Getting every student substantive feedback on a draft when you have ninety of them
Peer review first, AI second, and the graded artifact is the reflection comparing them — which is where the thinking actually shows.
English (ENGL)
English has the largest enrollment, the loudest anxiety, and the most faculty demand of any discipline here. The tools that help are the ones that make writing process visible; the ones that hurt are the ones that promise to detect cheating.
Workflows
How people actually chain these tools together to get something done.
Grading the machine's lesson plan: building developmental judgment by critiquing AI activities
Hand students a polished, quietly wrong AI lesson plan and make the assignment finding what is wrong and naming which principle it violates.
One reading, four proficiency levels, same discussion
Generate genuine reading-level variants of a single text so a mixed-proficiency section can discuss the same content — then check what the simplification quietly threw…
Remediating a semester of course materials without hand-writing two hundred alt texts
AI drafts descriptions and captions at volume while the judgment — what the image is for — stays with you, because that is the part the machine genuinely cannot do.
The verification lab: catching AI-fabricated authority before it reaches a filing
Run a research question through an AI tool, then pull and confirm every single authority by hand — the step whose omission produced over two thousand sanctioned filings.
Twenty minutes of speaking practice a week that a twenty-eight-person class cannot provide
Structured role-play with a voice assistant between class meetings, where the graded artifact is a marked communication breakdown, not the transcript.
Tools for English
AI Source Trust Checklist
A free When Notes Fly checklist and rubric for educators, students, and knowledge workers who need to evaluate AI-generated answers before relying on them. It gives 10 checks for source presence, source reachability…
Anthropic-Claude for Education
An advanced writing and analysis assistant known for strong summarization, nuanced reasoning, and the ability to handle long documents and extended context. Best for: Drafting policies and professional communications…
BoodleBox
BoodleBox is an innovative AI-powered platform designed specifically for educators, offering a collaborative workspace where teachers can efficiently create, organize, and share lesson plans, assessments, and classroom…
Brisk Teaching
Chrome extension layering feedback, leveling and lesson tools onto Google Docs and the browser.
Why here: Free tier is generous, but treat the writing-history replay as conversation, not evidence.
Canva Magic Studio
An AI-powered design suite for creating slides, handouts, posters, infographics, and quick visuals using ready-made templates and smart layout tools. Best for: Visual lesson materials, anchor charts, and classroom…
Citing Generative AI Models
If you are permitted to use generative AI and you reuse or paraphrase information from a generative AI program you will need to cite it as you would any other source.
Claude AI COURSEs
A variety of courses for learning CLAUDE AI - Vibe Coding, AI in General, Claude for Education and more.
Descript
Edit video and audio by editing the transcript; removes filler words and repairs audio automatically.
Effective AI Prompting for Educators
A professional development resource from the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges focused on practical strategies for crafting effective prompts to support teaching, assessment, and student engagement. Best…
Gamma.app
Gamma is an AI-powered tool for creating presentations, documents, websites, and visuals fast, with polished design, easy sharing, and exports.
Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM)
Source-grounded research assistant that answers only from documents you upload, with citations back to the text.
Why here: Source-grounded answers make it the safest general AI tool for a research-writing course.
Google (Gemini Pro)
A multimodal AI assistant integrated with Google Workspace, capable of summarizing Docs, analyzing Sheets, and generating or outlining Slides. Can be paired with Veo 3 for high-quality video creation within the Google…
GPTZero
Standalone AI-text detector with sentence-level highlighting. Listed as a risk to understand, not a tool to adopt.
Why here: The false-positive evidence is the reason this is listed.
Grammarly (with Authorship)
Writing assistant with grammar and clarity feedback, plus Authorship, which logs how text entered a document.
Why here: Authorship supports process evidence, which is a defensible alternative to detection.
Microsoft CoPilot
An AI assistant integrated across Microsoft 365, supporting document summarization, email drafting, and data analysis within familiar school workflows. Best for: Quick drafts, meeting summaries, and extracting insights…
OpenAI for Education
A versatile AI assistant for lesson planning, rubric creation, parent communication, accommodations, and role-play scenarios. Can be paired with Sora (OpenAI’s video generation tool) to create short lesson clips and…
Otter.ai
Real-time transcription and meeting notes with speaker labels and searchable transcripts.
Packback
AI-moderated discussion platform that scores question quality and pushes students toward open inquiry.
Why here: Check the institution-paid option before adopting — the default bills the student $39.
Perplexity for Education
An AI-powered research assistant that provides cited sources and organized collections, making it especially useful for current topics and rapid topic overviews. Best for: Unit background research, current events, and…
PlayLab AI
PlaylabAI is a 501c3 nonprofit organization devoted to creating a future where educators and students around the world have the agency to not just use AI, but to shape it. On their terms. As part of a global community…
Prompt Maker (by Ruben Hassid) CustomGPT
A free custom GPT designed to help users craft clearer, more effective prompts for a wide range of AI tools and tasks. Best for: Improving prompt quality, refining instructions, and generating structured prompts for…
Quill.org
Nonprofit writing-skills platform with sentence-level practice and AI feedback; core activities free forever.
Why here: Free forever and aimed squarely at the clause-level control developmental writers lack.
Read&Write (Everway)
Literacy support toolbar with text-to-speech, word prediction, picture dictionary and vocabulary tools.
Turnitin AI Writing Indicator
Percentage estimate of AI-generated prose inside Turnitin's similarity report. Listed as a risk to understand, not a tool to adopt.
Why here: Listed so faculty know the evidence, not so they adopt it.
General-purpose tools that work in any discipline (7)
Nothing here is specific to English. They are listed once, in every discipline, so the section above stays about the tools that actually are.
Adobe
Boost classroom and career success with Adobe solutions for education. From critical thinking and creative problem-solving to communication and collaboration, Adobe’s creative apps, PDF tools, and responsibly developed…
Beautiful.ai
Presentation tool whose slides auto-adjust layout as content changes, free for a year to verified students.
Diffit
Generates leveled versions of a reading passage with vocabulary and comprehension questions.
MagicSchool AI
Teacher-facing generators for lesson plans, rubrics, IEP support and family communication, plus student tools.
Napkin AI
Turns written text into editable business diagrams, flowcharts and visual frameworks.
Perplexity Comet
AI browser with a built-in assistant that reads, summarizes and acts across open tabs.
Universal Access Bot (Accessibility)
An AI-powered accessibility assistant built in Playlab that helps instructors adapt course materials to be more inclusive, readable, and aligned with Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. Best for: Improving…
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