Today I'm focused on School AI, a tool specifically designed to make it simple for teachers to use AI in their lessons in a safe and school-appropriate way.
To test the system, I asked Maria the Math Tutor for help with a prealgebra task: solving a system of equations by graphing. Screenshots and commentary to follow.
A simple intro and question gets into the taskthe student needs help with.
I appreciate that it starts with a top-level view of the task ("graph both equations on the plane and look for the intersection"). A student who understands the math but just forgot the terminology would be able to start independently here.
First step successful: the AI correctly re-arranges the equation into slope-intercept form (though I wish it had used that terminology specifically), and then repeats the instructions to graph these on the plane and find the intersection.
After a brief glitch, I get the AI back with more explanation, which includes step-by-step guide and explanation of what the intersection of the two lines tells me.
After I admit my confusion — I was joking! I promise I know how to graph equations! — the AI breaks that step down into substeps that clearly tell me what to do. And then it reminds me (again) of the ultimate goal --> to recognize that the intersection of two lines tells the the (x,y) coordinate pair that solves the system of equations.
After I tell the AI that I don't understand a key concept — again, I'm lying! I promise I know what a y-intercept is! — it gives a clear simple definition, along with a mathematical explanation of what "y-intercept" means in the language of math as it's applied.
Finally, when I ask it to do something visual, it tells me it can't do that -- but directs me to an online tool specifically for that purpose. And it's the exact one I would have recommended as a teacher, so I feel this AI knows what it's doing.
I see potential for tons of applications. I'll actually have by enrichment group using it to research a randomly drawn noun in the library in about a half hour or so. You can log in using your school email to play with the free account, which limits you to 150 sessions total per day across all students.
Though you can customize it to suit your needs, they already have a host of prebuilt content, as well as another suite of AI-powered tools for things like making lesson plans or generating assessments.
And, of course, you're wondering about safety. Well, I can safely report that you cannot convince the School AI chatbots to tell you a dirty joke or define inappropriate terms, because I channeled my inner middle-schooler and tried relentlessly. (Obviously, I did not include those screenshots for purposes of protecting your justifiably high opinion of my character.)
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