College Students Pick Useful AI Tools
April 28, 2026
Every semester I have students in my AI and Journalism class at the University of Illinois Chicago do short presentations on tools they’re using as journalists, students or in everyday life. Past newsletters shared some interesting tools from the fall 2024 and fall 2025 classes.
Now it’s the spring 2026 group’s turn. I hope you find these resources helpful:
Senior Mike Yonova presented AIFiesta, a Swiss Army knife tool for Large Language Models. It uses the application programming interfaces (APIs) of the top LLM models, such as ChatGPT, Claude, etc.
One drawback to AIFiesta: It doesn’t allow for Custom Instructions/Preferences that many LLMs offer, so it’s harder to program them to produce results you want. (Pro-tip: Work the instructions into your step-by-step prompts, which can be a pain.)
This keeps you from juggling tabs and subscriptions, and costs just $120 a year (basic plan). You lose some features, like Custom GPTs, but if you want LLM access for a low price, this is a good bet.
The Veo Analytics game camera rig
Edzon Lozano presented one of my all-time favorites for AI hardware: the Veo Analytics game camera. For less than $500 a year, this rig lets coaches record games and practices in their iPhone, then use AI to analyze the video to build strategy and detect tendencies in players and opponents. You also can buy a Veo camera for around $1,300.
This type of next-generation analytics and technology is all the rage in sports at all levels, from youth sports to the pros. It’s being marketed heavily to colleges and universities, and the site features case studies from soccer, rugby and other sports.
Kalia Vang, a content creator on TikTok and Instagram, showed us the Revid PDF to Video tool that’s widely used by creators. It transforms boring PDFs into engaging TikTok-style videos and offers trending backgrounds like Subway Surfers and Minecraft Parkour.
Arturo Gutierrez demonstrated Mureka AI for creating audio and music. Mureka has a paid tier that gives you a license to use the music you create commercially. It will be interesting to see how it stands up to Suno.
Mureka’s intuitive interface
I often tell my students to put assignment deadlines in their digital calendars, so I smiled a bit when Cherish Esmane presented Reclaim.ai, which analyzes your calendar and finds pockets of time for you for various tasks or relaxation. I’ve experimented with the tool a bit and found it helpful to work in time for technology breaks and reminders to eat (yes, I sometimes forget).
Evalyse Teruel showed us KickResume for building a vitae. Victoria Bernat used Notion.ai to create and edit documents. Eden Joseph shared the audio creation tool Eleven Labs, which we then used in class to create audio news reports and edit our written stories by listening to them.
Gabriel Palos demonstrated YouTube Transcript which makes downloading video to text effortless.
Other useful tools from students (most have small fees and free trials):
Emre Zor: Elicit, a deep research tool that rivals Perplexity. Nayda Garcia: Penseum (study guides and more). Alejandro Regalado: Tripo 3D AI, which converts images into 3D characters. It’s great for gaming.
Alyssa Carino: MyMind. A Pinterest on steroids; this tool lets you organize various projects and classes in a visual way. It features a browser plug-in that lets you clip parts of articles and text, then save them.
Sponsor
News Media Help Desk is a hub for local media news organizations to get digital help.
We’ll help you with free resources like case studies, how-to guides and our Scorecard database of tools. For more help, send us a note and we’ll answer your question or refer you to our fractional services partner who can match you with a vetted expert.
Visit the Help Desk at newsmediahelpdesk.org
Sponsor
Be sure to check out the incredible production tools suite with our new sponsor at HeyNota.com
More Tools and Research
Answer This
Create academic workflows and diagrams for books, presentations, presentation boards, etc.Pomelli
A Google AI tool that lets you place your website URL in it to get bespoke ad campaigns with image and video assets. Takes about 5 minutes.Guardio App
iOS and Android phone app that flags scam websites and provides other protections.Draftable
Compare two documents online (Word, PDF, text files). Free with a paid desktop version.
Textbooks
Data + Journalism, 2nd Edition
Samantha Sunne and I co-authored the 2nd Edition of the textbook, “Data + Journalism: A Story-Driven Approach to Learning Data Reporting” that will be available in August through Routledge and other booksellers (pre-order here starting in July). It’s an introductory- to intermediate-level guide to learning data storytelling from A to Z. The second edition features new tools, datasets, exercises and AI tools.
The Journalist’s Toolbox
My book, “The Journalist’s Toolbox A Guide to Digital Reporting and AI” was published by Routledge in 2023 and focuses on concepts and tools still used today. You can order it here.
In Quotes …
“The goal of an AI is independent of its intelligence.” — Max Tegmark, Book: Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
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Copyright and Trademark 2026 | Mike Reilley