What is Magic School AI?
Magic School AI is an AI platform for teachers (and now students!) designed to assist and streamline various aspects of their work. MagicSchool helps expedite lesson planning, facilitate differentiation, generate assessments, craft Individualized Education Programs (IEPs), enhance communication clarity, and provide a range of additional functionalities.
However, while Magic School AI offers a robust platform with over 60 features, the need for more extensive functionalities or budget constraints may prompt educators to explore other options. Moreover, while MagicSchool provides a free version for teachers, it comes with limitations and excludes access to the latest features. To unlock additional capabilities, users must either upgrade at a cost of $100 per year or involve their district or school for enhanced features, security, and privacy measures.
Below we delve into 12 of the best free alternatives to Magic School AI, each offering unique functionalities tailored to educators’ diverse needs. Whether you’re seeking comprehensive automation, personalized feedback, or interactive lesson planning, these alternatives provide valuable resources to enhance your teaching experience.
Free Magic School AI Alternatives And How They Compare
Instructional Planning and Resource Creation
#1 Edcafe AI
An overall best alternative to Magic School AI, Edcafe AI, is an all-in-one generative AI teaching assistant, designed specifically to help educators cut down hours of work to mere minutes. With tools spanning lesson planning, content creation, interactive learning, and student assessment, Edcafe takes on complex tasks, while still making sure teaching materials are personalized and tailor-fit to every educator’s needs.
The platform’s capabilities are thoughtfully organized across essential teaching functions: instructional planning, material generation, assessments, and even customizable chatbots for interactive support.
Edcafe simplifies prompt creation by allowing teachers to turn a topic, text, webpage link, or any existing document directly into ready-to-use instructional content. It reduces the need for extensive prompt engineering, making it easier specifically for teachers starting out with AI.
Unlike Magic School AI, Edcafe smartly interacts with students by transforming static materials into engaging, dynamic learning activities. It allows educators to go beyond text-based resources, letting students view and/or work on learning materials asynchronously.
Edcafe also provides AI-driven insights, giving educators a real-time overview of student progress, engagement, and areas where support is needed. These insights are also provided to students during assessments so they, too, are kept on track.
Additionally, Edcafe includes a shared resource hub, similar to Google Drive, where teachers can store, organize, and share AI-created materials. It’s an accessible and collaborative space for managing all your teaching resources in one place, ready to share or modify as needed.
Features Included:
- AI Lesson Plan Generator
- Slides Generator
- Teaching Resource Finder
- Summary Tool
- AI Flashcards Maker
- AI Vocabulary Cards
- Vocabulary-Based Reading Exercises
- Text-Leveler Reading
- AI Text-to-Speech
- AI Text-to-Image Generator
- AI Quiz Generator
- YouTube to Quiz Generator
- Reading Comprehension
- Custom Teaching AI Bot
- Q&A Chatbot
- Quiz Chatbot
- Character Chatbot
- AI Knowledge Bot
Major Differences from Magic School AI:
- Interactive AI Content: Edcafe’s AI-generated teaching materials like quizzes, flashcards, audio-supported reading exercises, and more can be dynamically and interactively shared to students which they can view and/or work on asynchronously, unlike the text-based output that Magic School AI mostly offers.
- Shareable Asynchronous AI Teaching Materials: With Edcafe, interactive content sharing is instant. Teachers receive a shareable QR code and link right after saving, ready for students to access immediately. In contrast, Magic School AI requires additional setup steps, like creating student rooms, adding tools, and customizing templates, which can add complexity and delay sharing.
- Google Drive-like Library: Edcafe has a dedicated library where teachers can not only save but also organize AI-generated teaching materials in folders with no limits on file storage. While Magic School AI gives you access to Output History, there are less organization options and can only be accessed fully beyond a paywall by upgrading to their Plus or Enterprise plans.
- Fully-Designed AI Slides: Edcafe AI’s slide generator includes four theme designs, enabling you to create ready-to-use slides without extra design effort. It also integrates with Google Images, allowing you to effortlessly add or revise images directly within the generated slides, unlike Magic School AI which does not offer slide designs and images, requiring more manual adjustments for a complete presentation.
- Unique content generators in Edcafe not present in Magic School AI include:
- Interactive AI Flashcards Maker
- Teaching Resources Finder
- AI Text-to-Speech Generator
- Reading Comprehension Quiz
#2 Brisk Teaching
Brisk is a Google Chrome extension to enhance productivity and customize learning experiences for educators through automation and personalization of various teaching tools and content.
Features Included:
- Generate lesson plans, quizzes, rubrics, presentations, etc
- Convert websites, articles, and YouTube videos into instructional content like quizzes and slide decks
- Create administrative documents (ie, emails, newsletters, recommendation letters and more)
- Develop customized interventions, IEPs, and behavior plans for individual student needs
- Helps to provide feedback on student work
- AI detection on student work
- Simplify complex texts, shorten sentences, modify word choices
- Integrations with Google Workspace, Canvas, Schoology, and other existing teacher tools
Major Differences from Magic School AI:
- Brisk allows the use of the AI tool across various teacher tools and websites, where Magic School AI is its own platform
- Provide Feedback in certain formats depending on the direction of assignment
- Core features include adjusting reading levels, generating quizzes/assessments from texts/videos, plagiarism checking
- With Google Classroom integration, teachers can replay step-by-step student revision history and detect AI-generated text
#3 Education Copilot
Similar to Magic School AI, Education Copilot is designed to streamline teachers’ lesson planning and resource creation processes. It aims to save teachers time and increase efficiency by automating tasks and offering support in both English and Spanish languages.
Features Included:
- Generate structured lesson plans for any subject, lesson, or concept
- Create comprehensive handouts in English or Spanish
- Enables creation of student reports to track progress and identify areas for improvement
- Use it to develop detailed project outlines for long-term student assignments
Major Differences from Magic School AI:
- Sole focus on the planning and prep stages of teaching
- Supports both English and Spanish languages for generating materials
- Create writing prompts, student reports, project outlines, and various templates (PowerPoint, etc.)
#4 Eduaide.AI
Eduaide.AI offers aims to streamline instructional planning, resource creation, and assessment generation. It offers AI-assisted lesson planning, customizable teaching resources, an assessment builder, and a feedback bot.
Features Included:
- Create personalized lesson plans tailored to students’ needs
- Offers over 100 different types of teaching resources, such as worksheets, activities, presentations, and more
- Assessment builder to adjust difficulty levels and export for use in class
- Generates feedback based on built-in rubrics or custom rubrics imported on your own
- Collaborate and chat with an AI teaching assistant
Major Differences from Magic School AI:
- Offering a similar number of features, some can find Eduaide.Ai UI takes more time to learn
- The main focus is on instructional planning, resource creation, and assessment generation
- Build lessons and objectives around 5Es — Engage, Explore, Experience, Elaborate, Evaluate
#5 Almanack
Almanack facilitates various instructional tasks like automated lesson plans, report cards, presentation slides, and question creation. It aims to streamline lesson planning and provide tailored support to students. Integrated with popular teaching tools (Google, Quizlet, Gimkit, and more), Almanack offers long-range curriculum planning and alignment with state standards.
Features Included:
- Generate curriculum-aligned lesson plans with learning objectives, activities, and assessments
- Provides ideas and creation of class materials like worksheets, quizzes, tests, presentations, videos and assessments aligned with curricula or lecture notes
- Track student progress and performance in the gradebook
- Collaborative group activities
- Exporting to various formats
Major Differences from Magic School AI:
- Includes Gradebook for progress and analytics tracking
- Plan whole courses breaking down by units and lessons
- Align curriculum meticulously with specific learning objectives from 500+ state standards and international curriculums
#6 LearntAI
Learnt.AI offers assistance by generating high-quality educational content tailored to their specific needs. Through Learnt.ai, teachers can effortlessly create comprehensive lesson plans aligned with educational standards and curriculum goals, generate various types of assessments with questions of varying difficulty levels, and develop interactive educational content like scenario-based activities and simulations
Features Included:
- Generate educational content like lesson plans, assignments, quizzes, prompts, and more
- Customize content to better fit your needs
- Assessment tool creation like quizzes, tests, assignments, and depth of knowledge questions
- Sidekick chatbots to help with course evaluation, job aid, blended learning, gamification, and more
Major Differences from Magic School AI:
- A main focus of content creation and instructional delivery for its tools
- Provides sidekicks and tools for mental health like the self-care assistant
Interactive Personalised Differentiated Lesson Planning and Activity Creation
Edcafe AI’s Differentiated Instruction Content Generator
The Differentiated Instruction Content Generator in Edcafe AI is a powerful tool crafted to adapt learning experiences to the unique needs of each student. By simply specifying the topic, student requirements, and relevant state standards, the generator delivers tailored learning activities and questions.
This tool provides an array of resources, from captivating lesson hooks to Depth of Knowledge (DOK) questions and Bloom’s Taxonomy-aligned activities, enhancing your ability to create differentiated, engaging lessons. With Edcafe, educators can seamlessly design dynamic instruction that meets students where they are and encourages meaningful learning.
Get a copy of this Edcafe-generated Differentiated Instruction content about Social Media.
#7 Diffit
Diffit main goal is to assist teachers in creating differentiated instructional materials and activities tailored to students’ reading levels and learning needs. With integrations with Google Classroom and a web platform, Diffit saves teachers time by automating the process of curating leveled resources and generating classroom-ready materials based on text, video, or “literally anything.”
Features Included:
- Convert any text or content into different reading levels
- Generate instructional materials like presentation slides, worksheets, and homework assignments from the text
- Tailor assessments to different reading levels to evaluate understanding
- Generate vocabulary lists with definitions and examples from texts
- Summarize Text
- Integration with Google Classroom
Major Differences from Magic School AI:
- Specializes in leveling and differentiating texts for various reading abilities
- Generates reading materials, assessments, and activities based on text
- Translates vocabulary lists and text summaries
#8 Curipod
Curipod‘s focus is on simplifying lesson planning and delivery with interactive presentations, now powered by AI. With customizable interactive features, teachers can deliver dynamic lessons directly to student devices, promoting inclusivity and catering to diverse learning styles.
Features Included:
- Generate interactive lesson presentations based on lesson focus and learning objectives with AI
- Provides real-time assessment tools for teachers to gauge student understanding
- Teachers can collaborate on creating lessons
- Offers a library of pre-built lesson templates created and shared by the community
Major Differences from Magic School AI:
- Curipod is focused on interactive lesson planning and delivery, whereas Magic School AI offers a broader range of functionalities catering to different aspects of teaching and classroom management
- Ability to edit presentation after creation
- Supports real-time assessment through polls, open-ended questions, and instant student responses
For Writing Support and Writing Feedback:
#9 Quillbot
QuillBot‘s superpower is in writing-related tasks for teachers. It can help with paraphrasing texts, checking grammar and fluency, summarizing lengthy passages, and even translating between languages. With QuillBot, teachers can save time on writing tasks, provide clearer feedback, and support students in improving their writing skills.
Features Included:
- Paraphrase complex texts with 5 different modes based on the desired purpose of paraphrasing
- Identifies and corrects grammatical errors
- Plagiarism Checker
- Summarize lengthy articles, papers, or documents into concise summaries, extracting the key information
- Translate text or writing from one language to another
- Thesaurus and word explorer for improving writing
- Integrations with Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and web browsers.
Major Differences from Magic SchooI AI:
- Primarily focused on aiding users in various writing-related tasks, not all encompassing teacher tools
- Quillbot’s feature are more general and can be used by teachers, students, and working professionals to improve writing
- QuillBot primarily uses natural language processing (NLP) and language models vs GPT-3 and GPT-4
#10 Class Companion
Class Companion supports teachers in providing feedback and practice opportunities for students’ writing assignments. It offers instant, personalized feedback tailored to each student’s needs, focusing on specific skills or areas of improvement. With various writing assignments and customized rubrics for automatic grading, Class Companion saves teachers significant time.
Features Included:
- Instant, personalized feedback on students’ written responses and assignments
- Edit and adjust feedback before giving back to students
- Get assignments and activities for different stages of the writing process, including comprehension practice, content mastery, outlining, and full essay writing
- Customize the rubrics and criteria
- Library of pre-built writing assignments covering various subjects like English, Social Studies, Science, and World Languages
- Data and insights on individual student performance
Major Differences from Magic School AI:
- Class Companion solely focuses on improving writing and providing feedback on students writing assingments
- Includes data and analytics on students progress
- Customize rubrics and criteria used by the AI to align feedback with students specific learning objectives
Specialized Chatbots
#11 ChatGPT
ChatGPT is an AI language model (Chatbot) teachers can use to engage in text-based conversations. As a versatile tool, ChatGPT can provide information, generate creative content, offer assistance, and engage in meaningful dialogue, making it a valuable resource for communication and problem-solving.
Features Included:
- Understands questions, prompts, and statements to help generate anything needed
- Can generate creative content like poems, jokes, stories, song lyrics, etc. (seriously there are so many ways to take advantage of ChatGPT)
- Considers previous messages, sentences, and entire conversation contexts to generate relevant responses
- Can understand and generate responses in multiple languages like English, French, German, Spanish, etc.
- Facilitates professional networking, collaboration, data analysis, and decision-making, while providing resources for accessibility and inclusivity support.
Major Differences from Magic School AI:
- Specializes in engaging in conversations with users across a wide range of topics and tasks, providing information, generating content, and offering assistance
- One chatbot that you can have multiple conversations with
- Magic School AI leverages similar large language models and generative AI capabilities as ChatGPT, but tailored specifically for educational use cases
#12 SchoolAI
SchoolAI is designed specifically for K-12 classrooms – students AND educators. SchoolAI provides over 1,000 interactive AI “Spaces” that can be used for personalized interactions with an AI tutor, allowing students to have one-on-one guidance and support tailored to their individual needs. In addition, it can be used to help educators with classroom management and lesson planning.
Features Included:
- Spaces for activities, simulations, and tutoring experiences tailored for different subjects and grade levels
- Custom spaces designed by the teacher with specific instruction for students, allowing students to have personalized conversations and interactions with an AI tutor
- Multi-language support for students and teachers
- Content generation for lesson planning, report writing, quiz creation, and email/letter drafting
- Real-time feedback dashboards with moderation capabilities to track student progress and develop personalized learning plans
Major Differences from Magic School AI:
- Accessibility features, like Speak, for students to listen to the generated content
- Spaces for students to chat with AI designed specifically for them by their teacher
- Teacher dashboard for feedback on students’ progress through their use of the AI spaces
Which Tool Should I Pick?
Here we break down the biggest feature and benefit of each tool:
Magic School-like tools | What it does best |
Edcafe AI | Smart, dynamic AI teaching content generation that asynchronously interacts with students |
Brisk Teaching | Comprehensive automation and personalization |
Education Copilot | Streamlined instructional planning and resource creation |
Eduaide.AI | Instructional planning and assessment generation |
Almanack | Streamlined instructional tasks and curriculum alignment |
LearntAI | High-quality educational content generation tailored to specific needs |
Diffit | Focus on leveling and differentiation via worksheets |
Curipod | Interactive lesson planning and delivery, now powered by AI |
QuillBot | Writing-related tasks support |
Class Companion | Instant, personalized feedback on writing assignments |
SchoolAI | Personalized tutoring and classroom management |
While Magic School AI offers a robust platform with a plethora of features tailored for teachers, exploring free alternatives can provide educators with additional options to meet their specific needs. Each of the alternatives mentioned offers unique functionalities, ranging from personalized lesson planning to writing assistance and interactive educational content creation.
Whether it’s the comprehensive automation and personalization provided by Brisk Teaching, the focus on leveling and differentiation offered by Diffit, or the writing-related tasks supported by QuillBot, educators have a diverse array of tools at their disposal. Ultimately, the choice of which alternative to explore depends on individual preferences, teaching styles, and the specific needs of students. Take a look at the ones that interest you and get started making your life easier!
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