Since the outbreak of the generative ai boom almost two years ago, I have had the chance to use and experiment with a wide variety of ai tools. While using these tools, I try to especially focus on their educational potential, looking for ways they can enhance teaching and learning. The rapid expansion of ai has led to an explosion of tools in the educational market, ranging from absence trackers to question generators, making it both an exciting and overwhelming time for educators.
Top 10 ai Tools for Teachers
In today’s post, I’ve sifted through the chaff and compiled for you a collection of what I believe are some of the key ai tools for teachers and educators. To keep it practical, I’ve narrowed it down to 10 key options that I believe will truly make a difference in your teaching practice and help you harness the power of ai in your classroom.
1. Vidnoz ai
Let me start this list with Vidnoz ai, a tool that enables teachers to create engaging and professional online course videos and educational content. Vidnoz is simple and easy to use, allowing you to create and deliver video lessons that are visually appealing and tailored to your students’ needs in minutes, even if you have no editing skills.
Vidnoz ai offers various features that you, as a teacher, will find very helpful. The platform provides access to a wide array of pre-made templates across various subjects, making it easy to design videos that suit different learning objectives. With over 2,800 templates available（including multiple languages）, including those for mainstream subjects like English, Physics, and Math, you can easily customize your lessons to align with your instructional goals.
The ability to add voiceovers, subtitles, and other multimedia elements further enhances the accessibility and engagement of the video content you create, ensuring that all students, regardless of their learning style, can benefit from the material. Vidnoz ai also allows you to create your own digital twin and speak in your videos instead of repeatedly recording videos. You can also add animated avatars engaging with your students to make the content more impressive.
The process of creating an educational video is simple: select a professionally ready-made template or avatar (or start from scratch if you prefer), create an ai voiceover, add your custom touch, and then click to generate your ai video.
Vidnoz provides a growing library of hundreds of realistic avatars that you can use to narrate your story. These ai avatars are built based on real human beings with perfect lip-syncing and gestures. You can even use dual-avatar mode to get two avatars to talk to each other, simulating real-life conversations—a feature that is excellent for language teaching. You can use your digital twin to narrate your story in any language in your tone.
Vidnoz also offers a powerful ai video editor, allowing you to edit your videos like a pro. You can easily cut and trim clips, change or remove backgrounds, add voiceovers, and much more. With Vidnoz, creating engaging educational video content becomes incredibly simple.
2. Claude and ChatGPT
When it comes to conversational ai chatbots, Claude 3.5 Sonnet and ChatGPT 4.0 are undoubtedly my top choices. In my book *ChatGPT for Teachers*, I emphasized the critical importance of mastering the art of interacting with ai chatbots to maximize their potential. Crafting well-thought-out prompts is key to unlocking the true educational power of these tools, and I’ve outlined various strategies teachers can use to make the most of them.
I believe these ai chatbots should be seen as valuable research assistants or study companions. While it’s essential to approach their outputs with a critical eye—always fact-checking information, especially when it comes to factual content—there’s no denying that they can significantly enhance both teaching and learning experiences.
For example, as a teacher, you can leverage these chatbots to brainstorm creative activity ideas for your lessons, assist with student assessments, or get personalized feedback on your teaching strategies. They can also serve as a sounding board for lesson planning or even act as a co-teacher, offering advice and support whenever needed. The potential of ai in education is vast, and with the right approach, these tools can truly become indispensable assets in the classroom.
3. Semantic Scholar
Semantic Scholar is another powerful ai-powered tool for teachers and educators, especially those involved in academic research. I have been using Semantic Scholar for some years now, but the addition of ai features to its core functionality makes it an impressive academic search engine you don’t want to miss.
Some of the features I like about this platform include TLDR, which is a lifesaver when you’re short on time but need to get the gist of a paper quickly. The concise summaries are usually spot-on, capturing the core essence without overwhelming details. The ai-powered paper recommendations are another fantastic feature, especially for those of us who constantly dive into new topics. It’s like having a research assistant that understands your interests and keeps feeding you relevant materials.
The “Ask This Paper” feature is another innovation that stands out. It allows you to interact with the content in a way that feels almost conversational, making complex papers more approachable. Other interesting features include the Semantic Reader, citation cards, table of contents, and many more.
4. ChatPDF
ChatPDF is an ai tool that helps you interact with your PDFs and documents in a seamless and intuitive way. Using ChatPDF, you can upload PDFs and engage in a conversation with the content, asking questions and receiving detailed answers, complete with references back to the original document. This feature works across multiple languages, making it incredibly versatile for a global audience.
Another helpful feature of ChatPDF is the ability to upload multiple PDFs and interact with them in a single conversation. This is particularly useful for those working on projects that involve cross-referencing or synthesizing information from various sources. As soon as you upload a PDF, ChatPDF generates a quick summary along with sample questions to get you started, which is a great time-saver. ChatPDF offers numerous organizational features, allowing you to sort your documents into folders for easy access and navigation.
5. ai/”>Fireflies
If you are looking for an ai-powered note-taker to help you capture essential insights from your meetings and discussions, Fireflies is a good option to consider. At its core, Fireflies records meetings on platforms like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams and then transcribes these recordings in real-time. The transcriptions are searchable and editable, allowing you to easily revisit specific parts of a conversation and extract key insights.
For us teachers and educators, Fireflies can be a game-changer. You can use it to keep accurate and detailed records of important meetings, such as staff discussions, parent-teacher conferences, and professional development sessions. Instead of manually taking notes, you can focus on the conversation, knowing that Fireflies is capturing everything for you. The tool also makes it easier to share summaries and key points with colleagues, ensuring everyone stays informed and on the same page.
6. ai/”>Otter
Otter is one of the best ai-driven transcription tools that I have been recommending for teachers and educators. Otter automatically transcribes spoken content, captures presentation slides, and even generates summaries, making it an invaluable tool for enhancing classroom collaboration.
For us teachers, Otter simplifies the process of documenting lessons, meetings, and discussions. The live transcript feature allows you and your students to interact with the content in real-time, adding comments, highlighting key points, and assigning action items directly within the transcript. This not only helps keep everyone engaged during the session but also ensures that no important information is lost.
Moreover, Otter’s ability to generate summaries and capture slides makes it easier for teachers to review and share lesson content. Whether you’re preparing materials for students who missed a class or creating resources for future reference, Otter provides a streamlined and efficient way to manage and distribute educational content.
7. Midjourney
I have tried several text-to-image generation tools and have found Midjourney way ahead of the pack. Using relevant prompts, you can instantly generate highly detailed and artistically inspired visuals.
As a teacher, you can use Midjourney to generate custom images tailored to specific lesson content. These include posters, worksheets, presentation slides, and more. You can also use it to design visuals illustrating complex concepts or to bring abstract ideas to life. Whether you’re teaching a science lesson on ecosystems, a history class on ancient civilizations, or a literature discussion on a classic novel, Midjourney can create visuals that captivate students’ attention and aid in their understanding.
8. Canva ai
Canva, as I like to call it, is the web’s design powerhouse. The integration of ai features into its core functionality has boosted the platform’s performance to the roof. Canva’s new ai tools offer a wealth of benefits for teachers. With tools like Magic Design and Magic Presentation, teachers can quickly generate visually appealing presentations and custom designs that capture students’ attention. If you’re looking to quickly create storytelling videos with a presenter, Vidnoz ai may be a faster way.
The Magic Edit and Magic Eraser features are particularly useful for refining classroom visuals. Teachers can easily modify images to fit their lesson plans, remove distractions, or highlight specific elements, all without the need for advanced editing skills.
Additionally, tools like Canva Translate and Magic Write can help teachers bridge language barriers and generate content ideas, making it easier to cater to diverse classrooms. Whether translating lesson materials for non-native speakers or overcoming writer’s block when planning lessons, Canva’s ai-powered tools provide valuable support, helping teachers save time and enhance the learning experience for their students.
9. Speechify ai
Speechify ai Studio is an all-in-one platform that offers a wide variety of interesting features, from generating real-time voiceovers and producing high-quality videos to cloning human voices and creating ai-powered dubs.
There are several ways to tap into the educational potential of this tool in your teaching. For instance, you can use the ai text-to-speech feature to convert written content into natural-sounding speech, enabling you to create lessons that are more accessible to students with different learning preferences.
This tool can also help you create engaging audio content for students to listen to during independent study sessions, enhancing comprehension and retention through dual-modality learning. Additionally, the ai voice cloning feature allows you to create personalized, lifelike voiceovers for instructional videos, adding a human touch to digital lessons.
Speechify’s ai dubbing and transcription capabilities further enhance its value for us in teaching. The ai dubbing tool can translate and convert video content into multiple languages, making it easier to reach diverse student populations. Meanwhile, the transcription feature simplifies the process of converting audio and video content into text, which can be invaluable for creating lesson plans, study guides, or accessible materials for students who benefit from text-based resources.
10. Quizizz
Quizizz is an interactive, game-based learning platform that allows teachers to create engaging quizzes and lessons for their students. With Quizizz, you can design both teacher-paced and student-paced activities that support a wide range of question types and multimedia.
Teachers can benefit from Quizizz by leveraging its extensive library of ready-made quizzes and lessons, which span multiple subjects and grade levels. This allows you to quickly find and adapt existing content to fit your specific curriculum needs. Additionally, Quizizz provides powerful analytics and performance reports, giving you valuable insights into student understanding and progress, which can be used to tailor instruction and support individualized learning.
Quizizz also promotes collaboration and creativity in the classroom. Teachers can work together to develop quizzes, or even encourage students to create their own quizzes as part of the learning process. The platform’s features, like meme-based feedback and customizable collections, add a fun and personalized touch to assessments, making Quizizz a versatile tool for fostering engagement and improving educational outcomes.
Conclusion
The ai tools I shared above are some of the best for teachers and educators. I know there are several other equally important ai tools that could be added to this compilation, but for practical reasons, I limited the selection to what I think are the most impactful and versatile options. Besides enhancing teaching and learning, these tools also streamline tasks, making it easier for educators to focus on what truly matters—engaging and supporting their students.
