Designed by a former teacher and principal, MagicSchool.ai is an AI-powered platform that offers over 60 tools to assist educators.

Features: MagicSchool.ai’s “Magic Tools” are organized into five categories: Planning, Communication, Student Support, Productivity, and Community Tools.

Here is a breakdown of MagicSchool.ai Magic Tools per four important pedagogical areas:

1. Lesson Planning Assistant -

MagicSchool.ai provides a great range tools designed to streamline the lesson planning process by providing teachers with a platform to create, organize, and manage lesson plans effectively. For example, Unit Plan Generator enables teachers to create a unit plan for any subject and grade level by entering their topic and related information. The AI then generates a unit plan with learning goals, essential questions, key concepts, skills, assessments, and resources. Next, the Lesson Plan Generator offer suggestions for lesson objectives, activities, and assessments based on the curriculum standards and individual student needs.

And there’s more. MagicSchool AI offers a Syllabus Generator, a Rubric Generator, an Academic Content Generator (to generate original resources), a Conceptual Understanding Generator, Common Misperception Generator (to alert students to common misconception about a topic), Math Word Story generator and several niche tools, such as a YouTube Video Question Generator.

2. Lesson Activities Assistant

MagicSchool.ai can help teachers create active learning environments by generating activities that are based on different strategies, such as inquiry-based learning, project-based learning, game-based learning, etc.

For instance, the Math Spiral Review Generator generates a students with an opportunity to practice skills. In addition, there is a Science Lab Generator whose goal is to create an engaging science lab based on topics and standards of your choice. MagicSchool.ai can also assist with quiz activities. The Diagnostic Assessment Generator generate a multiple choice diagnostic assessment for any topic. Furthermore, the Multiple Choice Quiz Generator can generate a multiple choice quiz and answer key based on any text and the Reading Quiz Generator can create a multiple-choice reading quiz and answer key based on any text.

3. Student Feedback and Support Assistant

MagicSchool.ai helps teachers provide students with assistance and feedback on their work. For instance, MagicSchool.ai offers an IEP Suggestion Generator to help students with an individualized education program. It also offers a text scaffolder tool to adjust a text’s reading level to the abilities of a particular student. In addition, MagicSchool.ai also features an Accommodation Suggestion Generator that provides a list of accommodations for students who need support. Recently, MagicSchool.ai released a Student Work Feedback TooI that identifies areas of strength and areas for growth on student work based on customized critieria.

Note that MagicSchool.ai does not ask for or store any student personal identifiable information and is compliant with COPPA and FERRA .

4. Writing and Communication Generator

MagicSchool.ai also has a series of tools designed to help users write and communicate more efficiently. For example, Text Rewriter Tool can take any text and rewrite it differently — more concise, another style, a new audience, and more. Also, the Text Proofreader Tool can take any text and have it proofread, correcting grammar, spelling, punctuation and adding clarity.

In addition, E-mail Responder Tool generates a customized professional e-mail communication in response to an email that you received. And the Class Newsletter Tool helps you create a weekly newsletter to families. There are other helpful tools, such as EOY Student Comments that produces a narrative end-of-year comment for a student.

Tom’s Take: MagicSchool.AI is a tremendous asset to teachers. It provides an impressive range of tools to assist teachers in multiple pedagogical areas and save them considerable time. MagicSchool.ai lesson planning tools in particular are outstanding, featuring a vast selection of well thought out and well organized tools to address a range of teaching needs and reach a diverse range of students. And its lesson planning tools are customizable, providing teachers with flexibility to select appropriate standards and skills development.

But MagicSchool.ai is not squarely designed to assist students, which might be considered the ultimate objective of any teacher assistant. Part of the reason is because MagicSchool.ai does not collect student data. I admire their desire to keep student data private, but the result is that MagicSchool.ai does not have the student data necessary to track student progress and offer consistently and well-targeted feedback.

Price: As of January 2024, MagicSchool.AI is no longer completely free for teachers. That said, MagicSchool.ai offers limited free features, including lesson planning, lesson planning, differentiation, writing feedback and more. For unlimited usage and plus features the cost is $8.33/month.

Created by former teachers, Eduaide is an AI teaching assistant that offers over 100 resource types and learning resources.

Features: Eduaide helps teachers create lesson plans, teaching resources, assignment feedback, assessments, and more.

Here is a breakdown of MagicSchool.ai Magic Tools organized per four important pedagogical areas:

1. Lesson Planning Assistant

Eduaide offers several tools that enable teachers to create effective lesson plans quickly. For instance, Eduaide provides a Content Generator that enables teachers to create a create a lesson plan quickly by entering information about their topic, grade level, standards, and objectives.

In The Lesson Seed, which offers ideas based on objectives, is the most popular resource to start lesson planning in Eduaide. Simply select the subject and level of your students and enter a topic, or keywords. Eduaide’s AI then generates a lesson plan with an objectives, direct instruction, practice activities, and more.

Eduaide also includes well organized Unit Plan generator to streamline unit planning, a Rubric generator, and more.

2. Lesson Activities Assistant

Eduaide AI helps teachers create active learning classroom and homework activities for students. For instance, the Lesson Seed gives you a range of independent practice, and cooperative learning ideas that you can choose from. Without needing to change the topic, click on Cooperative Learning and select a cooperative learning resource from the list (maybe a "Jigsaw Activity" or “Think-Pair-Share”). Finally click "Add To Workspace" to generate an activity that will supplement your lesson.

Eduaide also offer a lesson planner built around the 5Es — Engage, Explore, Explain, Evaluate, Elaborate.

It provides a structure for inquiry-based learning provides of various opportunities for active learning and differentiation.

Under Independent Practice in the Content Generator, Eduaide provides a series of active learning possibilities, such as a Research Project, a Project Based Learning activity, a Keyword Assignment to reinforce specific vocabulary. In Essay Review, Eduaide provides “mistake-ridden” essays for students to review, revise, and critique. Eduaide also provides supplemental worksheets and other student activities.

In the Assistant category, click Wellness and you’ll find a Team Building Activities generator and an SEL Activities generator, among other options.

3. Student Feedback and Support Assistant

Eduaide helps teachers provide feedback on student work. Its Feedbot category enables teachers to paste in the students work and receive feedback based on various categories, including custom feedback based on your own rubric.

In its Assessment category teachers can input a teaching objective or standards based information and Eduaide can generate various types of questions, such as Multiple Choice and Fill in Blank. For example, type in “Spanish 1 irregular verbs” and Eduaide will provide a series of questions for your students to answer.

4. Writing and Communications Assistant

Eduaide helps teachers write effectively and communicate with diverse audiences. In the Assistant section under Productivity, Eduaide offers Email Home to guide your writing and a Newsletter Outline to keep parents and guardians informed of your classroom news. There is also a Student Update feature for writing professional reports about students and a Report Card Comments section.

Tom’s Take: Eduaide is an impressive teacher assistant, full of efficient and time-saving tools. Like MagicSchool.ai, its lesson planning tools and lesson activities tools are excellent, showcasing a wide range of features to address a diverse array of teaching needs. Eduaide also provides teachers flexibility to select standards and customize output.

Eduaide is arguably more flexible when it comes to facilitating active learning environments. But I find Eduaide tools less streamlined than MagicSchool.ai and it can take a bit of creative thinking to uncover an appropriate tool for your needs. I also find that MagicSchool.ai is more focused on customization than Eduaide.

Eduaide takes a more straightforward approach to lesson planning with clear objectives, practices, and assessments. MagicSchool.ai provide a stronger array of writing and communication tools, but neither system provides immediate student assistance while studying, as neither collects or tracks student data.

Price: Eduaide was free up to 300 generations a month, but as of January 2024 that was reduced to 15 generations a month. For unlimited access to all tools and resources you’ll pay $5.99/month.

ChatGPT is a conversational AI chatbot from OpenAI, endowed with voice, vision, ad memory capabilities. ChatGPT can be an invaluable tool for generating lesson plans and lesson activities.

Features: ChatGPT is a versatile platform to create, organize, and manage lesson plans. It can create lessons plans by subject, topic, grade level, and other parameters, and can assist with addressing individual student needs.

It can also create a unit plan with learning goals, essential questions, key concepts, skills, assessments, and resources. used to brainstorm ideas for lesson plans.

Teachers can provide a prompt related to the topic they are teaching, and ChatGPT can generate responses that can be used to create lesson plans or activities.

And it can do much more. It can generate questions for discussion and reflection problem sets or quizzes for practice. It can generate diagrams or visual aids to further enhance understanding.

ChatGPT can also break down complex information and principles into digestible information for handouts. It can also suggest practical activities or projects that students can undertake to understand issues better.

Furthermore, ChatGPT can assist in explaining complex concepts. Similarly, it can also provide real-world examples to make these abstract concepts more relatable for students.

ChatGPT serves as an exceptionally useful tool for generating written content and can significantly save educators time. It aids teachers in creating various educational materials, including curriculum content, student feedback, rubrics, discussion prompts, and lessons on grammar or vocabulary, as well as in designing course mindmaps.

ChatGPT can help draft emails, newsletters, and announcements to students, parents, and colleagues. This includes personalized messages or updates on class activities, school events, and reminders, saving time and ensuring consistent communication.

Furthermore, ChatGPT can enhance written work by correcting errors in spelling, grammar, or format, and offering suggestions for different sentence structures or wordings.

It also supports educators by drafting instructions for student tasks, developing outlines for comprehensive subjects, and crafting various communications for students and colleagues. ChatGPT's ability to produce writing that mimics human tone ensures that the output doesn't come across as mechanical.

ChatGPT can assist in pinpointing areas where student feedback is necessary, covering a wide range of assignments such as essays, short responses, solutions to math problems, science experiment summaries, or any pertinent student submissions. It is advisable to give ChatGPT a feedback prompt tailored to the specific task and derived from the student work submitted.

ChatGPT is capable of offering feedback that nudges students toward the correct or preferred outcome without directly giving away the answer. It can provide clues, pose insightful questions, or give broad advice to help guide students in the right direction.

Therefore, if you're looking for "guided" feedback that avoids outright providing the answer, it's important to state this in your feedback request to ChatGPT.

Teachers can use ChatGPT to assist in creating various reports, such as progress reports, attendance records, and incident reports. By providing basic information, ChatGPT can structure and draft these documents, requiring only final adjustments from the teacher.

Beyond teaching aids, ChatGPT can assist in the administrative aspect of preparing instructional materials, such as lesson plans, syllabi, and educational content, aligning them with curriculum standards and learning objectives.

ChatGPT can help teachers with planning and organization by generating schedules, to-do lists, and meeting agendas. It can also assist in brainstorming and outlining plans for school events, projects, or class trips.

Tom’s Take: ChatGPT is incredibly useful and versatile. It can help facilitate a whole range of lesson ideas, such as group and individual activities, role-playing activities, simulations, experiments, labs, and more.

ChatGPT can also help teachers create lessons that are based on different learning strategies and help foster active learning environments by generating

But to leverage ChatGPT effectively, teachers need to create effective prompts. In contrast, both MagicSchool and Eduaide offer pre-constructed prompts to simply the process of generating relevant and appropriate content.

But what ChatGPT lacks in structure and organization it makes up for in versatility.

Price: Free to use version 3.5. Version 4.0 costs $20/month