Classroom Teaching and Learning Resources

Numerous (and freely available) resources have been developed to assist teachers in designing and implementing AI-based learning activities for the classroom. Some of the more well-known include the following providers.

AI4ALL

Run by a non-profit organisation, AI4ALL, which provides free resources for teachers in secondary schools to use in their classrooms (e.g. lesson activities), such as:

  • AI & Dance (Students play with AI that can react to their movement, or can showcase their choreography to classroom peers)
  • AI & Drawing (Students become familiar with some core ideas of modern AI while playing with Google Quick, Draw)
  • AI and the Environment (Students explore how conservationists use image recognition to protect endangered species)
  • AI & Ethics (Students explore how companies creating/using AI-based systems make ethical decisions through role-playing)

Adobe Firefly*

Firefly generative AI incorporates Adobe’s philosophy of responsible development. Firefly is embedded within a suite of Adobe products, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, Adobe Express and InDesign. Firefly is trained on licensed content, such as Adobe Stock images, openly licensed content, and public domain material where copyright has expired. This approach ensures that Firefly generates content that is safe for use.

Teachers can use Firefly as part of improving students’ digital literacy knowledge and skills (e.g. importance of copyright and ethical AI use). Additionally, Firefly allows teachers to integrate AI tools in their unit and lesson plans (e.g. creating historical scenes in History, creating mock scenarios). Students can use Firefly to create infographics, prototyping designs, and creating visualisations for presentations. Additionally, Firefly can enhance student collaboration through sharing their ideas.

* May require a subscription

The AI Advantage

With 290,000 subscribers and 375+ videos, including a beginner’s course in ChatGPT and building chatbots, this is one of the more popular videos on skilling up in AI

Teachers can further develop their knowledge and skills through The AI Advantage content developer, irrespective of their existing ability levels. Apart from videos on the basics of AI, other videos help guide teachers on novel ways of using ChatGPT with their students in the classroom, as well as more sophisticated videos that can help teachers develop learning activities where students create chatbots. When creating chatbots, students can explore the issue of gender stereotyping.
Decorative image of a male receiving help from a robot

BlockTalk

BlockTalk is an educational tool created by the Creative Computing Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. BlockTalk has been designed to help teachers practice troubleshooting and debugging of common issues that students encounter in coding projects, specifically in platforms such as Scratch.

Canva

Canva provides a range of AI image generators, such as Magic Media with its text to image functionality. Eligible teachers can create a Canva for Education account which can provide a type of virtual classroom for students, tailored to a broad range of subject areas, and which can be designed to engage and encourage student interaction and collaboration.

Benefit for teachers:

Embed creative elements within learning activities, such as collaborative projects where students create presentations of their collaborative projects which feature visual elements generated by AI tools such as Canva’s image generators. For those students who have trouble sketching their ideas for a project (as an example), Canva’s tools can help in creating a visualisation that exists in the student’s mind from a text prompt. This tool could be particularly useful for students in Media Studies or in Visual Arts classes.

ChatGPT

One of the most widely used generative AI tools, ChatGPT can be used by both teachers and students (as part of teacher-moderated activities).

Teachers can use ChatGPT to help with: administrative tasks; developing ideas for providing differentiated learning experiences; creating assessment tasks and rubrics; or use as a guest speaker in the classroom. Students can use ChatGPT for creating story starters (literacy class) and explaining maths concepts and/or solutions to maths problems.

Google's YouTube Channel

The curated collection of videos produced by Google allows teachers to better understand how AI can be integrated in the classroom, and more broadly when working on administrative tasks. For the novice teacher, the Google YouTube collection provides teachers with a foundational understanding of AI and how it works. More advanced videos show how teachers can use Gemini to generate images explaining complex concepts (e.g. scientific processes, historical events). Teachers can also use this tool with their students as a learning activity. For example, have students work collaboratively on a project where they create a presentation, animation or story that has the theme of gender stereotyping.

Gemini is Google’s most capable AI

Link to Google's Gemini playlist
Decorative image of two students studying together

Grammarly*

Grammarly markets it’s AI tool as a responsible ‘writing partner’ that helps students (and teachers), with personalised suggestions that help their “writing and reputation shine”. Additionally, Grammarly offers on-demand videos and webinars, such as:

  • Back-to-school in the gen AI era
  • Generative AI in Education
  • Making the Generative AI Leap

* May require a subscription

Khanmigo*

Khan Academy’s AI tool, Khanmigo, offers assistance and resources to teachers, students and parents. Teachers can sign up for free, but a paid subscription is also available, which allows access to a broader set of tools and resources. For example, the Khanmigo AI tool provides teachers with differentiated lesson planning ideas, rubrics, exit tickets, and a refresher on content knowledge that needs to be taught to their students. Additionally, Khanmigo also features an AI-powered tutor, which can help students with personalised tutoring, as well as providing teachers with insights into how their students are progressing.

* May require a subscription

LABS.GOOGLE

The home for Google’s latest AI experiments and technology, allows teachers (and the broader community) to see and shape the latest tools and experiments, view the latest Lab Sessions, and see what's going on in their Labs.google community.

This resource provides teachers with hands-on experimenting of Google’s latest AI tools. Doing so, allows teachers to develop their own digital literacy and AI literacy skills, which will then enable the teachers to guide their students in the responsible and ethical use of AI tools in a technology-driven world.

Machine Learning for Kids

Provides the teacher with a free tool to introduce young students to the basics of AI, as they engage with fun and easy-to-use AI projects that teaches the students about training machine learning models.

Teachers can adapt this resource to have students train a machine learning model about gender inclusion.

Microsoft AI for Earth

AI for Earth is a Microsoft initiative that aims to address critical environmental issues (e.g. climate change, water resources, sustainable agriculture) through use of AI.

Teachers can use this resource in the classroom as a learning activity with students to help them understand the issues caused by biased data. For instance, teachers can use examples from the AI for Earth projects to show how biases in data collection can impact environmental decisions. Teachers can then extend this to biases in generative AI’s vast training datasets.

Perplexity AI

An AI-powered search engine which acts as a virtual research assistant, providing concise answers with citations. A free plan is available.

Teachers can use this tool in a variety of ways, such as: (1) professional development by leveraging Perplexity AI’s ability to access the latest educational trends and research, which can then be integrated within their teaching; (2) developing unit and lesson plans which contain current and engaging content; and (3) designing quizzes and assessment tasks. Students, particularly senior secondary school students, can use Perplexity AI as part of an inquiry-based learning project where they formulate questions and explore answers.

Story AI

An AI-driven story telling platform designed for creating quick and engaging mini-stories and videos of up to 60 seconds. This tool can be adapted to secondary school classrooms, though for primary school classrooms, tools such as Scratch might provide a better (i.e. more age-appropriate) method for introducing students to digital storytelling.

Teachers can have their students use this interactive story telling platform to effectively address gender stereotyping and promote gender inclusivity. For example, students can create stories with diverse and inclusive characters or create stories that challenge traditional gender roles (e.g. feature characters in non-stereotypical professions).

Teachable Machine

By Google

This web-based tool can be used by teachers in primary and secondary classrooms to immerse students in creating machine learning models, where students train the Teachable Machine with images (pulled from their webcam or image files) and sounds (in one-second snippets from their microphone).

Teachers can adapt this resource to have students train the Teachable Machine about gender inclusion.