Develop a Personal AI Professional Learning Plan

Improve your understanding and use of AI in three steps.

Teaching in a Tech-Empowered Classroom
Grades K-12 8 min Resource by:
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The following plan is designed for educators who like to learn on their own, especially those who feel the need to catch up a bit with everything AI.

Step 1: Use a generative AI chatbot.

It can be really helpful to familiarize yourself with generative AI chatbots up front, and they really take no training to get started. Simply choose one to use and start interacting with it in a conversational style. This interaction can do a lot to demystify these AI tools and give you practical insights into what it can do and how it works.

The first task is to choose a generative AI chatbot. If you have one available to you at school, that’s probably the best choice. Otherwise, any of the options below would also work:

  • ChatGPT: This is the first one to hit the mainstream, and it remains the most popular option.
  • Gemini: If you’re a Google district, this might be the chatbot most available to you.
  • Copilot: If you’re a Microsoft school, this might be your best choice.
  • Claude: This one from Anthropic is known for its focus on safety and ethics.
  • Perplexity: This is a great choice if you’re mainly interested in research and information gathering.

Once you have selected the generative AI chatbot that you will use, here are a few ideas to get you started:

  • Ask it to help you plan something, such as a lesson, a travel itinerary, or a menu.
  • Ask it to help you create something, such as an email response, a letter of recommendation, or a rubric.
  • Ask it to explain something, like a historical event, how something works, or steps in a process.

Try to include as many relevant details as possible within your requests so that the chatbot knows what you want. If you don’t get what you are looking for or the response is lacking, ask follow-up questions until you get what you’re seeking. You’ll be able to glean additional learnings from this back-and-forth interaction.

Step 2: Take a free AI course.

Now that you’ve gotten yourself familiar with what a generative AI chatbot is, what it can do, and what the experience feels like, you’re ready to dig a little deeper.

To do this, consider taking one of the many free AI courses available online. Once you are finished, you can decide if you want to engage in another, or if you have enough context to move on.

One of our previous articles at AVID Open Access, Free AI Courses and Resources, lists many free options that are available. We’ve included four such options below for you to consider:

  • AI 101 for Teachers
    • This course is from Code.org, ETS, ISTE, and Khan Academy. It offers a list of videos, companion guides, and an informational slideshow that you can choose from. You can pick and choose what makes sense for you.
    • Videos with companion guides:
      • Fireside Chat with Sal Khan and Hadi Partovi (31 min.)
      • Demystifying AI for Educators (31 min.)
      • Transforming Learning with AI (24 min.)
      • Ensuring a Responsible Approach to AI (38 min.)
      • Bringing AI to the Classroom (30 min.)
      • How AI Works (8 min.)
    • A slideshow about using large language model (LLM) chatbots:
      • Starter prompts
      • Beginner tools
      • Intermediate tools
      • Advanced tools
  • Creative and Critical Engagement With AI in Education
    • This  second option is a very brief course from the AI Pedagogy Project by the metaLAB (at) Harvard. They describe this as “a collection of resources for educators curious about how AI affects their students and their syllabi”:
      • Part I: AI Starter (What Is AI?, The Basics of Generative AI: Large Language Models, Incorporating AI Into Your Teaching, Glossary)
      • Part 2: LLM Tutorial (an interactive, guided demonstration of ChatGPT that allows you to apply concepts as they are introduced)
      • Part 3: LLM Comparison (compare results from using two different LLMs)
      • Part 4: Resources (a hyperlinked list of resources related to AI)
  • Generative AI for Educators
    • This third choice is a self-paced and hands-on course from Google and MIT RAISE.
    • They state that the purpose of this course is to “learn how to use generative AI tools to help you save time on everyday tasks, personalize instruction, enhance lessons and activities in creative ways, and more.”
    • The outcomes focus on using generative AI tools to save time on everyday teaching tasks, personalize instruction for different learning styles, and creatively enhance lessons.
  • AI Basics for K–12 Teachers
    • The fourth option is a free course from Common Sense Education.
    • It includes three modules:
      • What Is AI and How Does It Work?
      • Ethical and Responsible Use of AI in School
      • How Will Generative AI Impact Education?

Step 3: Explore an AI education tool.

Now that you have a good foundation, explore AI tools that have been created specifically for teachers and students. It can be overwhelming—and probably impossible—to try them all, so start by picking one that sounds intriguing or useful to you and give it a try. When available, engage in both the teacher and student experiences. Most of these tools have their own support and training materials, but if you don’t find them helpful, go to YouTube and search for tutorials. You’ll almost certainly find teachers who have put out their own user guides.

Here are some of the most popular classroom options to choose from:

  • SchoolAI or MagicSchool: These two tools are similar in that they both offer teacher productivity tools as well as student-facing custom chatbots. The teacher tools can help you plan lessons and assessments, craft communication, develop rubrics, and so much more. The student-facing custom chatbots are really powerful and can help foster personalized feedback for students. This is where much of the real transformative potential is.
  • Snorkl: This is an AI tool that can provide custom feedback to students. Students record themselves solving a problem—perhaps a math equation on a digital whiteboard—and then the AI provides detailed feedback. It’ll correct the work and help the student understand how they can improve. Teachers receive AI-generated insights about student performance.
  • Brisk Teaching: This tool functions as an AI-powered Google Chrome extension, which can be used to streamline your teacher workflow by integrating directly into platforms like Google Docs, Google Slides, PDFs, and YouTube. It offers over 30 tools to assist with content creation, feedback, and differentiation.
  • NotebookLM: With this note-taking and research tool from Google, you can upload content and then ask questions about it. It’s like having a study partner to help break down information that you’ve gathered. It also lets you generate a custom podcast version of the content that you’ve collected.

AVID Connections

This resource connects with the following components of the AVID College and Career Readiness Framework:

  • Instruction
  • Opportunity Knowledge
  • Insist on Rigor
  • Collective Educator Agency

Extend Your Learning

Topic Collections

This course is part of the following collections:

AI in the K-12 Classroom

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