As an educator, staying current in your field requires keeping up to date with magazines and other professional publications. The volume of new research and constant immersion in new technologies that are potentially valuable for teaching and learning make staying up-to-date almost impossible. Fortunately, new artificial intelligence (ai) tools offer a solution to summarize long, complex articles into concise summaries that highlight only the key points.
The ai summary works by analyzing the full text of an article to understand the central themes, key findings, methodologies, and conclusions. Sophisticated machine learning models, like Anthropic's Claudie.ai, can identify what information is most vital in an article, white paper, or blog. The ai then summarizes this into a brief summary that covers the main content in a fraction of the time needed to read the entire magazine article.
Summary tools are already widely used by researchers and academics in STEAM fields to conduct literature reviews effectively. These same technologies can help teachers and administrators stay up to date and save time. Beyond personal development, being able to share condensed research summaries with students can accelerate learning and keep course content fresh and engaging.
With the right knowledge and applications, summarization tools can be an effective way to optimize your workload. The fact that many of these tools can work in multiple languages can also help educators access materials written in foreign language journals.
- ai/” target=”_blank” data-url=”https://claude.ai/”>Claude.ai – This tool took a 23-page article and summarized it into five multi-faceted key points and provided a one-paragraph summary at the end. When asked to expand on one of the main points, he was able to provide a solid paragraph on each of the facets of the key point. Overall, you provided a deeper summary and background that helps tie the article into a larger context.
- SciSummary.com – This is a dedicated summarization tool, although the free version is limited to less than 10,000 words per month. A premium version is available for a nominal monthly subscription and allows users to summarize multiple articles (up to 25) at once. You can also create summaries for an article.
- ai Summarizer – The free version is limited to 1500 words, but seems to do a good job with short web-based articles and blog posts. When asked to review a selection of 700 words, he did a good job of summarizing the section. Provides options for a narrative summary, bullet points, or “best line” of the article.
- google bard – This one requires a little more work. When asked to summarize an article by providing a URL to it, Bard offered an initial five-sentence summary. Then, when asked to describe the key points of the article and expand on each of them, he was able to do so, but it required two additional prompts.
- ai-summarizer” target=”_blank” data-url=”https://sassbook.com/ai-summarizer”>Sassbook ai Overview – This tool will summarize up to 6,250 characters, or about two and a half pages, in either a narrative or “extractive” method where it will extract key sentences. The paid version will allow you to summarize up to 20 pages. The extractive method could be an effective way to extract elements from a short article for use in a presentation, but still present it as a narrative.
- ai&showconv=1″ target=”_blank” data-url=”https://www.bing.com/search?form=CHRD01&q=Bing+ai&showconv=1″>Bing Chat – This tool will summarize articles that are available on the Internet or pasted on its interface. Was able to effectively respond to follow-up inquiries to expand on the initial summary.
- Any summary – A tool specifically designed to summarize a variety of document types, including text, audio, and video. Allows for a solid bulleted summary or a detailed narrative. It also offers options for a tweet, a sarcastic reply, and even a song! The summary of the song sounded a lot like a nine-sentence paragraph from the sample article on special education. The tweet options were pretty much ready for prime time.
- tech/” target=”_blank” data-url=”https://www.gistai.tech/”>ai cyst – A Chrome extension that links to ChatGPT and provides an in-depth review of a website, YouTube video, or PDF article. When I tried it, it was a little slow and crashed my computer. However, it provided the most detailed summary of all the tools.
Ultimately, ai summaries save precious time and reduce the risk of missing relevant information. Teachers can then use these summaries to determine which parts deserve a deeper dive in their quest to enrich instruction. With proper awareness and adoption, ai-based summaries are poised to enhance the teaching and learning process.
