Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series on AI tools and assignments for college professors and students.
For those of you starting your fall semester, I’ve compiled some great resources to get you started with AI tools:
Journalist’s Toolbox AI Educators page
This page features some useful tools to teach your students but also resources to make you efficient and evaluate your editing, help with presentations, etc.
AI and plagiarism detection tools
I have a list of several gems on this Toolbox page, including Copyleaks, GPTZero and Winston AI. All of them have free trials or limits on free usage. I know some don’t trust the tools, but I’ve found that they’ve improved immensely over the years and have become much more accurate. Be careful using them with international students as some use AI to translate their writing into English.
A fun assignment: After your students write a story or a paper, have them load it into Eleven Labs or another free AI audio tool, assign a voice to it and have it read it back to them. Then ask them to edit the story or paper based off what they hear and not what they see. It’s an effective tool in basic writing and editing courses and a cool way to introduce AI in a safe way. Don’t forget to ask them to list the edits at the end of the story.
More useful teaching resources, tools and readings:
AI Syllabi Policy Repository
More than 165 AI policies for classes.
AI Institutional Policy Repository
More than 20 AI policies from universities around the world
List of GenAI Syllabus Policies
LLM Journalism Tool Advisor
Training students on how to write prompts for Large Language Models? Get them started with this tool from Joe Amditis. It helps them build base prompts from clicking a few buttons.
ChatGPT Study Mode
Helps you work through problems step by step instead of just getting an answer.
Claude for Education
AI for higher ed, with a new ‘Learning Mode’ for students
Genspark AI Slides
Agentic tool for quickly creating presentation slides
Sponsor
See beyond the algorithm. Get the full story.
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Sponsor
Be sure to check out the incredible production tools suite with our new sponsor at HeyNota.com
Textbooks
The Journalist’s Toolbox
My new book, “The Journalist’s Toolbox A Guide to Digital Reporting and AI” was published by Routledge in December. You can order it here,
Data + Journalism
Samantha Sunne and I co-authored a textbook, “Data + Journalism” that’s available now on Routledge. (Order here). It’s an introductory- to intermediate-level guide to learning data storytelling from A to Z.
More AI Tools and Resources
MyLens
Turns your ideas and content into effective visuals that are interactive, editable and ready to present. Upload PDFs, web pages, documents and more.Text Jam
AI-driven writing and editing tool. Offers AI suggestions as you write. Studies your writing style and matches it to future edits.Retab
Complete developer platform and SDK for shipping state-of-the-art document processing in the age of LLMs. Extract data from any document format.SkyReels
All-in-one video editor
In Quotes …
“I’m more frightened than interested by artificial intelligence – in fact, perhaps fright and interest are not far away from one another. Things can become real in your mind, you can be tricked, and you believe things you wouldn’t ordinarily. A world run by automatons doesn’t seem completely unrealistic anymore. It’s a bit chilling.” — Gemma Whelan, actress and comedian
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