I Tried the Newest AI Tool for Teachers

Hello there and welcome back to my channel! If there's anything that teachers are used to, it's terms and phrases being abbreviated using letters and acronyms. Lately, two letters that seem to be everywhere are AI. Good abbreviating there, Jim—it saved some time! Now, whether you love or hate it, AI isn't going away anytime soon. That's why I'm excited to partner with KH Academy to test out their newest AI tool for teachers called Kigo. In this article, we'll explore what Kigo can generate and how it can save you a little—or hopefully a lot—of time as a teacher.

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If you're not familiar with KH Academy, they are a nonprofit that offers thousands of free videos, articles, and practice problems for just about every educational standard. This makes it an incredibly powerful resource for teachers, students, and families. If you haven't already, you can head to conacademy.com to browse all the free content they offer, completely ad-free. You can browse their courses by grade, subject, or even standard, organized by state and territory, ranging from Pre-K through college. The courses all have guided lessons with instructional videos, practice questions, activities, and even quizzes. Plus, they offer courses for life skills like social-emotional learning, financial literacy, and even test prep for exams like the LSAT, SATs, and PRAXIS.

I am so excited to partner with KH Academy on this article because they recently released a brand new AI tool for teachers called Kigo. They are giving teachers access to Kigo 100% for free! So, what exactly is Kigo? Think of Kigo as your AI-powered teaching assistant. Kigo has over 20 different tools designed to save you not only time but also brain power, making your job much easier.

The goal is not to replace the teacher with AI but rather to leverage the technology in a way that can free up some of your workload so that you can be fully present when teaching your students. Teachers can use Kigo to generate engaging lesson hooks, draft communications for multilingual families, or even create rubrics. As mentioned, Kigo is 100% free for teachers.

To responsibly adapt AI for education, Kigo is currently not available for students under 18 unless there's a district-wide implementation or the student is granted access by a parent or family. As a teacher, you're not able to add students to your account unless you have that district-wide implementation. However, Kigo does offer paid subscription models for families and students on a monthly or yearly basis. So, if you're not a teacher but you're interested in using Kigo for private tutoring or personalized feedback for yourself or your child, I will leave the information for that below in the description box.

Since this tool is new, I thought it would be fun to test it out in real-time with you. I’ll show you what it’s capable of, my thoughts on what I like, and any changes I might make as I use the tool. This way, we can explore it together.

I'm logged into my account, and you’ll notice I have these Kigo tools. The first thing that catches my eye is how they are all listed out but can also be filtered. They're color-coded! That makes sense. All the planning tools are purple (alliteration love it), create tools are green, differentiate is red, support is blue, and learn is yellow. There's also a search feature. Let's start with a lesson plan, which is intriguing to me.

Create structured detailed lesson plans tailored to your curriculum and student needs. Describe the topic you’re planning to teach. As you type, you can search KH Academy. Let's create a lesson for a fourth-grade math lesson on identifying points, lines, line segments, rays, parallel lines, and perpendicular lines. I’m going to copy the Texas standard (TIS MA.4.6.A) word for word for accuracy.

I love that I can add any details about the topic or teaching tools I’d like to use. For instance, I put "manipulatives" and that my students know the terms but need to practice identifying them in isolation and real-world applications. This would be a follow-up lesson after they've learned the vocabulary.

After hitting “create lesson plan,” the AI engine went to work. It generated a detailed lesson plan with a learning objective, student-facing objectives (which I appreciate for student-friendly terms), standards, warm-up activities, direct instruction ideas incorporating manipulatives, guided practices, independent practices, and even differentiation for advanced and striving learners.

Nevertheless, I noticed the lesson introduction lacked engagement. Kigo offers a tool called "Lesson Hook" to Jazz it up. I played with the “Lesson Hook” tool and generated some fun ideas, like using string and thumb tacks on a corkboard to represent different geometric elements. This would definitely be engaging for my students.

I then tested some other tools within Kigo. The Rubric Generator caught my attention next. Writing rubrics from scratch can be time-consuming. I created a rubric for a fourth-grade writing assignment on the best pizza topping. Kigo suggested criteria such as content and organization with performance levels from beginning to exceeding expectations. This tool generated leveled categories for the rubric, which I was able to copy and paste into a Google Doc for easy access.

Overall, I find Kigo to be an incredibly useful tool. I am not a big fan of AI everywhere, but Kigo ties everything in one place for teachers. It’s great for generating ideas, detailed lesson plans for observations or substitutes, differentiated learning activities, and various communication tools. Its potential to save time while making the teaching process more efficient is enormous.

There are many ways to incorporate Kigo to meet student needs like using chunk text, clear directions, leveling text complexity, generating multiple assessments, and differentiating rubrics. Kigo also simplifies communication, allowing you to draft emails, translate documents, generate report card comments, and more.

Even if you're apprehensive about AI, Kigo shows how powerful it can be. If you're interested in trying Kigo, it's 100% free for teachers. I highly recommend giving it a try.

Thank you to Khan Academy for providing incredible free resources for teachers, students, and families, and for making education more accessible.

If you enjoyed this article and you're excited to use KH Academy or Kigo, please let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment. Thank you for reading, and don't forget to put your positive pants on!

Keywords

KH Academy
AI in education
Kigo
Lesson plans
Differentiation
Teaching tools
Rubric generator
Substitutes
Detailed lesson plans
Communication tools

FAQ

Q: What is Kigo? A: Kigo is a new AI-powered teaching assistant developed by KH Academy. It offers over 20 tools to help teachers save time and make their jobs easier.

Q: Is Kigo free for teachers? A: Yes, Kigo is 100% free for teachers.

Q: Can students use Kigo? A: Kigo is currently not available for students under the age of 18 unless there is a district-wide implementation or parental/family consent. However, Kigo offers paid subscription models for families and students.

Q: What kind of lesson plans can I generate with Kigo? A: You can create structured, detailed lesson plans tailored to your curriculum and student needs. The plans can include objectives, standards, warm-up activities, direct instruction, guided practice, independent practice, differentiation, and more.

Q: Can Kigo help with creating rubrics? A: Yes, Kigo has a rubric generator that provides a structured and leveled rubric for various assignments, saving you the time and effort of creating one from scratch.

Q: How can Kigo assist with communication? A: Kigo offers tools to help draft emails, translate documents, generate clear directions, and create report card comments, among others, making your communication with families and students more efficient.

Q: Is Kigo useful for substitute teachers? A: Absolutely. Kigo can help you generate detailed lesson plans and provide background information on topics, making it easier for substitute teachers to follow and teach your lessons effectively.