SchoolAI Sidekick for Students

SchoolAI has always been a tool designed for students, but the only way they have ever been able to access it is through a guard-railed Space designed by teachers and shared with them. This allows teachers to see the chat transcript and control exactly how the AI interacts with the students. The downside is that students have to wait for the teachers to create these Spaces. What if students had their very own version of "Dot" that could support them with homework for any subject at any time, but that would NEVER do the work for them? Wonder no more! SchoolAI student accounts with Sidekick are here!

Students simply go to student.schoolai.com and log in with Google. It takes them to their own "Sidekick":

Students can ask for help with homework, studying, researching, or learning about something. They can upload work and ask for feedback or support. They can upload work and ask for more explanation. But one thing it won't do? Their work:

For comparison, Google just opened up Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) to students. Here's what happened when I uploaded some sources and asked it to write a paper for me:

Side note on Gemini Notebook - since it only creates content based on your attached sources, it greatly reduces (almost eliminates completely) the problem of AI hallucinations. Just something for teachers to keep in mind when questioning the academic integrity of student work.

What does this all mean for teachers? Spaces aren't going away. They are still a great way to give students a fully controlled environment specific to your content area. They are still a great way to give students a real-world role-play scenario. This new feature is more about giving students a little more freedom to explore AI and learn how to interact with it themselves. There are still guardrails - it's always going to have an academic focus and it will notify administrators if they type anything concerning. It's like bumpers on a bowling alley. It gives students the ability to access an "open" AI environment without fear of them falling into a gutter of academic dishonesty or inappropriate behavior.

My suggestion would be to introduce it to students and give them some ideas on how they could use it to support themselves in your class. Giving a homework assignment on factoring polynomials? Show them that they can get help from Sidekick if they don't understand it. And no - they can't just ask it for the answer to each problem. Giving a test on genotypes, phenotypes, and Punnett squares? Show them how sidekick can help them understand how they all work and give them sample questions until they feel comfortable with the concept. Doing that research project on NASA's Artemis project? Show them how Sidekick can walk them through the research and creation process one step at a time.

One other helpful thing about the student view is that students can easily access previous Spaces. So if you build a tutor Space or a writing feedback Space and share it out with your students, they can get back to it any time without first needing to find the link on Classroom or in their email. As long as the Space is still active, it will appear in their Spaces tab:

Finally, if you're still on the fence about whether this would be useful to your students, the great thing is that teachers can also access the student account view - just visit the same link (student.schoolai.com) and log in with your staff account. You can test out the Sidekick and see if you think it will help out your students.

Side shameless plug...I had the awesome opportunity to be featured alongside two other SchoolAI "Champions" in a webinar this week. You can watch it here!