According to Google, its new and improved LearnLM, an AI model specifically designed for teaching, outperforms AI models such as GPT-4o, Claude 3.5., and even Google’s own Gemini 1.5 when it comes to adherence to the principles of learning science.

It’s generally good practice to view any company’s reports on the capabilities of its own products with some skepticism, but after experimenting with LearnLM myself, I’m convinced of all the above. LearnLM can do things such as add rubrics, plan lessons, and build syllabi. It also excels as a tutor that you can instruct to behave in certain ways.

For my testing, I focused on its tutoring capabilities, and it is the best AI tutor with which I have interacted. Not only did I think it could be theoretically helpful to students, I learned from using it.

Here’s a closer look at everything you need to know about LearnLM and why its an AI model educators should watch.

What is Google LearnLM?

LearnLM is a AI model from Google trained on learning science best practices and specifically designed with teaching in mind. Built upon Gemini 1.5 Pro, Google deployed it initially with students at Arizona State University, and has fine-tuned the model based on student reactions and feedback from instructors at the institution. They also had its progress assessed by hundred of teaching experts with advanced degrees.

Google explains in a blog post about LearnLM that when teaching complex topics, LearnLM takes actions such as break content into chunks, asks guiding questions instead of providing answers, and adapts to each learner's ability. In Google’s technical report on LearnLM the company notes that it was preferred by education experts more than 31% over GPT-4o, 11% over Claude 3.5, and 13% over Google's standard version of Gemini 1.5 Pro.

How Much Does Google LearnLM Cost?

Google LearnLM is an experimental model available in Google’s AI Studio for free. You just have to sign up for Google's AI Studio.

Though free to use, each prompt requires credits, and AI studio only provides a limited number of credits per month.

LearnLM has also been integrated into existing Google apps such as Google Classroom, YouTube, and others in pilot programs.

What Makes Google LearnLM Special?

Google’s claim is that LearnLM is more fundamentally designed for teaching than other AI models. While correctly prompting general AI models for teaching purposes can improve their teaching ability, these can struggle to truly embrace good pedagogical practice.

“Pedagogical behavior is often at odds with typical behavior of conversational AI, principally because learning is often a process of discovery rather than simply a transfer of information,” notes Google in its most recent LearnLM report.

The tool also lets you choose what type of pedagogy strategies you’d like it to embrace, for instance, active learning or the Socratic method. My experience with LearnLM bore this out. It was easier to get the model to do what I wanted, and instead of being frustrated by the answers it was generating, as frequently happens when I've tested other AI models, I was intrigued.

My Experience With Google LearnLM

To get started with LearnLM, Google provides some sample system instructions you can give to the model to set how it behaves. This sounds technical, but it’s not. All you need to do is copy and paste these instructions into the “system instructions” tab at the top of the page when you’re using LearnLM.

I used the following system instructions provided by Google:

You are a tutor helping a student prepare for a test. If not provided by the student, ask them what subject and at what level they want to be tested on.

Then,

* Generate practice questions. Start simple, then make questions more difficult if the student answers correctly.

* Prompt the student to explain the reason for their answer choice. Do not debate the student.

* **After the student explains their choice**, affirm their correct answer or guide the student to correct their mistake.

* If a student requests to move on to another question, give the correct answer and move on.

* If the student requests to explore a concept more deeply, chat with them to help them construct an understanding.

* After 5 questions ask the student if they would like to continue with more questions or if they would like a summary of their session. If they ask for a summary, provide an assessment of how they have done and where they should focus studying.

Once these system instructions were in place, I was able to have LearnLM quiz and tutor me on a variety of topics. I was surprised by the results. It truly helped me better visualize and understand concepts from quantum physics and helped me obtain a better understanding of Gödel numbers, though I may still need a few more sessions on that one.

I also worked with it on topics I’m more well versed in, such as writing a magazine or news story. In response, it provided clear examples of how to write in a standard newspaper-style story as well as some specific examples around the type of story on which I was working.

When I testing exercises such as this in the past, the results have been somewhat basic and similar to the advice you’d find by putting a similar question into a search engine. LearnLM provided much more detailed, personalized, and effective advice. I could easily see how this advice and instant feedback could help students write an effective news story.

Should Educators Use Google LearnLM

Because LearnLM is currently being deployed by Google as an experimental model, it’s probably not yet a good idea to use it with students. However, more than any other AI model I have personal experience with, this is a tool that seems well suited to education long-term.

Ultimately, I suggest educators who are interested in AI explore it and see if it’s something they might be inclined to use in the future. Once Google deploys this more widely, I think LearnLM will be one of the best AI tools for education.

• 5 Ways To Avoid AI 'Snake Oil,' According To ISTE Experts
• 13 Ways to Detect AI Writing Without Technology

As more and more students use artificial intelligence (AI) for educational purposes, an “abstinence-based” policy is not a viable path forward for school and district leaders. Instead, we should focus on creating an atmosphere in which students and teachers use this powerful technology safely.

At the annual Deeper Learning New York (DLNY) conference, hosted by Ulster BOCES and focused on the theme “Leading for Deeper Learning,” we recently presented a Deep Dive session on using AI in the classroom. In this wide-ranging half-day session, we discussed how AI's ability to aggregate and analyze vast amounts of information allows teachers and students to customize teaching and learning—but only when it is used responsibly.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the insightful conversations we had with district leaders at DLNY.

Embracing AI as a Tool

Our presentation began with an interactive game show in which we asked participants to determine whether a given piece of work was created by AI or by a human. We called it “The Bot or Not Game Show.” The goal was to spark a conversation about AI and challenge common assumptions regarding the technology. For some educators, AI has a similar status as calculators did when they were first introduced: it seems like a shortcut that bypasses actual learning. Of course, that attitude changed and calculators are widely seen as indispensable tools. We see AI as a tool for learning in the same way that probes are a tool in science classes: it changes the way students do the work, but it doesn’t do the work for them.

We discussed how AI is in a period similar to the early days of social networks. Some educators have adopted what we call “abstinence-based” policies, but our hope is that schools won’t miss the opportunity to embrace AI in the way that many of us missed the opportunity to use social media as a teaching tool. To do that, of course, teachers and students need guidance from school district leaders.

Our district has had many discussions about how best to support responsible use of AI. While we don't yet have strict, written guidelines in place yet, we remain focused on student data privacy and academic integrity. Our general rule for teachers is, “Unless the tech department has purchased the tool, don’t input any student data into it.”

Tools for Students and Teachers

While we urge our teachers to be cautious, we use multiple AI tools to generate creative work, and encourage students to leverage AI to boost their creativity across various mediums. For example, in creative writing, using Grammarly frees students to focus on expressing their ideas rather than worrying about grammatical errors.

Another tool we use to support teaching and learning is School AI. One of its most notable features is its student facing generative bot that doesn’t just generate text—it asks guiding questions to help students develop and refine their own ideas and clarify misunderstandings. The goal is to enhance the learning process rather than do the work for them, creating a personalized learning experience that mimics one-on-one teaching. A great example of this technology in action is in special education, where teachers can input IEP goals in the program, such as writing objectives, and the chatbot will act as a personalized tutor, guiding students to meet their goals and providing personalized support along the way.

Another tool we use in our district is Ink Wire, which assists students in creating portfolios for their work in STEM programs. In this technology, AI takes more of a supportive role, helping teachers with lesson planning and students with refining their writing for their portfolios. The purpose of these technologies is clear: while they handle some of the more tedious tasks, they do not replace the work students need to do to learn. Instead, these tools help personalize instruction and streamline processes, allowing students and teachers to focus on teaching and learning.

A Hippocratic Oath for AI

We introduced an intriguing concept during our session: an educator’s Hippocratic Oath for AI. While still in its early stages, the idea revolves around fostering open discussions about the responsible and ethical use of AI in the classroom—something we believe was missing during the rise of social media, when some educators were told, “Don't talk about it, don't let students use it,” and that led to kids making mistakes on social media. As educators, it’s our job to teach students how and when to use AI, just as it’s our job to teach kids how to be safe, how to be good people, and how to interact with others.

During the conference, as is the case in our district, the consensus was that an abstinence-based AI policy is not the most beneficial approach for teachers and students. Engaging in discussions about how to use AI and having an open mind to reframe concepts such as creation, plagiarism, and cheating will be more productive than simply saying “no.” Before the current school year began, our district held a two-day workshop with 40 teachers from a variety of disciplines including, K-12, special education, and reading. We discussed AI through the lens of student privacy.

As AI continues to evolve and educators learn to embrace it, we’re deeply excited about its potential. The teachers who joined the workshop felt the burden of responsibility to spread the word about AI. We look forward to seeing how we can shift teachers’ mindsets and help our students know when and how to use (and not to use) AI.

Graham Clay isn’t just excited about the potential AI has for education in the future: He’s thrilled with the way it has helped save him time as a professor and enhanced the student experience in his classes.

Clay, a philosopher and PhD, has taught at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Fort Lewis College in Colorado. He also writes the AutomatED newsletter, which provides tips on how professors can incorporate AI into their teaching.

Clay regularly coaches fellow instructors in better utilizing AI in their classrooms. Here are some of his favorite ways to utilize AI to help save time, which range from simple-to-implement ideas to more complex strategies that require some extra work on the front end but pay dividends on the back end.

1. Using AI To Teach: Quizzes, Tests, and Other Content

AI can be really good at generating classroom content such as quizzes and slide shows based on educator lecture notes and recordings. Clay recommends Gemini 1.5 Pro, which anyone can access for free from Google AI Studio, because it allows for prompts that are very long.

“Maybe you record yourself using just the microphone at the front of the class so it can only hear you,” he says, which avoids any student privacy concerns. Then you pop that recording in Gemini 1.5 pro and ask it to create a 10-question quiz based on it.

“I start each subsequent day with a quiz about what happened the day before,” Clay says. “Normally, that's a pretty heavy lift, because you have to remember everything you said, because maybe you deviated from your lecture notes because students ask questions, and so on.” Using AI in this way eliminates most of that work.

2. Writing Letters of Recommendation

Most college professors are asked to write regular letters of recommendation and have a template they already use, Clay says, whether that’s putting positive information first, then your qualifications and your relationship to the student.

To have AI help draft these letters, Clay recommends creating a prompt that describes that framework rather than adding an example of a past letter with any identity removed. “That shows the large language model exactly what you meant by your description,” he says.

The final step is adding a section of the prompt in which you use your favorite voice-to-text software to describe the individual student you are writing about in a stream-of-consciousness manner. Clay has done this while walking around his neighborhood with his dog. Then you put in the individualized prompt and edit the final letter of recommendation as needed.

3. Grading

Grading with AI is potentially a huge time-saver but also still has challenges when it comes to grading papers, etc.

Clay has a workaround for this. He still completes all the grading himself but then uses AI to save by creating a stream-of-consciousness response to each student's work and then having an AI punch it up. For these, he prefers to write it out rather than use speech-to-text, but either approach can work.

“So it's basically like having a TA sit there who has some understanding of the assignment and what the rubric looks like,” Clay says. “And here's what you have to say about a given paper, and their job is to convert that content into something that a beginner student would understand and benefit from, and is professional and grammatical. That can be 10 to 15 minutes saved per paper. Half the time you know exactly what the problem is, and you just have to package it for this particular student. The AI can help you with that packaging.”

4. A ChatBot Trained For Your Class

For the more advanced AI teacher, Clay recommends creating a chatbot trained on data that is specific to your class and can help students when you’re not around.

Clay uses CustomGPT, which allows users to create their own tailored ChatGPT-style chatbots. Users can provide specific training data as well as set their own guardrails—for instance, Clay trains his not to give students the answer but instead act as a tutor. This doesn’t take any technical or coding skills; however, getting the chatbot right requires some fine tuning. Clay has written detailed instructions for doing this.

Despite the upfront work that is required, he says this can really help students once it is deployed. Students can ask it questions day or night, and it can be helpful during group work sessions during class. “Sometimes I have 40 students who are all pretty needy,” he says. “They are all beginners. They all ask a lot of questions. They're not sure of how to proceed, and the CustomGPT can keep them going in class when I'm trying to circulate from group to group.”

He adds that as with many use cases for AI, a custom chatbot helps an individual instructor increase the impact they have on students. “In higher ed these days, there’s not that many of us who have TAs or a lot of support from assistants and other instructors," Clay says. "So being able to kind of multiply yourself in some way through a CustomGPT is very appealing.”

• AI-Assisted Characters Help Students Learn From TV, According to Harvard-Led Research
• Do ChatGPT-Style AI ChatBots Help Students Learn? Yes, But There Are Caveats, Says Research

Eduaide.Ai was developed out of the need of a teacher, to cater to teachers. In short, it was created to make the lives of teachers easier.

Started up by co-founder and public school teacher Thomas Thompson, this tool uses artificial intelligence to automate many tasks that would otherwise have teachers stretching themselves administratively, often at the cost of quality teaching.

The idea behind this AI platform is to offer high-quality resources available to all those who could use any. As such, there is both a free Eduaide offering as well as a premium paid-for Pro version of the platform.

This setup, in both versions, takes what ChatGPT offers and enhances it for a teaching specific workflow. That should mean that this offers a lot more, in a clear way, without the need for much prior AI tool experience.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

What is Eduaide.Ai?

Eduaide.Ai is a generative AI system that uses artificial intelligence to help speed up and simplify workflow for teachers when it comes to administrative tasks and planning.

Eduaide takes the wider AI learning model and uses teaching-specific parameters with the view to offering better output results. That can mean lesson plans or re-worked resources, which are ready to use right away -- without the need to go back and make refinements to make sure your prompt was spot-on.

Usefully, this system has a built-in text editor so you can refine your output right there in the platform. The result, the company says, is a far more efficient way to generate lesson plans and resources.

Since this is all built by teachers it is made with those needs in mind. It also means this system is continually being refined and tuned -- following teacher user feedback and more -- to get the best end result.

How does Eduaide.Ai work?

Eduaide.Ai is free to use in its basic form and can be accessed right away by simply signing up using either a Google account or your email address. You can then upgrade to the Pro account for more resources at a monthly charged rate.

Eduaide lets you generate more than 100 resources right from the outset. That includes lesson plans, worksheets, quizzes, report card comments, prior knowledge and scaffolding, assessment measures, escape rooms, role playing scenarios, vocabulary lists, letters of recommendation, problem sets, and much more.

You can select the tool you need and then work on refining the output to suit your specific teaching requirements. You even have an AI teaching assistant that lets you ask for anything you need, so you can feel guided through the process.

Access to more than 15 languages is available, making this a highly adaptive tool that can be used, not only in language teaching, but also to work across cultural backgrounds in the classroom.

What are the best Eduaide.Ai features?

Eduaide.Ai is a great way to create lesson plans and assessments, and to provide useful feedback. So it covers many of the main time-consuming tasks of teachers, only this should make all the outputs in record time.

Eduaide stands out from many of the other AI platforms as it not only gives you an output, from what you type in as a request, but then continues to listen and lets you refine that. This is the game-changer as this feature is what allows you to get to a genuinely useful output, fast. Where others, such as ChatGPT, often miss the mark and end up leaving you to refine that -- not saving you as much time as it could and should.

Since this system can also generate feedback for students, grading and guiding students is kept to a minimum too. Thanks to multiple built-in rubrics options, or the option to import your own constructive feedback and actionable steps, this is super effective.

The ability to remix is really helpful. This means you can play without outputs, to get some variations, and also work with current materials. For example, you can load current lesson resources to have this generate something new, perhaps pulling in new additional resources to create yet another way to teach and work with the class.

How much does Eduaide.Ai cost?

Eduaide.Ai offers a free model as well as a paid-for option.

The Free mode gets you 15 generations per month, a limited feedback bot, and the enhance and transform features.

Go for the Pro version, at $5.99 per month, and you get unlimited generations, more than 75 content generator resources, more than 25 teaching assistant resources, increased feedback bot assignment length, Eduaide chat, enhance and transform features, plus all future features and tools as any are added.

Eduaide.Ai best tips and tricks

Try before you buy
It's worth giving the limited free version a try before you pay for Pro. Yes, Pro gets you a lot more but you should have an idea if this is for you after trying the basics.

Assess individually
Use the ability to vary assessments using six question types and varying difficulties to test students at their level, rather than as a group or class.

Use vocabulary
Take words and have the AI generate questions or tasks using them to test students' command of their vocabulary and expand their own levels.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers