AI Tools for History Teachers

  • ChatGPT

    ChatGPT: History Uses

    ChatGPT by OpenAI is a conversational chatbot that can be an invaluable tool for history teachers.

    Features: For students, ChatGPT can provide detailed explanations of historical events, figures, and concepts. Students can ask questions about specific historical periods or topics and receive instant responses. ChatGPT can generate content such summaries on historical topics, which can be useful for assignments or revision. ChatGPT can also explain difficult concepts (ex. socialism, interstate relationships, tax treaties) at the appropriate level. ChatGPT can also role-play and take the identity of a historical character, so students can ask questions and engage in conversation.

    For teachers, ChatGPT can assist in creating lesson plans, quizzes, and other content. It can generate questions for classroom discussions or tests, suggest teaching strategies based on the latest pedagogical research, and provide information on historical events or figures to supplement teaching materials.

    Furthermore, ChatGPT can serve as a tool for professional development, offering insights into the latest trends in history education.

    Price: ChatGPT version 3.5 is free. Version 4.0 is $20/month

  • Parlay

    Parlay: Building Discussion

    Parlay is a tool powered by artificial intelligence that aids in conducting class discussions based on given topics or texts.

    Features: Parlay has the ability to formulate written or live discussion activities, boasting features such as secret identities, peer feedback, model submissions, and more. Additionally, it offers analytics and insights into student participation and performance.

    Teachers have the option to search or browse discussion topics in Parlay Universe or create their own. The Parlay Genie is a tool infused with AI that assists in creating prompts where teachers can choose the number of questions they want, input the topic, and select the grade level.

    Teachers can decide whether the activity will be conducted online or live. In an online discussion, teachers can choose to create a new course or select a course they have previously created. Parlay also includes an assessment tool that enables teachers to monitor, score, and provide feedback on students' participation in the discussion and their written responses.

    Price: Parlay is free for up to 30 students.

  • Google Arts & Culture

    Google Arts & Culture

    Google Arts & Culture AI is a platform that uses artificial intelligence to enhance our understanding of art and its cultural importance.

    Features: Google Arts & Culture can help students explore and understand historical events, civilizations, and places by providing a vast amount of information and interactive experiences.

    Here are three examples of its offerings:

    1. The White House: Google Arts & Culture AI offers a virtual tour of the White House, one of the most famous American structures.

    2. The Palace of Versailles: Google Arts & Culture offers a virtual tour of the former royal residence in France palace, allowing you to see its grand architecture and beautiful gardens.

    3. The Colosseum: Google Arts & Culture AI allows you to take a virtual tour of the Colosseum, giving you a glimpse into the world of ancient Rome.

    These examples illustrate how Google Arts & Culture AI can provide unique insights into history, making it more accessible and engaging for students.

    Price: Free

  • Diffit for Teachers

    Diffit for Teachers: Level-up Texts

    Diffit is an AI-powered tool that significantly aids teachers in crafting personalized learning materials.

    Features: Diffit is able to modify a reading, passage, or article to match any reading level, ensuring that every student can access content appropriate for their grade. Teachers can search for a topic, term, or question and then select an estimated reading level for the output.

    The strength of Diffit lies in its capacity to produce “just right” resources — readings aligned with the curriculum, vocabulary, comprehension checks, and more. It can create worksheets and activities that align with the curriculum, along with summaries, key vocabulary words, multiple-choice questions, short answer questions, open-ended prompts, and it cites sources. These resources can be edited and copied, saving teachers a considerable amount of time while also ensuring that all students can access and engage with the content at their own level.

    For history teachers, Diffit can be an invaluable tool for helping students understand primaryisource materials.

    Price: Limited free features, but teachers can get free access to premium features for 60 days. An individual teacher subscription costs $14.99/month.

  • Twee

    Twee: Text Analysis

    Twee AI can enrich enrich teaching and learning in History classrooms. It empowers educators through the generation of dynamic lesson content.

    Features: Twee offers a versatile range of tools designed to facilitate the creation, analysis, and discussion of specific texts. Naturally, these can be historical texts.

    Twee is adept at generating thought-provoking questions, tailored exercises, and quizzes centered on a given text. It also excels at crafting engaging lead-in activities to prepare students for text comprehension.

    Furthermore, Twee boasts an array of vocabulary-enhancing resources, encompassing exercises like word-formation and word-definition matching. Additionally, it can construct concise dialogues utilizing target vocabulary and identify collocations within a text based on provided vocabulary parameters.

    Price: Twee free account includes 20 runs/month for Text Tools and 10 runs/month for Media Tools. The Pro account offers unlimited runs and costs $19/month.

  • Hello History

    Hello History: Talk with Historical Figures

    Hello History AI by Humy is an AI-driven app that enables students to have life-like conversations with AI versions of historical figures.

    Features: Hello History is a fun and unique opportunity to talk to 400+ historical figures. Characters are grouped by historical category, such as “Middle Ages” or “Founding Fathers of USA”. Students can ask questions directly to these AI-powered characters, receiving responses that reflect the historical figure's known beliefs, speeches, and writings.

    The interactive nature of Hello History can help students better understand history by engaging them in meaningful discussions. Hello History AI can be a valuable supplement to traditional classroom lectures, making history lessons more interactive and engaging. By incorporating conversations with historical figures into their lesson plans, teachers can provide students with a unique perspective on the past that goes beyond textbooks.

    Hello History AI is generated by GPT-3.5, which can “hallucinate,” make errors. So it’s important to analyze the content derived from Hello History, which is a great skill building activity for students in and of itself.

    Price: Hello History is free for up to 30 credits. Annual plan is $99 a year.

  • Historia

    Historia: Personal Assistant

    Historia is history assistant, designed to delve into the past and bring it vividly to life.

    Features: Historia is a GPT (specialized chatbot) that can be accessed by ChatGPT Plus users. It provides detailed explanations of historical events, figures, and periods, and emphasizes the causes, effects, and long-term impacts of historical events. It covers a broad range of geographical areas and time periods,

    Historia employs storytelling techniques and offers “interesting anecdotes, lesser-known facts, and thought-provoking questions” in its discussions with users.

    Historia attempts to maintain accuracy by cross-referencing with reputable historical sources. That said, Historia might hallucinate at times so it’s important to analyze its responses, which is a great skill building activity in and of itself.

    Price: Free for ChatGPT Plus users (version 4.0)

  • CharacterAI

    CharacterAI: Dialog with Historical Characters

    CharacterAI is a popular AI platform that leverages advanced artificial intelligence technology to create and interact with digital characters.

    Features: CharacterAI features AI characters that can simulate conversations, behaviors, and personalities. It enables the creation of a wide range of characters, from historical figures to fictional personas, allowing for prolonged and engaging interactions that can mimic real-life conversations.

    For history and social studies teachers and students, CharacterAI can bring history to life in a way that traditional textbooks cannot. Teachers can use CharacterAI to create simulations of historical personalities, allowing students to engage in dialogues with these figures.

    Students can ask questions directly to these AI-powered characters, receiving responses that reflect the historical figure's known beliefs, speeches, and writings.

    CharacterAI, like other AI, will hallucinate at times. So it’s important to analyze its responses, which is a great skill building activity in and of itself. If leveraged effectively, CharacterAI can create a dynamic learning environment that makes history more accessible and engaging for students.

    Price: Free

  • Sorcerer

    Sorcerer: Ask Great Questions

    Sorcerer by Antimatter is a an AI tool in beta that asks questions about the content you upload to help gauge your knowledge and understanding of the material.

    Features: Sorcerer allows you to upload both written content and media and offers five levels of difficulty for questions, from Middle School to PhD. Teachers can set up an activity to share with students, but Sorcerer does not display any individual student name/username.

    Sorcerer provides a demo for US History content.

    Sorcerer is a a great tool for creating differentiated questions that could be the basis for an assessment, like a quiz.

    Price: Free (while in beta)

  • Chatmind

    Chatmind: Visualize Connections

    ChatMind is an innovative AI-powered mind mapping tool designed to streamline and enhance your brainstorming and project management experience.

    Features: Chatmind transforms your questions, articles, or data into a comprehensive mind map with just a click. The tool offers context rewriting and dialogue expansion features, allowing for a more in-depth exploration of ideas. It also provides functionalities for framework sorting, brainstorming, project management, schedule arrangement, and note-taking, making it a versatile tool for various tasks.

    For students studying history and social studies, ChatMind can be an invaluable aid. It can help students visualize complex concepts and relationships, making abstract ideas more tangible. The tool’s ability to generate detailed mind maps can help students visualize complex concepts, theories, and processes. Moreover, the bookmarking feature allows students to save important URLs for later reference, facilitating efficient study and research.

    Price: One Free credit a month. Basic account is $7.99/month

  • PamPam

    PamPam: Simple Map Creation

    PamPam is a simple, colorful, and fun way to make maps —including historical ones.

    Features: Simply type in a prompt and view your map. For example, type “Boston historical sites” or “Allied troop movement 1941-1942.” Or, you can import a list of places by simply pasting them or by adding a Google Maps link.

    PamPam will create your map and you can add annotations, such as text and stickers, and labels You can also add routes (such as a walking path) and highlight an area of the map (with their built-in highlighter.)

    Also included is a PamPam chatbot , so you can ask questions about the locations on your map.

    In addition, you can share your PamPam creation with others — as you would a Google document. Nobody needs a PamPam account to view the maps. If you wish, you can even edit a map together with a colleague or student.

    With its simple, colorful, and interactive interface, PamPam will be a hit with elementary and middle school students.

    Price: Free for up to 3 maps per month. Pro account is $12 a month.

  • QuestionWell

    QuestionWell: Boundless Questions

    Questionwell is a teacher-created AI platform that generates a boundless supply of questions based on input reading material.

    Features: Simply add a topic or input some reading, and Questionwell will write multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer, and essential questions that can be exported to various platforms.

    Questionwell allows teachers to input any topic and reading material, such as a book, an article, a video, or a website, and generate questions based on the content and the level of difficulty. Teachers can choose from four types of questions: multiple choice, fill in the blank, short answer, and essential. They can also edit, delete, or add questions as they wish. By default, the AI is set to try to produce 20 unique questions.

    Questionwell also provides learning objectives and standards alignment for each question set. Teachers can export the questions to various platforms, such as Kahoot, Quizziz, Google Forms, Microsoft Forms, Gimkit, Moodle, Canvas, Booklet, and Quizlet, and use them for assessment, review, or enrichment purposes. But Questionwell does not collect and work with any student data.

    Price: Free for educators; Paid plan for extra features is $7/month or $70/year.

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