, someone else had likely made one.
Recently, Quizlet added two features teachers can use to create engaging content for their classrooms: Blast and Categories. Blast is a gamified learning tool that lets students participate in asteroid-blasting sessions, matching terms to definitions from study sets. Categories is a Jeopardy-style game in which the whole class participates in a mock quiz show.
3. Grammarly
The free Grammarly extension is so helpful that I even included it in my AI tools for work round-up because I still use it every day. The beauty of this tool is that it exemplifies using AI to enhance your work rather than doing it for you. The application runs in the background of your work and catches small mistakes that are easy to miss.
Also: Grammarly to roll out a new AI content detector tool. Here's how it works
Whether you are writing an essay in Google Docs or email in Gmail, Grammarly will scan your text and detect spelling and grammatical errors. It can also offer edits about the actual syntax of your text, offering suggestions to rephrase, rewrite, be more concise, add details, adjust tone, and more. The results are not only more polished work but also an opportunity to learn from the edits.
4. Duolingo
Duolingo is a great app for learning a new language. Students can use it to supplement the language courses they are taking in school and build their skills further at home.
The appeal of the Duolingo app is that it gamifies the language-learning experience through bite-sized lessons that feel like individual quests. It also has a streak, leaderboard, league, and point system that motivates learners to want to keep going.
I quickly became invested in Duolingo, earning a 245-day streak in an attempt to learn a new language.
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Foreign language courses are typically mandatory for students throughout their education, starting at the middle school level and going all the way through to college.
As if learning a new language isn't already hard, my experiences suggest foreign language courses are not a priority for schools, especially at the younger learning levels, making them under-resourced and sometimes poorly taught.
Duolingo would be a great way to bridge the understanding gap that is being created in class. Test yourself on your understanding of the language before an exam, or simply supplement your in-class lessons with some out-of-classroom practice.
5. Socratic
Although younger learners can benefit from AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, there are concerns about giving them access to the entire Internet. Socratic by Google is a great alternative if you are a parent concerned about these concerns.
With the Socratic app, students can type in any question about what they are learning in school or upload their worksheets. The app will generate a conversational, human-like response with unique graphics and even related YouTube video links.
The app will not just pump out answers or generate essays. Instead, it will give step-by-step explanations and instructions that students can use to get the answer themselves, functioning as an intelligent learning tool.
Also: How Google Socratic can help you with your homework
To give parents peace of mind, Socratic also blocks inappropriate questions from being answered.
The app isn't limited to younger learners, and Google actually refers to it as a "learning app from Google that helps high school and university students." However, due to its functionality, I would say it's better suited for younger learners because of its limits and fun graphics.