AI Advocates

S1 E12: Exploring Khanmigo as a Free Flexible AI Tool

• Lisa Dieker • Season 1 • Episode 12

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In this episode of AI Advocates, Dr. Lisa Dieker and Dr. Maggie Mosher dive into Khanmigo, an AI-powered educational tool developed by Khan Academy. They discuss how it compares to other platforms like Magic School and highlight its teacher-friendly features. Maggie walks through Khanmigo’s flexible interface, where users can explore and favorite various AI tools tailored for planning, tutoring, feedback, and more. The conversation also touches on the potential of AI to support learners, the ethical considerations around accessibility for students and parents, and the importance of educators testing tools themselves before classroom use. Whether you're curious about AI in education or looking to streamline your teaching, this episode offers insights and practical tips for making the most of Khanmigo. 

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Music:

Reclaim your time….., time…., time.

Lisa Dieker:

Welcome to AI Advocates. I'm Lisa Dieker.

Maggie Mosher:

And I'm Dr. Maggie Mosher.

Lisa Dieker:

And we're excited again to have you reclaim some time with Khanmigo Maggie, talk about your thoughts on that AI?

Maggie Mosher:

Yeah, I love Khanmigo. We did Magic School a bit ago, and we were talking about, there are similarities in the tools. Khanmigo tools, what I love about both of them, they're free for teachers. They're not necessarily free for students or parents. And so we'll talk a little bit about that. But the part I love about the teachers that's free is, when you get into Khanmigo tools, it has all of these options at the top that will let you decide which chat bots and which features you like the most, and then you can favorite them, and they'll always be at the top of your screen, and it'll tell you by color what each of these chat bots or what each of these tools does. So this tool helps with planning. They're all purple. This tool helps with creating. They're all green. This tool is the one that differentiates. They're all pink. So I love that it has that kind of helped, helps you kind of block all of that out. It does a really good job with class newsletters and exit tickets, I will say the lesson hook I really enjoy on this specific piece. And then all of the writing is really great. So those are my favorite things within it?

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, I, in general, think it's, again, an equally good tool, as we mentioned to you know, Magic School AI, with some different features. And I think what I really appreciate is if, for those of you who are maybe more mature in our crowd, might remember the original Khan Academy videos, some people you know were against because it was a talking hand. And really and truly, these are rich and robust. So if you haven't tried them, I really appreciate in the math and where you can do the Student Coaching that you know, it doesn't say, if the student says, I think six times six is 30, it doesn't say, "No, it's 36." It says, "Why do you think that?" You do realize what six times is so they're they're prompting that they have built in to their chat bots and their and their coaching is great. And then in the writing, I think it is a rock star in the writing, not only the prompts and the discussion prompts, I think they've done a really good job of understanding the the power of discourse and the power of writing, but also the feedback. So if you are needing to reclaim some time in essays, highly recommend you look at the feedback it gives. I have a great friend who's an English teacher, and she's like, oh my goodness, after being Khanmigo, she said, I don't even feel guilty that an AI agent is reading the papers and giving feedback, because I then go and read that feedback and really get more in depth in the paper than I gotta try to type, you know, those were her words, a sense of, this was a great sentence instead of because she said, I want to give good feedback and corrective feedback in writing, which is so important and hard to do.

Maggie Mosher:

And I will say, with the feedback piece I've also found. So this one Khanmigo and Brisk AI will both give feedback within the document for you, so you don't have to keep cutting and pasting things back and forth. And then you can continue to type like you can continue to add to that feedback everything that you want. So it's almost like you have this personal assistant you're talking to that says, you know, this is what's good and this is what's bad, and then you put the extra part of that relationship with the student into those comments, and I love that. I will say, if you are a parent, I would highly recommend, if you have a student that you do not know how to assist them in their homework, this Khanmigo for students. It's a paid version. The teacher is free.

Lisa Dieker:

I think it's like$4 a month, though, isn't it?

Maggie Mosher:

It's not bad at all in the paid version for students.

Lisa Dieker:

It's not free but it's not expensive, right.

Maggie Mosher:

But it's gotten so good that you can actually have your camera of your computer look at the problem that they're looking at, and it will tell you where they are in the problem, and it'll give them feedback on their paper, like the paper they're writing on. It'll say you did this correctly, but you might want to look at this piece of your math problem, which I love, because it feels like it's a real person there interacting.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, and my last more than anything else you want to share, of course, but is, if you're a novice teacher and you really struggle with getting a lesson started, or you're moving kids to a lab, or you're doing stations, it had this great tool called clear directions. And I don't care how well you think your directions are, I know mine, I put one in there for an activity I was doing in class, and I left, I was like, wow, that is so much better. And I think you've said it so well, Maggie, that that all of these tools we're talking about is your personal assistant to reclaim time, but don't let the assistant take over your brain read over so it doesn't say, like, stupid go here, or, you know, silly go there, or whatever, when really it was supposed to be safely, go there. You know, that kind of thing can happen because it doesn't have emotions and feelings. It is still just a computer, so be cautious. But honestly, the clear directions it gave for my activity I was doing in my college class was so much better than the directions I was planning to give them on the board, on my PowerPoint slides to start with. So any last thoughts from you, Maggie?

Maggie Mosher:

Yeah, the last three, I would always recommend people check out is that Refresh My Knowledge if you're wondering about something specifically in Math Science, it gives a really good for us as teachers, reminder of how to do something by step by step, and then that text rewriter, it is one of the best at taking text and making it what you want it to be, and also in chunking text, that chunk text piece. So those are some things that some of the other tools don't have, that I think Khanmigo does really well, and I hope that it continues to reclaim your time.

Lisa Dieker:

So check out our work on KU Scholar Works, and we will be happy to give you links to any other activities that are going on. Thanks for joining us.