SchoolAI's Glow Up

It's no secret that SchoolAI is my favorite educational AI tool. I have written about it A LOT. About a year ago, I was talking about the move to "SchoolAI 2.0" and how great it was going to be. Well...it came out and parts of it really were great. But there were also parts that began to frustrate teachers. As a lifelong "early adopter" of most technology, I encouraged people to just keep diving in and trusting that the frustrations would be heard and resolved.

I'm here to say that although "2.0" has gone away, the new SchoolAI interface is well on its way to being exactly what teachers need and want. They brought back the things teachers missed: assistants, tools, and the "everyday Spaces" like exit tickets and bellringers. They kept the PowerUps like the image generator, document generator, and graphing calculator. They've merged the idea of building a Space with support from AI and creating your own from scratch. In short - they've blended the best of both platforms.

Let's take a quick tour. The homepage is now the "Discover" page and you can find the navigation on the side instead of the top. Through the Discover page, you can see some of the more frequently used Spaces and tools along with your own recent history. One fun little nugget - if you used the Video Explorer before, you might want to check it out again...it's not quite there yet, but it is feeling very EdPuzzle-like! I will write something up about it once a few more bugs get squashed!

Next up in the navigation is Dot. You may notice that the cute little blue circle with a smiley face is missing from...well...everywhere. That was an intentional decision to avoid humanizing AI for students. They will continue using "Dot" as the name of the main AI chatbot and the cute blue circle with different outfits will continue to appear in marketing materials!

"Create a Space" has gone through a few iterations and will likely continue to go through more over the rest of the school year and the summer. You basically have three choices right now. You can describe what you want to create and let AI build the Space for you (the main option), you can have a conversation with the "Space Designer" assistant to come up with an idea (Brainstorm with Space Designer), or you can build a Space entirely from scratch with your own custom prompting (Create from Scratch):

Next up: Assistants. These really haven't changed at all from "1.0". Each assistant is an "expert" on something different. You can find Dot in here too. These are all just regular chatbots.

Tools haven't changed much from 1.0 either. Simply select the specific tool you want (or the "Build Your Own" option) and fill in each field to get documents quickly generated for you!

The Organize tab is where you will find all of your own content. It includes documents generated from Tools, Spaces you've created, other people's Spaces that you've launched, and any folders (collections) you've created to help keep yourself organized. You will also see anything that has been shared out by the school district.

Session History shows you ALL the Spaces you have ever launched. You can quickly see the status and jump into the Mission Control dashboard. With the 3 dot menus, you can rename the session, duplicate the session to launch for a new class/period, end the session, or delete it entirely.

And finally...Community. This takes you out of the SchoolAI website and into "Circle", a community platform. The link will take you directly to the SchoolAI "Space" (yeah...they use the term Space too...) where you can connect with other SchoolAI users all over the world. It's a fantastic community where you can learn from other educators, ask questions, and get REALLY fast responses from either other SchoolAI users or even SchoolAI employees who also frequently check the posts. Don't be surprised if you post a question or criticism and someone from SchoolAI reaches out to get more feedback! The Community also includes lots of professional development resources and certification courses.

Take some time to check out the new and improved platform and don't be afraid to share feedback as much as possible! I've worked with a LOT of technology companies in my career and I have never experienced one that is THIS responsive to feedback. Imagine if a bunch of people told Apple or Google that they didn't like the latest update and they decided to walk it back and listen to their users? That's what SchoolAI is willing to do. They want to build a product for teachers and students, not themselves.