What Is Magic School AI & Top 18 Alternatives for the Modern Teacher

Picture this: You've just assigned an essay to your students. You hope this will help them develop critical thinking and writing skills. But when it's time to grade the papers, you dread repeatedly reading the same five-paragraph structure and generic content. You want to support your students’ success but don’t have the time or energy to review these papers. Sound familiar? If so, you’re not alone. Teachers everywhere are overwhelmed with classroom tasks, impacting their ability to do their jobs well. In this article, we’ll explore how educational artificial intelligence, AI in the Classroom, tools like Magic School AI can help lighten your load so you can get back to what you love—teaching!

One of the first AI tools you can start using right away is EssayGrader.ai. This grading software for teachers uses artificial intelligence to help assess student writing quickly and accurately. It can help you optimize classroom operations and save time to focus on improving the educational experience for you and your students. 

What is the Magic School AI?

Magic School AI is a website and Chrome extension that provides a variety of AI-powered tools and resources for educators. The platform’s primary purpose is to help teachers save time and improve classroom outcomes by streamlining and simplifying the creation of educational and teaching-related content. 

Magic School AI aims to alleviate educators’ workload by producing resources supporting student learning. The target audience for Magic School AI is educators.

What Does Magic School AI Do?

Magic School AI can do many things to help teachers, including:

• Generating informational content
• Leveling texts
• Brainstorming lesson ideas

Generative AI Tools

The platform uses generative AI to produce over 40 different types of educational and teaching-related content. After signing up, teachers access a simple dashboard to choose which tool to use, from creating a behavior intervention plan to leveling a text’s reading level up or down. Each tool works slightly differently, but most ask teachers to:

• Indicate grade level
• Input any relevant background information
• Include general instructions for what they’d like to see created for them

Customize and Share

The AI then takes over and creates something following the teacher’s input. Teachers can then:

• Adjust reading level
• Make the output longer or shorter
• Ask for it in a summarized form
• Translate it into more than 30 languages

When they’re happy with the output, they can copy it and paste it wherever they want.

Why Use Magic School AI?

Magic School AI Is Made for Educators

Magic School AI stands out because it’s designed specifically for educators. Educators will appreciate the user-friendly interface that helps them:

• Save time 
• Personalize learning

The dashboard showcases a variety of generative AI tools that help teachers immediately improve their classroom outcomes.

Magic School AI Makes Using AI Easy

If you’re new to AI, using Magic School AI is a great place to start. The tool simplifies the process of using AI by showcasing tools and capabilities you might not have even realized AI could offer.

User-Friendly Interface

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
• Text fields

Simply click a button, enter key details related to your task, and voilà! Magic.

Magic School AI Is 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. 

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.

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10 Game-Changing Features of Magic School AI

1. Text Leveler: Transform Content To Suit All Learners

The Text Leveler is a powerful feature that rewrites any text at different grade levels. This tool can significantly enhance:

• The inclusivity 
• Accessibility of learning materials

To use it:

• 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.

Text Leveler Tool

With the Text Leveler, teachers can create multiple versions of a passage or article to provide students with options, adapt high-interest but complex content to be more accessible for younger learners, and differentiate reading assignments to suit individual needs.

2. Text Translator: Break Down Language Barriers

The Text Translator instantly translates any text into multiple languages. This tool is a game changer for ELL teachers or anyone looking to support their ELL students and families. Of course, the accuracy of translating tools can vary, and I cannot personally vouch for every translation. 

But the good news is that I’ve heard from many ELL and World Language teachers that this tool has already benefited them. So, it seems promising to me! With the Text Translator, educators can offer translated versions of a newsletter to:

• Support multilingual families
• Create a Welcome poster in their students' primary languages
• Translate emails to families in their preferred language

3. AI-Resistant Assignments: Combat Plagiarism With Creativity

Worried about AI-generated plagiarism? The AI-Resistant Assignments tool can help with that! Simply enter your assignment prompt or objective, and Magic School AI will generate 2-3 creative suggestions for modifying the assignment to make it harder for an AI chatbot to complete. 

With this feature, teachers can turn a standard research paper into a more engaging interactive project, shift from traditional book reports to multimedia presentations that include personal reflections, and develop project-based tasks that require the application of concepts in real-world scenarios.

4. YouTube Video Questions: Easily Create Video Comprehension Questions

The YouTube Video Questions tool allows you to generate 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. 

With this feature, educators can create a pre-viewing guide with questions that set the stage for discussing the topic, generate comprehension questions to assess understanding of the presented material and develop open-ended questions to encourage discussion and personal connection to the video topic.

5. Sentence Starters: Help Students Organize Their Thoughts

The Sentence Starter tool can assist teachers in quickly generating a list of sentence starters for any topic. Sentence starters are a potent scaffolding technique that can help students:

• Organize 
• Communicate their thoughts more effectively

With this tool, educators can 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

6. Raina The Chatbot: Your AI Teaching Assistant

Raina is both an instructional coach and a teacher's assistant. This chatbot, offered by Magic School AI, answers all your teaching-related queries. Like ChatGPT, it responds to text-based prompts. 

You can use it to perform various actions, such as translating text into different languages, such as Arabic, Urdu, Japanese, etc.:

• Generating multiple-choice questions for student assessments
• Rewriting content with either fewer or more words
• Summarizing content in sentences, paragraphs, or bullet points
• Asking comparative questions

7. Output History: Access and Bookmark Past AI Outputs

Another notable feature of the Magic School platform is Output History. This tool saves the output generated by AI so you can access the history whenever you want. You can also bookmark preferred generations to find them quickly in the future. This feature lets you tweak and edit past creations and make them fresh.

8. Training: Magic School AI Helps Educators Get Better

Khan's Magic Platform offers training for educators to help them enhance their teaching skills. It provides different certification courses that guide you on how to use the Magic School platform. The certifications it offers are:

• A Level 1 introductory course on using Magic School
• A Level 2 course on prompting and advanced features
• A Level 3 course on becoming eligible to be a certified Magic School trainer

9. Group Work Generator: Plan Collaborative Activities

A group work generator is another practical planning tool by Magic School AI. It allows educators to plan a group activity relevant to the topic of study. The aim is to teach students the importance of:

• Collaboration 
• Teamwork

Group Work Generator

It will also help them develop social and problem-solving skills. To use the group work generator, educators:

• Select a grade level
• Choose the number of students participating
• Set a time for group activity
• Type in the topic name
• Click generate

The Magic AI tool will give a group activity plan with a detailed task description.

10. Magic Content AI Tools: Save Time With Content Generation

There are a couple of content tools, such as Magic School AI, that can save educators loads of time. The first is the Rubric Generator. This AI tool will develop a well-structured rubric in table format for you. The AI rubric will provide a transparent framework for grading assignments. It will also help educators identify the strengths and weaknesses of a particular student. 

The steps to use the Magic School’s tool are to:

• Click on the rubric generator
• Select a grade from pre-k to university year 13
• Input a clear objective
• Type in the title and description of the assignment
• Choose a point scale
• Hit generate

You can also add some additional details to customize the rubric. Another helpful content tool is the Vocabulary-Based Text. It can help you improve the grade-appropriate vocabulary of the students. The Magic School AI will create text containing all the keywords you want. 

To use it:

• Specify a grade level
• Prompt the AI about the topic of the text
• Type the vocabulary words you want to be included
• Select the length of the text
• Click generate

How to Use Magic School AI?

Sign Up for Magic School AI: The First Step

Account registration is the first step. 

• Visit the magicschool.ai.
• Hit the sign-up button in the top right corner.
• Enter your email and a password. Make sure to input a strong password to prevent data threats.
• Click sign-up. You can also sign up using a Google or Microsoft account. 

After signing in, you will be greeted with a welcome message. Magic School will then give you an overview of the AI tools before you start.

Explore the Features & Decide What You Need

Once signed in, you can check out the Magic School AI features. It offers over 50 AI tools to assist teachers with various tasks. Examples include:

• A rubric generator
• Text leveler
• Multiple-choice assessment
• Lesson planning

Identify your need and search the tool accordingly.

Input the Prompts

After tool selection, the next step is to input relevant prompts. Khan's AI platform follows written prompts in the same way as ChatGPT. So, if you want accurate results, give clear written instructions to the tool.

Let the AI Cast Magic

Once you have prompted the tool with relevant information, click generate. The magic school will use an advanced AI algorithm to:

• Analyze the instructions 
• Give the best possible output

Review and Edit

After the AI generates results:

• You can edit them.
• Review the results thoroughly and personalize them. 
• Make necessary adjustments to match your teaching goal.

Share or Export

When satisfied with the final output:

• You can copy or save it
• You can also export the result in the following ways
• Print the output
• Transfer it to Microsoft Word
• Transfer it to the Google Docs

You can share the results publicly with anyone on the internet.

Is Magic School AI Free?

Yes, Magic School AI offers a free version for teachers. The free plan gives you access to all the platform's basic AI features. To access the advanced features, subscribe to Magic School Plus. For individual subscribers, it will cost $11.99/month and $99.96/year. 

The paid plan comes with a 15-day free trial. You can enjoy the plus features and unlimited usage for two weeks during this time. The platform also offers an innovator program at a special price for schools and districts.

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11 Best Practices & Safety While Using Magic School AI

1. Check For Bias And Accuracy

AI might occasionally produce biased or incorrect content. Always double-ccheck before sharing with students. Magic School AI has the potential to generate erroneous or prejudiced information. Before presenting any AI-produced content to students, educators should verify for fairness and accuracy.

2. The 80-20 Approach

Use AI for initial work, but make sure to:

• Add your final touch
• Review for bias and accuracy
• Contextualize appropriately for the last 20%

A solid strategy for integrating Magic School AI into classroom activities is to let the AI do about 80% of the preliminary work, and then you do the final 20%. This means you let the AI generate a response to a prompt you provided, and then you:

• Review the content for bias and accuracy
• Revise as needed
• Add your context before presenting it to students

3. Your Judgment Matters

See AI-generated content as a starting point, not a final solution. Always adhere to your school's guidelines. Remembering that AI is not human and cannot think critically or creatively is crucial. So, while Magic School AI can be a helpful tool, educators must use their judgment when deciding how to utilize the program. Always follow your school's guidelines for using AI in the classroom.

4. Know The Limits

AI is not connected with retrieval from the internet yet, and training ends at a certain date, so be aware when dealing with recent topics. Magic School AI is not connected to the internet and cannot pull recent information from online sources. Its training data only goes up until September 2021. Be aware that any current events or recent topics that may have developed after that date will likely be:

• Inaccurate 
• Not reflected in the AI's responses

5. Protect Privacy

Don't include personal student details like names or addresses. We strive to remove any accidentally submitted information promptly. As an educator, it’s your responsibility to protect your students’ privacy when using AI tools. Never input any personally identifiable information (PII) into Magic School AI. This includes:

• Names
• Addresses
• Other details that could be used to identify an individual

We take privacy seriously and work to eliminate any accidentally submitted information, but it’s best to avoid this issue altogether.

6. Your Teacher Can See Your Activity In Magic School

Follow your school and classroom guidelines when interacting with the AI. Students should understand that any work they do in Magic School AI is not confidential. Teachers can see how students are using the AI and what the AI is generating for them. Because of this, students should follow all classroom guidelines for using the tool.

7. Math Answers Not Reliable

Large language models can help you with step-by-step processes, but need help to calculate math solutions accurately. Do not rely on AI for math solutions. Students should refrain from using Magic School AI to generate math answers, as the results will likely be inaccurate. While AI can help explain processes, it cannot reliably compute math solutions.

8. Interacting With An AI Takes Practice

Be clear and specific about what you need so the AI can give you a better answer. Try again if the first try isn’t what you hoped for. AI is a new technology that can take some getting used to. Users should understand that interacting with Magic School AI may initially feel awkward. To get the best results, be clear and specific about what you need to help the AI generate a helpful response. If the first result isn’t what you hoped for, try again!

9. AI Is A Tool - Not A Replacement For Your Thinking

See AI-generated content as something that can help assist you, But not the final solution. Students must understand that while AI can be a helpful tool, it is no substitute for human intelligence. Any content generated by Magic School AI should be used to help inform your ideas, not replace them.

10. Monitor For Bias And Accuracy

AI might occasionally produce biased or incorrect content. Always double-check important information. Magic School AI can sometimes produce biased or inaccurate content like any AI. Students should always double-check any information they plan to use generated by the AI.

11. Protect Privacy

Don't include personal details like names or addresses. We strive to remove any accidentally submitted information promptly. Like their teachers, students should protect their privacy when using Magic School AI. Personal information, like names or addresses, should never be submitted to the AI. 

Top 18 Magic School AI Alternatives for the Modern Teacher

1. Speedy Essay Grading with EssayGrader

EssayGrader is the most accurate AI grading platform trusted by 60,000+ educators worldwide. On average, it takes a teacher 10 minutes to grade a single essay, but with EssayGrader, that time is cut down to 30 seconds. That's a 95% reduction in the time it takes to grade an essay, with the same results.

With EssayGrader, Teachers can:

• Replicate their grading rubrics (so AI doesn't have to do the guesswork to set the grading criteria)
• Setup fully custom rubrics
• Grade essays by class
• Bulk upload of essays
• Use our AI detector to catch essays written by AI
• Summarize essays with our essay summarizer

Teacher Trust

Our AI tool helps primary school, high school, and college professors grade their students' essays. On our platform, 60,000+ teachers graded over half a million essays. Save 95% of your time grading school work with our tool to get high-quality, specific, and accurate writing feedback for essays in seconds with EssayGrader's grading software for teachers. Get started for free today!  

2. Streamline School Tasks with SchoolAI

This platform helps streamline administrative and educational tasks such as:

• Email drafting
• Marking
• Quiz creation
• Lesson planning

It's known for its time-saving capabilities in creating and organizing educational content.

3. TeacherMatic: Your Comprehensive AI Assistant

A comprehensive AI assistant for educators, TeacherMatic offers tools tailored for creating:

• Rubrics
• Marking assignments
• Generating report card comments and tools for lesson plans and question generation

4. Save Time with TeachMate Ai

This platform provides AI-powered tools for generating:

• Reports
• Model texts
• Comprehension texts
• Questions that aim to save educators significant time

5. Automate Lesson Planning with EducatorLab

Focused on automated lesson planning and creation, EducatorLab aids educators by:

• Streamlining the lesson planning process 
• Improving student outcomes through AI-generated materials

6. Lesson Plans Made Easy with LessonPlans.ai

This platform uses generative AI to efficiently help educators create custom, age-specific lesson plans. It is known for significantly speeding up the lesson planning process.

7. Curipod: A New Approach to Lesson Planning

Curipod is an educational app that marries AI-based lesson planning and slide-making into a single tool. It’s a handy app for teachers who want to finish lesson-ready slides quickly. Using Curipod, you can:

• Select from an assortment of lesson types
• Choose your grade level
• Supply a bit of information related to desired lesson outcomes
• You’ll get a slide deck that’s ready to go up on the class screen

PDF Download & Limitations

Conveniently, you can get the students to download chosen slides as PDF files and use these as references while studying or writing assignments. One drawback of Curipod is that the slides you create only exist within its ecosystem. You can’t export them into the more commonly used presentation programs, such as:

• Microsoft PowerPoint 
• Google Slides

Curipod has two plans:

• Basic 
• School & District

Pricing Plans

The Basic plan is free, but it’s limited to use by a single teacher and includes none of the premium resources (like state standard test preparation lessons). The School & District plan costs $3,999 per school and has more features for advanced lesson creation and greater collaboration between educational staff.

8. Transcribe Conversations with AudioPen

AudioPen is an AI transcriber that’s worth considering if you teach a conversational language class — or simply prefer speaking over writing. It’s designed to capture spoken text, but unlike most dictation apps, AudioPen allows you to enhance the output text using generative AI. 

You can then share the output text or store it in the app. These features can be helpful for transcribing students’ verbal answers and writing:

• Lesson plans
• Assignments
• Report card comments using text-to-speech 

9. Meet Pi: Your Personal AI Companion

Pi is your personal AI companion, ready to assist you with various tasks and answer your queries. It's designed to be:

• Supportive
• Smart
• Available whenever needed

10. Generate Images with Ideogram

Ideogram (ideogram.ai) is an AI image generator. Type a description of the image you'd like to generate -- or choose features of the image from selectable options below the prompt. Ideogram generates your image and can improve your description/prompt with AI.

11. AutoDraw: Fun with AI for Educators and Students

AutoDraw is a free, web-based drawing tool created by Google that uses artificial intelligence to help users create professional-looking drawings and illustrations quickly and easily. It has been around for a long time, and its simplicity means anyone of any age can use it to try AI.

12. Create Engaging Videos with Pictory

Pictory AI is a cool platform that makes it super easy to create engaging videos. It uses advanced AI technology to help you turn your written scripts or articles into captivating videos. You can even add your voice or use an AI voiceover to bring your video to life.

13. Canva Magic Classroom

Canva Magic Classroom is a suite of AI tools designed for educators. It includes features such as:

• Magic Design
• A free AI design tool for creating visual content
• Magic Write
• AI text generator 
• Writer that assists in generating written content

14. Level Resources with Diffit

Diffit allows you to get leveled resources for literally anything. You can adapt existing materials for any reader, generate just right resources for any topic, and then edit and share resources with students. 

15. Brisk Teaching: Your Free AI Assistant

Brisk Teaching (briskteaching.com) is a free Chrome extension that uses AI to help teachers:

• Save time 
• Improve their teaching methods

Brisk integrates with Google Classroom, Docs, Slides, YouTube, Canvas, and Schoology, allowing teachers to: 

• Create instructional materials
• Provide feedback
• Evaluate student writing
• Adjust reading levels
• Generate personalized curriculum
• Analyze class progress

16. Teach Aid

TeachAid (teachaid.ca) automates lesson prep as your AI teaching assistant. It includes:

• Lesson planning
• Assessment planning
• Interactive presentations
• Learning activities

It includes several tools you'd find in different apps in one spot.

17. Eduaide.ai

Eduaide.ai is an AI-powered teaching assistant designed to help teachers with:

• Lesson planning
• Instructional design
• Generating educational content

It offers:

• A resource generator
• Teaching Assistant
• Feedback bot
• AI chat

18. Khanmigo

Khanmigo is an AI-powered learning tool developed by Khan Academy that can be used as a virtual tutor and a debate partner. Teachers can also use it to:

• Generate lesson plans 
• Assist with other administrative tasks

Save Time While Grading Schoolwork with EssayGrader's Grading Software for Teachers

The critical role of writing skills in academic life cannot be overstated. Writing is a fundamental way students demonstrate their knowledge and understanding of a subject. Grading essays can be time-consuming and tedious for educators, especially if they have large classes. Luckily, with the introduction of tools like EssayGrader, teachers don't have to tackle the task alone. 

EssayGrader is an AI-assisted grading tool that helps educators assess student essays accurately and efficiently, saving them valuable time.

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