4 AI Tools Teacher Toolkit #yt
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Introduction to AI Tools for Teachers
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Teachers are starting to use AI for everyday tasks in their classroom, and companies are building teacher specific AI tools. Now, some of these can be useful, and I use them regularly.
The Importance of Frontier Models
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But, your time is actually best spent learning the frontier models. Those are the big underlying models that run all of the teacher specific ones, like ChatGPT and Google Gemini.
But which ones are best for which purposes, and where should you start if you're new to all of this?
I've been using all of these models, some of them daily for years. Which means you don't have to waste your time and experiment and fail and be overwhelmed like I did.
We all need that person who's paid for ChatGPT Pro since the day it came out. That's me. I'll be that guy for you.
I've got three AI tools that you should be using, and two that you can skip if you're a teacher.
now before we jump into the tools, if you didn't watch my last video on skills for AI, the skills trump the tools. And when you get good at the three skills that [00:01:00] I suggest you learn in that video, you'll be way better at using all of these tools because you'll have the AI skills in place and the tools won't matter as much.
ChatGPT: The Default AI Tool
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We're gonna start with the one that you know, and you've heard of, and you've probably used, and that's ChatGPT.
One of the things you'll hear people say about ChatGPT is it writes like a robot and creates these generic sounding outputs, which it is true, but once you learn how to use projects and context windows, It can actually do a great job of customizing the outputs to sound like you or give you a specific tone.
A few of the pros of ChatGPT. First of all, it's the most common. If you only have one AI app open in your browser or on your phone, it's probably ChatGPT. Same thing with your students.
The free features keep getting better and more open over time.
ChatGPT by far has the best voice mode, so if you want to be able to talk to it, not just talk transcribe your text, but have an actual voice conversation, do [00:02:00] things like live translating. ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode is amazing.
And an underrated feature of ChatGPT is it has the best desktop app. So if you don't always want to have to run it in a browser on your computer like this, you can just download it to your Windows PC or your Mac device, and then you can use shortcuts and have little windows open in the back without having to use your browser.
A few of the cons of ChatGPT, it's still not great at searching.There is this little globe icon at the bottom of the chat window. And you can turn that on to, say, search the internet, not just its knowledge base.
But it's still not the best at searching. The UI and the user experience can also be underwhelming. It seems like it was made by coders, not people who care about design.
And probably the biggest con is the model selection. When you go up to the top here and pick your model, the names are really long and convoluted, and most people are going to be confused. Which model should I use for which purpose?
[00:03:00] But, even with these cons, I would suggest as a teacher that you start with ChatGPT. It's the jack of all trades. It's pretty good at everything. It's not terrible at any one thing, and it's also one that you probably already have or have used, so you don't have to go download it, get a new app on your phone.
Just start using it for your day to day teacher tasks.
With ChatGPT being the default AI tool that most people have when they think of using AI, this next suggestion is kind of the opposite. A lot of people discounted it or haven't heard of it, and early on it was pretty terrible.
Exploring Google Gemini
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The tool is Google Gemini. I have to say at the time of recording in early 2025, it is overall the best model, and lately it's been the one that I use the most.
A lot of people criticize Google. They've changed the name from Bard to Gemini. It also didn't integrate very well across different types of Google accounts like your work, your personal Gmail, maybe [00:04:00] a school one if you're a Google Apps for Education user.
But a lot of that has changed and if you haven't tried Google Gemini since December of 2024, I'm going to encourage you to give it a try.
And if your school is deep in the Google ecosystem, you should be using it, even if it's not turned on right now. Because if you look ahead to the future, these tools are going to be integrated into Google Docs, Gmail, Sheets, Google Calendar, and you should be starting to use that, even if it's on your personal at Gmail account.
Some of the pros of Google Gemini, the default tone when you're writing things is actually pretty good.You can upload a bunch of different file types, including images to interact with.
If you're on a school account, it's up to your administrator if they allow it, but it's starting to get built into all of your Google apps, like a sidebar in Google Docs and in Gmail.
And second to chat GPT only, it has a really good voice mode.
Some of the cons, you're probably going to have to pay 20 if you want to use it on your own to do the [00:05:00] most powerful things like building gems. Those are like custom GPTs in Google Gemini, but they're not shareable, unlike custom GPTs They have some features that are still kind of wonky, like Deep Research, where it runs this research report and gets a bunch of sources and then exports that as a Google Doc. It's a cool idea, but it doesn't work very well yet.
And probably the biggest con, people just haven't heard of it, or what they heard about Gemini before was that it was bad. I'm telling you, in early 2025, that is no longer the case.
If you're in a Google ecosystem, I am for school and my personal stuff. You should be learning how to use GeminiIf for no reason other than it's more integrated with what you're already doing with your documents and your email. if you're one of those people who hasn't used Gemini since December of 2024 when it got a big update, you You should pause the video and just go use it.
Get the app on your phone. It doesn't have a desktop app yet, but the mobile app is really good. Even if your school district doesn't allow Gemini with your school email, [00:06:00] you should be giving it a try in 2025. A lot of people still haven't heard of this next tool and if they have they think it's only good for one thing.
Perplexity: The Ultimate Search Engine
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That tool is Perplexity. I'm here to tell you it is the best default search engine that you can get in 2025. I do not use Google search as a default in any of my browsers. I've used Perplexity for about a year now.
and it's good at things besides just searching.
If you're only going to pay the 20 a month that most of these apps cost, I would actually pay for Perplexity first. Here's a big pro. You can adjust the language model inside of it. In other words, you can have it write responses with ChatGPT's paid model, or Gemini, or Claude, or DeepSeek. In other words, under the hood, you can adjust to use other apps.
So for 20 bucks a month, you get access to most of them. Plus you get the great search interface. My favorite thing about Perplexity, the UI. [00:07:00] Basically, when you do a search, the first thing it's going to show you are the images
Another underrated pro of Perplexity is it has a great desktop app. I'm using mine on Mac. You can download that from the App Store. It also has a really good mobile app. Including being able to search from an image. So you can just take a picture on your phone and do a search from whatever your camera's pointing at.
Perplexity, besides it's not very well known and appreciated, The default model, if you're not paying for it, isn't the best at writing on its own. It's kind of optimized for speed and search, but it's still pretty decent. If you only change one thing in your daily habits around AI from this video, please let it be this.
Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-2: Set your default search engine to Perplexity. If you're in Chrome, it's probably set to Google Search. Go in and change that. Let me show you how.Here's a quick step by step guide for how you set your default search engine to Perplexity. We're in Google. If you open a new tab, it probably goes to [00:08:00] google. com. We're going to go up to the three button menu and go to settings. And then within settings over here, we're going to go to search engine.
Shure MV7 & Insta360 Link-2: You're going to see a list of these. It's going to have Google as the default. Now you can set this to other things, but I strongly encourage you to hit add. And then put in perplexity. ai and make it your default search engine. Try it for one week, thank me later. You won't be using Google Search nearly as often.
if these are the three apps I'm suggesting, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Perplexity, what about the last two and how do they fit in? I'm telling you, as a teacher in 2025, you should skip them for now. Don't waste your time.
AI Tools to Skip: Claude and DeepSeek
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Here's the first one, Claude. A lot of people still haven't heard of it. One time when discussing Claude with a co worker, they thought Claude was a person.
I was talking about asking Claude a question. They thought Claude was a dude, not an AI app. Claude is an AI app. But it's not worth your time in 2025 if you're [00:09:00] a teacher. It does have a really tight knit group of people who love it, especially coders and writers. I've paid for the full version. I've used it a ton.
I've used the desktop and mobile apps. And I'm here to tell you, in early 2025, it is not worth your time. Claude does have its uses. In fact, it's really good at long form writing. If you're doing long articles or essays or even research papers for the writing part, it can be really good. You have some tools like projects and writing styles that Claude does very well, but I still don't recommend it, especially not for teachers.
First, it has very restrictive use limits. If you're on the free version, it's hard to get anything done with Claude because it cuts you off. And even on the paid version, you keep getting prompted to use the faster model, which is super annoying. I'm paying 20 a month, I want to be able to use it as much as I want.
Another big issue with Claude for me is it's not good at research. You can't search the internet. [00:10:00] Almost every other model has some kind of a web search feature by now, except for Claude.
If you do cool things in there and build a project that's kind of like a shared folder, you can't use that with anyone else to collaborate. It's only in your account.
All of that is to say, teachers, Claude's not worth your time. Unless you're a super nerdy coder or something, or you get a lot of use out of the artifacts feature, which is cool, I wouldn't waste my time.
I'd be using ChatGPT as a default. I'd be learning Gemini. I would definitely be searching with perplexity. But if Claude is the model you haven't heard of, and I'm telling you to skip it, what's the one you have heard of that I'm still going to say is not worth your time?That's DeepSeek, and here's why it's not worth your time.
DeepSeek in a lot of ways is the model that broke the internet and the stock market, but you shouldn't be using it as a teacher. DeepSeek is really good at a couple of things. Number one, it doesn't even have a paid version. It's totally free. It doesn't have a desktop app, but it has a decent mobile app, and it shows [00:11:00] its thinking. So if you give it a complex task, it goes one step at a time, In very human terms, it says, I'm going to do this.
Now I need to do that. I need this. And you can see the steps as it's thinking. That's called a reasoning model. And while it's really good at research and reasoning, I'd still skip it. The obvious reason? Privacy concerns. Everything you put into DeepSeek is going to end up being viewed by the Chinese.
It's going to run through China. if you're doing anything related to culture, history, politics. It has a very obvious pro Chinese bias. The easy thing to do is just ask it about Taiwan and it's going to say, I can't talk about this, let's talk about something else. As a history teacher, that's obviously a deal breaker for me.
The biggest reason you should skip DeepSeek isn't even the privacy. It's that other tools have already integrated it better. Perplexity has an R1 search model that's hosted in the U. S. and doesn't have all the Chinese bias.
Conclusion and Next Steps
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So based on the fact that it's [00:12:00] already available somewhere else better and doesn't have the privacy concerns, you shouldn't be using DeepSeek Thanks for joining me in this part of the AI Teacher Toolkit. I hope this gives you some great ideas on where to start and where to not waste your time when it comes to tools. Remember, the skills always trump the tools. If you can get good at using AI, which tool you're using matters a lot less. And while there are a bunch of teacher specific AI tools, I strongly encourage you to be using these frontier models on your own so that you can learn to not be dependent on companies.
To make you a teacher version of what's really just chat GPT under the hood. If you haven't already, go to the link in the description below and All my teacher resources are available for free. Just go to the link that says Scaffolding AI into Your Classroom, put in your email and I'll send them to you over the next week.
In the next video, we're going to be talking about applications of all of these skills and tools in the classroom. What does that look like as a teacher in 2025 who wants to [00:13:00] learn to teach with AI instead of fight it? I'm Aaron Makelky.
Thanks for joining me. See you in the next video.
