Let's Make It About Students, 

And Learning

MagicSchool And MagicStudent

@LisaBerghoff 

Everyone agrees that students need to know about AI. What they need to know, how much they need to know, and what types of experiences should they have are all questions that are worth exploring. One thing we can all agree on is that AI is not the future, it's the present. We can teach our students in a safe, secure way, or we can ignore the water we're swimming in and hope for the best for our students. 

The good news is that we have incredible tools that allow us to give our students practice with AI while giving the educators control.

What Is MagicStudent? 

MagicSchool for Students (MagicStudent) is a set of over 50 easy to use, AI-powered tools  that help students study for tests, develop research ideas, debate historical figures, and more. It allows educators to open a "room" and grant access to specific AI tools. The teacher gives the parameters and also has access to the students' interactions.

MagicSchool has set up a student room specifically for teachers to get the student experience. If you want to try it, go to: student.magicschool.ai/s/join and enter the code GmRTbg. The room has several tools added to it and you can test them out.

Why Would I Use MagicStudent? 

Remember, every tool that we use, digital or not, should have a specific purpose towards learning. There are many reasons why you would want to use MagicStudent. Here are a few suggestions.

• A study/review partner for an upcoming assessment
• An AI tutor that knows your curriculum and will ask the students questions but not give them the answers
• Interact with a historical figure, or a character from a book
• Choose your own adventure games for review of content and decision making
• Career exploration and interview practice
• Specific writing feedback
• Interactive escape rooms, answer questions to unlock the door

How Do I Get Started With MagicStudent?

Log into MagicSchool and click MagicStudent on the left navigation bar.

Go to Rooms and click to open a room. Here, you can choose the tools and set the instructions. 

There are also room templates that are already created for you. When I created mine, I asked Raina how to set it up and then I copied/pasted the instructions.

You can preview and test the tool before your students use it.

Once your room is set up, share it with your students by clicking on "invite students" and adding the join link in Schoology.

What Can I See When My Students Are In The Room?

On the teacher dashboard you can see the list of students. Yes, you can remove a student from a room. You will also see any messages that are flagged as inappropriate or concerning. It's very sensitive and so you may have many flags that are actually nothing but I like that it errs on the side of caution. If you click on a student's name you will see their interactions and a whole lot more.

You can use the AI to generate a summary for you. You also have access to whole class insights.

What Gets Flagged?

It will flag content for you to monitor such as any mention of self-harm or violence. It will also flag any attempts at academic dishonesty. Here are some that were flagged from my class.

Here's how it responded:

What If I Don't Want My Students On Screens For So Long?

Same! We know that not all screen time is created equal. That's why we can set up activities that allow for purposeful technology use. I love this example from MagicSchool. In this AI tutor activity students start by writing on paper, then they use the AI tutor together as a class, finally, they are given an opportunity to practice independently.

Want to learn more or talk about how MagicStudent might work for your classes? Let me know. I'm happy to help!