Tools to Help You Find and Evaluate AI
Authors: Samantha Goldman; info@ciddl.org
New AI technologies that promise to transform teaching and learning are being introduced almost daily. However, AI tools vary significantly in quality and effectiveness. Identifying the right one for specific needs and contexts can be time-consuming. As a result, numerous organizations have introduced resources to help educators and other decision-makers manage the overwhelming number of AI tools. This blog post will highlight the efforts of EdTech Insider and AI for Education to support efforts to effectively integrate AI into teaching and learning.
EdTech Insiders: Generative AI Use Cases in Education
EdTech Insiders, a community of edtech professionals headed by Alex Sarlin and Ben Kornell, works to ensure interested parties have up-to-date information on all things EdTech. They have a podcast and newsletter that highlight innovations in EdTech, specifically related to K-12 education. Recently, they released their Generative AI Use Cases in Education Market Map, which provides about 60 use cases and a curated list of over 300 AI directly related to K-12 education. The use cases are broken into several categories: instructional materials, assessment and feedback, teacher practice and support, teacher professional learning, student support, and social tools. Each category contains several use cases, each with "use in action," what the use case supports, and aligned tools. Additionally, they created a correlated map that shares the category, use case, and related tools in one concise visual.
AI for Education
AI for Education strives to create equal access to AI for all students and teachers, regardless of socio-economic status. They hope to improve learning and increase accessibility. The group includes educators, policymakers, and developers who work to bring these tools to low- and middle-income countries. This organization has developed several useful tools for educators looking to increase their knowledge and usage of AI. One such resource is the Evidence Library, which shares related research, books, and reports on GenAI in educational contexts (up to age 18) since 2020. Additionally, they have developed guidance documents designed for educators related to AI, including prompt writing, how AI can support and strengthen education, and how AI impacts education.
They also created an interactive map of AI products that are used and accessible in Sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Pakistan. This map includes filters for product type (e.g., adaptive, personalized learning platforms, learning management systems, and student-facing chatbots), intended users (e.g., parents, students, schools, and teachers), use cases (e.g., administrative tasks, automated grading and feedback, and reading practice tools), education level, studies on quality (e.g., qualitative, quasi-experimental, and mixed methods), and implementing countries. In addition to providing specific product names, it graphs the number of available tools for each filter.
Their Pedagogy Benchmark tool tests various AIs' knowledge of pedagogy. The question, “Can Large Language Models (LLM) pass teacher exams?” guides this work. This highlights the importance of the difference between content knowledge (which AI is usually tested on) and pedagogical knowledge. According to their data, ChatGPT’s o1 Preview is the top for pedagogy and content knowledge. As the list goes on, the rankings of LLMs vary between pedagogy and content. The top five pedagogy tools include o1 Preview (84%), Gemini-2.0 Flash Exp (81%), Grok-2 (80%), Llama-3.1 405B (79%), and GPT-4o (78%). The top content knowledge tools include o1 Preview (92%), o1 Mini (88%), Gemini-2.0 Flash Exp (87%), Hunyuan Large (87%), and Hunyuan Large (Large Context; 86%).
Implications for Teacher Preparation
Even though these tools are intended for K-12 education, it is important for teacher-educators to be familiar with and knowledgeable about them to educate their teacher candidates. Integrating the EdTech Insiders podcast into course readings or having teacher candidates explore the tools available through AI for Education are just a few ways teacher-educators can embed these resources into their coursework.
Join the Conversation
CIDDL is committed to providing high-quality resources to support the increasing knowledge, adoption, and use of a range of educational technologies that can be used for educators, related services, or leadership preparation programs. For more resources, including videos and blogs, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. The most important part of our CIDDL community is YOU. Join our community and share the innovative ways you are using technology, ask a question about technology integration, or participate in our bi-weekly live AI Community Chats.