Magic School AI has been making big waves in the education space lately, and for good reason. It’s an easy to use and incredibly comprehensive tool designed to help teachers streamline their workload and create personalized learning experiences in their classroom.

This post will dive into the wonderful world of Magic School AI and share some handy AI-powered features you can start using right away. Here we go!

What is Magic School AI?

Magic School AI is a website and Chrome extension that offers a suite of AI-powered tools and resources for educators. You can translate or adjust the reading level of a text, brainstorm lesson or assessment ideas, or generate informational passages for students all in one place. It’s meant to help streamline some of the planning and prep work teachers do regularly.

Why Magic School AI?

Here are a few reasons why Magic School AI stands out:

It’s designed for educators. One of the key advantages of Magic School AI over other AI tools like ChatGPT is that Magic School AI is designed with the educator in mind. The interface is incredibly user-friendly and showcases a variety of generative tools to help teachers save time and personalize learning in new and unique ways.

It simplifies the process of using AI. If you’re new to the world of AI, Magic School AI is a great place to start because it showcases tools and capabilities you might not have even realized AI could offer. And rather than having to type in a lengthy set of directions like you would with something like ChatGPT, Magic School AI simplifies the process through an intuitive set of pre-made buttons, dropdown menus and text fields. Simply click a button, enter a few key details related to your task, and voilà!

It’s free to use. Magic School AI also scores major points for the fact that it’s free—like, actually, genuinely free! While there are optional paid features, the tools available for free in Magic School AI are more than generous (and very much appreciated!). I’m certainly not against supporting a great tool by paying for its service, but I prefer to write about tools that are free or have robust free versions; this helps ensure that educators can explore, experiment, and implement new and exciting technology in their classrooms without financial pressure or upfront costs.

What Can Magic School AI Do?

There are dozens of incredible things Magic School AI can do. I’ve outlined 5 of my favorite features below.

But first, a couple quick reminders:

AI serves as a tool to support and enhance your teaching, not to replace the invaluable insights you bring.
Always review and revise AI-generated content to ensure it fits your curriculum and pedagogical objectives.
Be aware that AI outputs can sometimes include biased, misleading, or inaccurate information.

Ok, now onto the features…

Text Leveler

The Text Leveler allows you to rewrite any text at a different grade level, which is a great way to enhance the inclusivity and accessibility of your learning materials. Simply add the original text (via copy/paste or PDF), choose a grade level, and Magic School AI will rewrite that text to fit your request.

💡 Example Uses:

Create 3 versions of an article and give students the option of which article they want to read.
Adapt a high-interest but difficult passage to be accessible for younger students.

Text Translator

The Text Translator instantly converts your text into almost any language, making it a helpful tool for ELL teachers or anyone supporting multilingual students and families.

That said, no translation tool is perfect and it’s always a good idea to let families know when a translation tool was used. Still, many ELL and World Language teachers have shared that this feature has already made their work easier and their communication more accessible. So it’s definitely a promising option.

💡 Example Uses:

Offer translated versions of a newsletter to support multilingual families.
Create a “Welcome” poster in the primary languages of your students.
Translate emails to families in their preferred language.

AI-Resistant Assignments

The AI-Resistant Assignments tool offers support by taking your prompt or objective and suggesting a few ways you could revise the task to make it more difficult for a chatbot to complete. It’s designed to help teachers think through assignment structure and encourage more authentic student work.

💡 Example Uses:

Turn a standard research paper into a more engaging interactive project.
Shift from traditional book reports to multimedia presentations that include personal reflections.
Develop project-based tasks that require the application of concepts in real-world scenarios.

YouTube Video Questions

The YouTube Video Questions tool allows you to generate a series of multiple choice, true or false, or free response questions aligned to a specific YouTube video. All you need is the URL for a YouTube video, and Magic School AI takes care of the rest.

💡 Example Uses:

Create a pre-viewing guide with questions that set the stage for the topic to be discussed.
Generate comprehension questions to assess understanding of the presented material.
Develop open-ended questions to encourage discussion and personal connection to the video topic.

Sentence Starters

The Sentence Starter tool can assist teachers in quickly generating a list of sentence starters for any topic. Sentence starters are an incredibly powerful scaffolding technique that can help students organize and communicate their thoughts more effectively.

💡 Example Uses:

Offer prompts for starting a reflective essay on a recently completed unit or project.
Provide sentence starters for peer feedback sessions on group projects or presentations.
Generate discussion starters for classroom debates on topics covered in recent lessons.