Let's Talk about Accessibility and AI #HourOfAI #withSchoolAI

If you are new to my site, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Nicholas Provenzano and I am a neurodivergent learner. I went undiagnosed until college. I am dyslexic, have ADHD, manage anxiety, and battle depression. I have slowly learned these things about me over the course of 20+ years and they have profoundly influenced who I am as an educator. I mean, who the heck chooses to me an English teacher when they are dyslexic? This guy!

Now you know a little about me, I hope you have a better understanding of why I am such an advocate for accessibility for all learners. I came to age as a teacher during the great technology movement in the early 2000s. Google made the teacher's edition of the textbook a non-factor and wikipedia became the bane of every teacher's existence when it came to citations. early adopters did their best to calm the nerves of tech directors and admins, but the need to ban the unknown was too strong. I sat in meetings begging to have YouTube unblocked, to have access to Google Docs, and other early tech because I know how powerful it could be in my classroom. Block now and hope nobody asks was the standard in many schools and districts across the country. I understand the urge, but these tactics ALWAYS impact the most vulnerable students in our classroom. 

Block AI because it is just used by students to cheat and not learn anything. That is the typical thought when I hear people discussing AI in the classroom. My main issue with this is that most people do not know that AI is used in many popular applications. For example, Grammarly is an amazing tool for students that support accessibility. It is a tool that I wish I had access to as a student. I probably would not have felt so dumb if I had something, anything, that would have guided and helped organize my thoughts. Grammarly also uses AI as part of the application. Does this mean that Grammarly should be banned in the classroom? Who is exactly being punished by doing this?

Have you done a Google search lately? The first thing that pops up is a Gemini answer to your search. Does this mean Google is now banned in all schools? Who is punished if this happens?

The reality of blindly banning things is that the students who benefit the most from edtech tools are the students who are hurt the most when they are banned. These tools are designed to help students share what they know. Is it possible that some students use technology to do the work for them and are not learning? Yup. How is this different than the students breaking out their home edition of Encyclopedia Britannica?

Working for an AI company now has not stopped by advocacy for accessibility for students. To be honest, it has only ramped it up. AI can be used to help so many of our students who feel that education is just out of their reach. By finding the right tools, helping students understand how to use them to support their learning, and making sure the maintain access is what accessibility is all about. Taking a UDL approach to you classroom even makes the use of these tools advantageous to all of your students. 

I hope you take a moment and think about any policy that takes something away from students and ask who is really going to benefit and who is going to be hurt by making this decision. There is plenty of room for nuanced conversations, but let's have them before we start banning and blocking. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

Hour of AI Week Is Here! #HourOfAI #withSchoolAI

Happy Hour of AI Week everyone! If you are thinking, "Wait a second. I thought it was the Hour of Code Week." you are not losing your marbles. Code.org has shifted from the Hour of Code to the Hour of AI. You can find out more about this change here. 

I loved teaching the Hour of Code in the classroom to get students excited about coding and computational thinking. The Hour of AI is designed to do the same. Sometimes students think they know what AI is and assume it is in everything. They might not be far off in thinking that, but students do need to know about AI, how to spot when it is being used, and how to use if effectively in their learning. 

The team at SchoolAI knew they had to have something awesome for teachers to give to their students to help them explore AI in a safe way. There are a series of lessons for all grade levels to help students explore AI. As a teacher, we even did a full webinar on showcasing the lessons and what they would look like if you were the student. You can watch the recording here. 

If you want jump right into the lessons SchoolAI created, you can find them all right here. 

What I love about these AI Lessons is that they are designed to empower the student to explore AI with the guardrails needed to ensure that it is safe. It was important that SchoolAI made sure that all of these resources were made available to all of our users for free. Watching the Sandbox recording of how the Lessons can be used and rolling the lessons out to students next week is a great way to engage your classroom in AI. If you are new to using AI, it is a wonderful opportunity to explore AI with your students knowing that it will be safe for everyone. 

This partnership with Code.org really shows the commitment to a sound, pedagogical approach to AI instruction that is at the heart of what SchoolAI believes. If you want to know more about how SchoolAI can support you and your students, sign up for a free account. I hope you will share how you use the lesson with your students in our Community or on socials. Tag me @TheNerdyTeacher if you do so I can share with everyone. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

Descriptive Writing Support #withSchoolAi #EdChat #ELA

One of the things that was always tough for me was to get students to expand their descriptive writing skills. High school writers were content to call think big or pretty and leave it at that. Getting them to see the beauty of word choice and what it can mean to a story can be a tough task. I have employed lots of different tactics over the years, but one of the last lessons on descriptive writing utilized SchoolAI to help students practice the idea of using imagery to get the reader to "see" what they were writing. With the launch of SchoolAI 2.0, I have updated the Imagery Workshop Space to create something I think is pretty awesome. 

There is a story from an episode of "Tales from the Darkside" that tells the story of a scary monster called The Grither that hates to have its name repeated and will come for anyone that dares to speak it. I took this episode and created a prose version of the story and shared it with students. There were descriptions in the story, but ones that could be elevated by another writer. The goal was to have students read the story, identify descriptive language, rewrite a portion providing more detail, and revising that piece of writing to make it stronger. The way to see if the writing was helping the reader to "see" their scene was to use the Image Generator PowerUp to create what they wrote! 

The Image Generator PowerUp allows the student to see what they wrote and make changes based on what they wished was in the image that they were not clear about on the first draft. Getting students to see their descriptive writing is a great way to help them connect their writing and imagery. Here is what was created based on my first draft,  

The Grither first attempt

After seeing this image, I was prompted to make an edits to my description to get it closer to what I want readers to see. 

Revised Grither description 

You can notice the difference in the images. It is not drastic, but enough that it was closer aligned to what I envisioned when writing the description. 

This Space can be launched in class and the teacher can use the teacher dashboard to observe all of the student inputs and how they are enhancing their descriptive writing skills. The students can save the images and connect them with their description and add that to their portfolio to show their growth. 

I think this is an awesome way to support students who are working on descriptive writing. Students can share their images with others, see how they are similar and different and take full ownership of their writing process. 

If you want to check out this Space, you can find it here and launch it with your students. If you want to learn more about SchoolAI supporting you and your students, consider joining the SchoolAI Community by becoming a SchoolAI Champion! 

Win a Trip ISTE/ASCD 2026 & Magic Kingdom! #withSchoolAI

🌟 Join Season 1 of the SchoolAI Champions Program! 🌟

Season 1 runs from August 5 – October 31, 2025

Get ready to earn points, unlock exclusive rewards, and compete for the Ultra-Mythic Prize:
🎉 A trip to the ISTE/ASCD 2026 Conference in June AND a magical day at Disney’s Magic Kingdom!

---

✨ How to Get Started✨

1. Join the Champions Program

👉 Fill out the form to officially join the Champions community.

2. Access Community Resources

💬 Join the SchoolAI Community and open the shared Champions Folder with:

• 🎥 Launch video

• 🏋️ Champions badge

• 📁 Seasonal challenge guides and other resources

3. Complete Seasonal Challenges

💡 Take part in fun, impactful classroom and community challenges to earn Champion Points.

4. Unlock Epic Tiers & Prizes

🏆 Points help you reach Rare, Legendary, or Mythic Tiers, unlocking:

• Exclusive SchoolAI swag

• Entries for the Ultra-Mythic Prize — the trip to ISTE/ASCD & Magic Kingdom!

5. Stay Engaged

📣 Share your SchoolAI journey, inspire your network, and keep collecting points!

New Webinar Series! Connecting the Dots #EdChat

Hello everyone! I am excited to announce that I will be starting a new webinar series with SchoolAI called Connecting the Dots. The focus of this webinar is on the current state of education from a wide variety of viewpoints. My goal is to always have an educator join us in a conversation where they can share their story. I feel it is so important to give teachers a platform to be heard.

These webinars are all free to anyone that wants to listen to the conversation and ask some questions along the way. The conversations w
ill be recorded and shared at a later date.  

The first Connecting the Dots webinar will be Monday April 28th at 8PM EST. I'd love to have you there to be part of the first of many great conversations connecting the dots in education. If you want to share on social, here is one post that I am using you can copy and paste for your community. 

🔥 Two incredible educators. One powerful conversation.

Jennifer Roberts and Marnie Diem Diem on Apr 28 8PM EST for Connecting the Dots webinar!

Brought to you by SchoolAI and hosted by me!

Register for Free! 🔗 bit.ly/43X7N9w

hashtag#withSchoolAI hashtag#AIinEdu

I hope to see all of you there!

Hugs and Hugh Fives, 

NP

2 Awesome Ways #SchoolAI Supports Accessibility #Accessibility #EdChat

As a person with ADHD and Dyslexia, among other things, accessibility is very important to me. Decding to leave the classroom is not an easy decision because I know that my neurodivergence might not thrive outside of the classroom. Having been with SchoolAI for 5 months now, I have seen how much they, not only value neurodivergence, but how much we stress accessibility. I am excited to showcase two things that can help make learning more accessible for students right now. 

1. Voice to Text

It can be tough for younger students to type all of their thoughts accurately and efficiently, so it is important to support them and create tools that make it easier to share their thoughts and ideas. Voice to Text is a feature that now allows them to press and hold the space bar to record their thoughts. They can pause and resume by simply lifting up and back down again. I also loves this for users that process their thoughts at different speeds. By creating an easier way to engage with Text to Speech, users can now share their thoughts without the worry of spelling and how long it might take them to type due to dexterity issues. This can help lower anxiety issues which will allow the user to think more clearly and engage more completely. 

2. EasyRead Mode

Being dyslexic and an internet user means that I often spend too much time rereading things because the fonts are not designed to support more processing. There are a multitude of fonts, but most of them do not support readers with dyslexia. To help with this issue for users, SchoolAI built EasyReader Mode. A students can simply turn it on at the top and the text will adjust and become a dyslexic friendly font. I have to say, this makes my brain so happy. Not just because I was on the Hackathon team that worked on this idea during HQ Week, but because it is easier for me to read. It is estimated that anywhere between 6% and 17% students have some for of dyslexia. Many of those students go undiagnosed. That means there are thousands of students out there that simply feel dumb because school is so tough for them. Little things like this can help make a difference for diagnosed and undiagnosed students. 

These are just two ways that SchoolAI is more accessible to students. Teachers can also use our Tools to level and translate texts to make them more accessible to their students. 20 years ago, the act of trying to make learning more accessible to students in the classroom was a very long and difficult process. Today, there is really no excuse not to make an effort to use a wide variety of edtech tools to support students who are looking for just a little help so they can engage in class. 

Stay tuned for more updates on features and things that can make learning more accessible to all students. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

Nick

Support Young Writers for Be an Author Month #EdChat

 

Figma and Book Creator have collaborated on an amazing project that is worth checking out if you want to dive deep into supporting your students as writers. You can click the image to be taken to the book they created that provided all of the details on the event and contest.

As someone who has written a few books, getting started with anything can be very tough. As a student, I would stare at blank pages and know I have a story in me, but I had not idea how to get over the hump in my brain and let the words spill out. A teacher always told us to read when we were stuck with writing and the ideas would pour out of us onto the paper when we are filled with ideas. Sometimes that worked, but others times, I still had a blank sheet of paper in front of me late at night. Have taught ELA for over 15 years, I know that this is still true for students. Sometimes, students just need a little nudge in the right direction and the idea will flow. I was thinking about this when I saw the Be an Author Month posts and thought about how much I would have wanted to do this as a kid, but I would have been terrified on how to get started. I just needed something to get the ball rolling and I think I might have built something using SchoolAI Spaces that would have helped me tell the stories I wanted to tell. 

Here is a Space I prompted that can help guide students through the creative process to build their story without writing it for them. You can take my Space, remix it, connect your standards, and edit however you want to fit the needs for your students. This is a wonderful way to make creative writing more accessible to students who struggle take the ideas out of their head and getting them on paper. 

Utilizing AI to make various projects, assignments, classwork, etc. more accessible for our students is such a quick win. I highly encourage you to take the time and use the Space to help those students who have a story to tell and just need a little help to tell it. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

Start Small: 3 Easy Ways to Introduce AI Without Overhauling Your Lessons #AIinEDU #EdChat

"AI in the classroom? That sounds like too much extra work right now."

I get it. You have been hit over the head with all of the AI talk right now. You do not have the time to sort through the chatter to find the things that will simply help your students learn or help you teach. These feelings are not new. When other internet based tools were released, there were many teachers that had no idea where to start, so they didn't. It's not like everyone jumped on board Google Docs, YouTube, Web Quests, etc. when they were readily available. The thing is, you are using AI all of the time and you might not even realize it. Whether it is search results in Google or Netflix suggestions after you binge a show, you are using AI and getting awesome results from it. It takes time to ease into using a new tool and I want to give you 3 easy ways to bring AI into your life without having to overhaul all of your lessons that move beyond having AI rewrite your email or create another worksheet.

1. AI as a thought partner

One of my favorite things about using AI is that it can help me think through issues I'm having. It is not about having AI solve my problems, it is having AI walk me through the problems and suggesting solutions. Some of the suggestions are terrible. They are not practical and they really would not work in the classroom. However, those bad ideas often lead to the solution. As I work through the logistics of the suggestions, I will find the answer along the way. It is really something amazing. 

This is truly no different than the times I spent with teachers in the hallways between classes thinking through lessons or classroom management issues. I wonder if you have found, like I did, that those hallway conversations are not happening like they used to. Those free moments have been taken by other tasks and those interactions are not happening at the same frequency. Using an AI Assistant in SchoolAI or using ChatGPT to quickly work through ideas is an easy way to bring AI into your educational career without the worry of having to change everything that you do. 

Example Prompts you can use:

Sometimes you are at the end of your rope with how to deal with a student and need other suggestions to help solve the problem. This is a simple prompt to get the ideas going on supporting classroom management issues. 

1. I’m having trouble with __________ (specific challenge, e.g., students staying focused during group work) in my __________ (grade level/subject) class. Some students __________ (specific behavior, e.g., finish too quickly and get off-task), while others __________ (another challenge, e.g., struggle to get started). Can you suggest strategies to __________ (goal, e.g., balance pacing and keep everyone engaged)?

Find new ways to support a wide range of learners in the classroom can be very tough. It is important to make sure that 504 and IEP students are getting what they need to be successful. A simple prompt can help so many students in the classroom. 

2. I’m designing a lesson on __________ (topic, e.g., ecosystems) for my __________ (grade level/subject) class. I want to incorporate activities that support __________ (specific needs, e.g., visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners) and also accommodate students who __________ (unique challenges, e.g., need reading support or are English Language Learners). Can you suggest ideas that keep the core objective intact while addressing these diverse needs?

Variety is a spice of life they say, but it is not something that always gets into our lessons. After a while, teachers fall into a rut of the type of assignments or projects they give to students. It can be tough to get out of the rut, so asking AI for lesson ideas can help move to a new space with new ideas. 

3. My __________ (grade level/subject) students are struggling with __________ (specific issue, e.g., staying engaged during history lectures). I want to make the material more __________ (teaching goal, e.g., interactive, relevant, or student-driven) and help them see how it connects to __________ (real-world application or student interests). Can you suggest strategies or tools to help achieve this?

2. Formative assessments made easy

We all love the idea of formative assessments, but they can be time consuming to create and collect the data. As there is an even greater push towards data driven instruction, we need a way to get these formative assessments into our every day class structure. I think this can be done with bellringers and exit tickets. The traditional way of having students write on notecards or scraps of paper can work, but the teacher is often stuck trying to read handwriting and group similar ideas/concepts to help inform the next steps. It does not have to be that way AI. 

Utilizing AI to help create bellringer and exit ticket questions is the easy part. Having AI take a look at the answers and come up with common threads is how you can take these formative assessments to the next level and it can be done in a matter of seconds. Here are two scenarios that can help you get the formative assessment data to make data driven decisions for your classroom. 

1. You can create a formative assessment using Google Forms and share that with students. The students spend the next five minutes doing a short response to the topic for the bellringer and all of those responses go to Google Sheets. Trying to parse data in Sheets in a pain in the butt. However, it can be downloaded as a CSV file and that can be used to get answers. Take the file and upload it to ChatGPT or SchoolAI Coteacher and ask it to find common themes in student answers. You can drill down as much as you want depending on how much info the formative assessment collected. That information can be used to inform the direction you take for the rest of class. Once you get comfortable with the workflow, it will become faster and faster to accomplish in class. 

2. You can take out the middle man and use a Bellringer or Exit Ticket Space from SchoolAI instead of using Forms. Create the Space, launch it with your students using Google Classroom, Canvas, or posting the link in another LMS. The students engage with the Space, the teacher can see their interactions in real-time and then use the insights provided on the dashboard to inform next steps in class. Again, the teacher can go even deeper by downloading the Space as CSV file and uploading to Coteacher to get more in-depth data. The nice part of this approach instead of using ChatGPT is that the data shared with SchoolAI is secured and fully COPA and FERPA compliant. That cannot be said of all AI tools. Be mindful of that when using AI and sharing student or teacher data. 

These two approaches help teachers create and use formative assessments to make data informed decisions. This is a huge step in the right direction of AI use in the classroom. AI is great at parsing data and it does it quickly as part of a workflow you can establish. The amount of time that is saved using AI for data driven decision support can be used for other tasks or for taking it easy on a Wednesday night so you can watch some TV and enjoy a nice beverage. Either way, you now have the time to make that choice and you did not have that chance before. 

3. Differentiate like a boss

One of the things that I found to be most difficult and time consuming, but extremely important, was differentiating assignments, tests, projects, etc. Besides being legally required to do so based on IEPs and 504s, it is important to give students the best chance to be successful and meet them where they are. However, if you do not have a support person in the class that can differentiate assignments for you, you are on the line to make sure that every students that needs an assignment, test, project, reading piece, etc is differentiated. That can be long and arduous process. AI can now make that process simple and fast. Here are just a few prompt examples that you can use to help differentiate different class assignments in an instant. 

You can alter reading levels for students and even have translations as needed. This prompt will help you adjust reading levels as needed for students. If you want create them in a batch, just add a sentence that requests the content in multiple reading levels.  

1. I have a __________ (grade level/subject) class reading __________ (text title or topic), but I need the text adjusted for students who read at a __________ (different reading level, e.g., 4th-grade level or ELL beginner). Can you simplify the text while keeping the core ideas intact and include __________ (optional: vocabulary definitions, guiding questions, or key takeaways)?

For students with ADHD, chunking is a wonderful approach to helping them stay on task and do each part at a time so they do not feel overwhelmed. Instead of having to go over each assignment with these students and chunk it for them, AI can chunk it quickly and then it can be shared to them via email or printed and handed to them. You can do this with almost any AI model. 

2. I’m assigning __________ (type of assignment, e.g., a research paper or science project) to my __________ (grade level/subject) class, but some students struggle with completing large tasks. Can you break this assignment into __________ (number of steps, e.g., 4-5 manageable sections) with clear instructions and include __________ (optional: deadlines, checklists, or guiding questions) to help students stay on track?

Sometimes using AI is about giving students more options that you can think of at the moment. As I moved to more of a project based learning approach, I wanted to make sure that all of my students had a chance to showcase their work in ways that were meaningful to them. I can't think of all of the projects all of the time, so having AI create options that I can easily share is a huge time saver. If you want to take it to the next level, you could use SchoolAI to create a Space that would ask students a variety of questions and then suggest a personal presentation approach. Here is an example you can use in your class. 

3. I want my __________ (grade level/subject) students to complete a project on __________ (topic, e.g., Ancient Egypt), but I want to offer them choices in how they present their work. Can you suggest __________ (number, e.g., 3-5) different project formats (e.g., slideshows, posters, videos, or podcasts) that align with the same learning objectives, so students can pick the format that best fits their strengths and interests? 

There is a time and place to have AI write your emails or create another multiple choice test. That is not where a teacher should stop when it comes to AI use. That just scratches the surface of what is possible when it comes to using AI to support teaching and learning. These three approaches can help you become more comfortable in your use of AI and give you time back to use as you see fit. AI can and should be used to support sound pedagogy if you truly want to help students. Keep that in mind when you see and use AI tools. 

If you have any questions about using AI, please feel free to reach out, leave a comment, or connect on socials @TheNerdyTeacher. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

Make Moments with AI #EdChat #SchoolAI

Time. The most valuable asset of any teacher. Teachers have been asked to do more and more over the years, but the schedules have never allowed for more time. Added bus duty, recess duty, aftercare duty, etc. All of these take time away from all of the other little things that teachers need to do to do their job effectively. All this really means is that the time do these things gets moved to personal time. Longer days in the classroom or longer nights before bed are needed to complete many of these tasks. Worse yet, the stress of coming up with new lesson idea, assignments, projects, etc, can make it hard to create on the spot before tackling the numerous other responsibilities we have as adults. I wasn't sure what role AI was going to play in my life as a teacher, but when I opened the door to the possibility of AI helping me with the little things, I found myself reclaiming my time. 

One of my biggest issues when it came to lesson planning was Lesson Block. A cousin of Writer's Block, Lesson Block is when a teacher has some sort of idea, but they just can't put it into words or the format needed to roll out in class. Too often, seemingly awesome ideas would never fully develop because I could not get over Lesson Block. Sometimes the idea would finally fully form, but after that part of the unit has passed. I used to be able to pop into another teacher's classroom and bounce ideas off of them to help flesh out the lesson, but those windows of time are few and far between because all of us are so busy. I needed a thought partner and one that could be there for me when I needed to explore an idea. I turned to ChatGPT to see if it can help me. 

I first explored the free version of ChatGPT and then eventually turned to the paid version. I started with a casual conversation exploring what it knew about lesson plans, education, state standards, etc. I was impressed by what it knew and understood with my various prompts. I decided to give it a broad idea of what I was thinking for a lesson and I wanted to see what it would do. Well, it gave me a lesson that was amazing...for someone else's class. The lesson would not work for the students I had in the class and rolling that out would have been trouble. But, that failure of a lesson was helpful to me in the long run. It gave me a starting point for exploring a similar type of lesson that would work best for my class. So, similar to how I might go to my teaching partner and ask for their thoughts on my ideas, they might not have an idea that would work, but it could lead me to the idea that works for me. This conversation with ChatGPT was great in its failure to understand my class dynamic and that back and forth and the creation of the lesson took less than 10 minutes! 

After exploring multiple school specific AI tools because I was concerned about data security and model training, I settled on SchoolAI because it was fully COPPA and FERPA compliant and I just loved the UX more than the others. I can be a bit of snob about those things. Anyway, SchoolAI has an assistant called Coteacher that functioned in a similar fashion as ChatGPT, but it was designed to better understand classroom dynamics and the things that a teacher might need when requesting different solutions. It became one of my go-to tools to help me work through ideas quickly. There was even a time when I had an idea mid class that I was trying to articulate and I dropped it into Coteacher and it was able to put into works my jumbled idea to use in class and it worked! When I started to explore Spaces and how I can prompt a chatbot to support the students in class, that was a game changer. 

One of the first things I did with SchoolAI Spaces was to build a Space to help students building in Minecraft. The Minecraft House Builder Space was designed to help students with varied experience with Minecraft to build a house using the Design Thinking approach we covered in class. The common issue with this lesson was that the class has a wide range of experience with Minecraft. I had students who have never played Minecraft and some students that kill the Ender Dragon for fun on a Saturday night. I am somewhere in the middle of those two groups. I am either spending lots of time with the first time users or I am struggling to help the advanced student figure out how to do something beyond my experience. Either way, I am spending too much time on one type of student. What the Space does is support all students based on their skill level. It will help newbies explore Minecraft with basic steps on getting started and it will also help students use redstone in wildly creative ways. That frees me to engage more fully with the whole class and observe how all of the students are doing, not just the top and bottom of the experience ladder. That reclaimed time allows me to connect with more students. 

Being able to connect with students with the reclaimed time is a huge part of using AI correctly and effectively. By creating that Space to support students, I was able to focus on the thing that makes teaching so amazing; connecting with students and helping them 1-on-1. That is my hot take when it comes to AI. Using AI effectively can lead to more human moments, not fewer. Reclaiming 5 minutes here and there might not seem like much, but that student that you connected with during that time felt seen and heard for the first time all day, week, or month. Teaching is all about the moments. If AI can help create more opportunities to have those moments with students, then it is worth every bit of time spent learning how to utilize it in the classroom for yourself and for students. 

I'd love to hear how you are using AI in your class to create more moments with your students. 

Hugs and high fives, 

Nerdy

Note: All images are AI Generated using SchoolAI and do it that way saved me tons of time!

Growing @GetSchoolAI with Basecamp #EdChat #SchoolAIBasecamp

I've been working at SchoolAI for almost a month and it has been a wonderful experience. I could not be happier with my teammates and our goal to make school awesome for everyone, everyday. As part of that, I am happy to announce the rollout of Basecamp! Basecamp is the complete AI training program for teachers. My team has worked hard to create training courses, Live and On Demand, that can help educators grow their understanding of SchoolAI and how it can be used to support student learning. 

Think of it this way. You are a young Jedi looking for guidance after the Order 66 wiped out almost all of the Jedi. Basecamp is your way to continue your exploration of the Force so that you can support your community. 

I am very proud of the all of the work that has gone into launching Basecamp and I know that it will only continue to grow in its awesomeness as more classes are added. If you are considering an AI tool for your classroom, school, or district, check out Basecamp and see how it can transform your understanding of AI can do for you and for your learning community.

AI to Save Time #EdChat

There have been plenty of articles and posts on the use of AI in the classroom. I think there are lots of people that are asking important questions about using AI. The most common question I have received is how AI can save them time. 

Time is the biggest thing that can be given back with the use of AI. This year, I have been put in charge of technology coaching for all three divisions of my school. PreK12 support for one person can be tough. That has me supporting all of the students and all of the teachers. Simply, there is not enough time for me to help everyone and teach my classes and support my 6th grade advisory. I needed to think of something that can help me save time. AI can step in and give me time back. 

What I have done is create a Sidekick using SchoolAI that can help students and teachers with low level tech support to solve some of those simpler issues that would normally take time. Having students or teachers do some of the quick fixes with support from AI can save me minutes here and there. Those minutes add up and can allow me to meet with one extra teacher a day. That is a huge deal when you take a step back and think about what that means for the big picture. 1 teacher a day does not seem like much, but 20 teachers a month is a nice number. 

AI is not designed to solve all of our ills in education. It is meant to help start the creative process. It can give teachers the extra few minutes that can be used to make a difference. Don't be scared of AI, think of it as another tool to let you do the things that matter most. 

This is the example I created using SchoolAI to help save some time for students and teachers. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

The Nerdy Teacher

What Role Does AI Play In My Life As A Teacher? #AIedu #EdChat

AI is the buzzword right now in education circles. There are plenty of "experts" that claim to show you how to do AI right. I think it is a little early to declare yourself an expert on this topic. However, there are some teachers that are AI Explorers. I think of these people as teachers looking for ways to leverage tools to enhance the work they do and support the varied learners in their classroom. 

I think it is important for teachers to constantly think about equity in all parts of education, and that includes how AI can and will be used by students and staff. There are some great conversations going on about these issues. Dee Lanier and Ken Shelton have shared amazing things on these topics and you should check them out if you want to learn more. 

For me, I have explored lots of different uses of AI for myself and for my students. I'd like to share a few of the ways I have used two tools to help me in those areas. 

MagicSchool AI

I have used MagicSchool for most of the school year to help me create rubrics, level text, and create meaningful lessons. It is nice to be able to quickly create something like a rubric in a couple of minutes when it used take a full prep period. Being able to automate these types of tasks that require minor tweeks makes my job as a teacher easier and more efficient. I can spend the extra time providing more in-depth feedback to students and more 1:1 time with students who might need some extra help. Being able to quickly create multiple versions of the same article for students to read with the text leveler to help the wide variety of students with varied reading levels is a huge time saver. It supports inclusivity for all of the students so they can still read the article, understand the content, and participate in the group discussion. I love using these tools to make so many things, that once took so much time, easier to get done and allow me to focus on the students. 

SchoolAI

SchoolAI is awesome because I love to use it create Spaces. Spaces are ways for teachers to set up AI chatbots to support students with very specific projects. I have created one for every single project my students have done this last trimester. SchoolAI has helped students with their coding projects, design projects, and creative thinking. I set the chatbot up in a way to ask student's questions and push their thinking instead of just giving them the answers to the problems. This has been a great tool to help students learn how to best prompt chatbots to get the most out of a single question instead of having to create multiple questions over time. 

These two tools are awesome to use in the classroom and really help make my life easier as a teacher. Most importantly, when used correctly, AI tools can support inclusivity. AI can allow students and teachers to create items that meet them where they are and help them where they need to go. As a dyslexic, neurodivergent learner, I struggled in many of my classes because I could not get past the opening paragraph and would just give up. Having texts leveled for me and written in ways that can support how I take in and process information would have made school so much easier for me in the long run. Having a AI Sidekick to guide me though the toughest parts of my Math, Science, Social Studies, and other classes would have helped eliminate the anxiety I would feel. 

Be wary of the self-proclaimed experts and pay attention to the AI Explorers who are living and learning with AI on a day to day basis if you want to see how you can use these tools to support your students.