I watch the PBS News Hour virtually every night. Some evenings they end the show with a Brief But Spectacular segment in which a person doing something to make the world a better place talks about their passion. A few weeks ago, the Brief But Spectacular segment featured Adrian Antao, a NYC high school teacher who developed an AI tool to help his students with their writing revisions. His AI tool is available for others to use on the Playlab.ai website.
In Mr. Antao’s own words, the Playlab website “provided an open platform for teachers to create their own AI bots.” His creation, Project Toni, acts as a “teaching assistant for teachers and writing tutor for students. … Toni provides strengths and areas for improvement for each paragraph” and “gives paragraph-by-paragraph suggestions for improvement.” “Toni also provides students with opportunities for interaction with or challenge to Toni’s suggestions. In other words, the AI-generated Toni makes the student think critically about their own writing. Mr. Antao describes the process as a conversation mimicking a professional writer and editor’s conversation.
This episode made me curious about Playlab and what other AI tools they have available. Playlab is a non-profit whose mission is simple yet grand: “We build public AI infrastructure for teaching and learning that deeply empowers those closest to kids to create a better education system for all.” To make its services/platform available to the greatest number of educators possible, they offer Professional Learning Communities through which one can learn AI tool design and prompt engineering. From what I can tell on their website, this skill development opportunity is available at no cost.
There are several apps built by educators available for free on the Playlab website in multiple categories, listed below.
· For teaching support:
o Monika the NGSS phenomena generator
o Powerful questions assistant
o ELI, the SDI guy
o Teaching for equity coach
o Holistic learning: social emotional learning
o NATE: neurodiversity, accessibility, tech, and education
o Write teacher observations quickly!
· For student support:
o Ida B, Cornell notes tutor
o Carter G, Cornell notes grader
o Jin, math & science tutot
o HTML, CSS and Javascript support
o Find an internship the BPL way
o Ask University of Oregon
· For English Language Arts educators:
o Project Toni: a writing assistant
o Butler: a personal statement tutor
o Murrow: a journalism writing coach
o An argumentative paragraph
o AP Lang: rhetorical analysis coach
o AP Lit writing scorer
· For project-based learning:
o Project launcher
o Durable skills evidence co-pilot
o Driving question builder
o Duara activity designer
o Project to career
o History experience simulator
o Lincoln-Douglas debate assistant
o Competency-based project builder
· Miscellaneous:
o Instructional observation support bot
o Fleur the high interest phonics story generator
o Community engagement assistant
o Student report generator
o Living Schools thought partner
o E! activity designer
Go to the Playlab website to play around with things and learn more. I’m guessing there will be more teaching support apps posted by the time you visit the website!
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