“Why use premade prompts when you have access to an open-ended chatbot?” This question popped up at a school district AI Summit in Northside ISD in San Antonio, Texas, earlier this year. The session title, Battle of the Bots: Your AI Assistant pitted a popular school-centric AI solution against a chatbot. In this blog entry, you will be introduced to a new pre-created prompt tool for educators. If you read my blog entry on TeacherServer, you may find EduSphere worth a moment of time.
Weighing In: PreMade Prompts or Open-Ended
That AI Summit presenter, Lucia, demonstrated the use of a premade prompt to make a choice board (see image above). The result included instructions for students, as well as a simple chart. Pro users of the AI school AI tool can easily export the chart to Google Docs, MS Word, or Print to paper or PDF. You can imagine taking that PDF and dropping it into a tool like Seesaw or Kami to heighten interactivity.
That’s the benefit of a pre-created prompt through a school centric AI like MagicSchool.ai, School AI, TeacherServer, and others. They take the stress out of the initial work, giving you something to modify. This removes the pain of figuring out a more detailed prompt like the one you will see in action below.
Open-Ended Prompts
As useful as premade prompts are, more adept users of AI tools will want increasing control over their creations. For example, consider this prompt written with the TCEA Prompt Engineering acronym (get a copy) in mind:
As a patient and energetic fifth-grade social studies teacher, generate a choice board activity to explain the significance of important landmarks, including the White House, the Statue of Liberty, and Mount Rushmore, in accordance with Social Studies TEKS 5.16(D). The choice board should include a markdown table formatted with three columns and three rows. The center cell (B2) should have a catchy title. Include a mix of interactive, hands-on activities that can be done both online and offline. Ensure that activities reflect UDL 3.0 Design guidelines and ELPS for grades 4-5. Provide links to age-appropriate resources and videos.
Below is what an example of a table looks like in Markdown format:
| Choice Board: | Explore U.S. | Landmarks |
| ------------- | ------------- | ------------- |
| Cell A1 | Cell B1 | Cell C1 |
| Cell A2 | Cell B2 | Cell C2 |
| Cell A3 | Cell B3 | Cell C3 |
| Cell A4 | Cell B4 | Cell C4 |
| Cell A5 | Cell B5 | Cell C5 |Put both the prompt and the table example together, you get a result like this one from the chatbot:
| Choice Board: | Explore U.S. | Landmarks |
|---|---|---|
| White House Virtual Tour Take a virtual tour of the White House and draw your favorite room. | Exciting Choice Board Activity Discover the significance of U.S. landmarks through various activities. | Mount Rushmore Research Research the creation and significance of Mount Rushmore and create a presentation. |
| Statue of Liberty Fact Sheet Create a fact sheet about the Statue of Liberty. | Exciting Title An exciting introduction to the choice board activities. | Mount Rushmore Model Build a model of Mount Rushmore using materials at home and explain its significance. |
| Statue of Liberty Video Watch an age-appropriate video about the Statue of Liberty and write a summary. | Exciting Title Explore U.S. Landmarks! | White House History Write a brief report on the history of the White House. |
https://aiarchives.org/id/e5VDZRdHDSqGVjwry9KO
Use the citation link above to see the entire conversation, from start to finish. How would you have approached prompt design?
Adding UDL and ELPS
If I had attempted to add the English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS) and UDL 3.0 guidelines as PDFs to the school-centric AI, I would have run into limits (e.g. one PDF file allowed). You would have had to fine-tune the result much in the same way I had to using ChatGPT 4o:
With this type of prompt in hand, you can go to any chatbot and drop in the prompt and get similar results. The quality of the response will vary based on whether you are using a free or paid version. For example, here’s what a Perplexity Pro choice board looks like:
| Landmark Lego Challenge Build a model of the White House, Statue of Liberty, or Mount Rushmore using Lego bricks or other building materials. Write a short explanation of the landmark’s significance. | Virtual Field Trip Take a virtual tour of one of the landmarks using Google Arts & Culture. Create a travel brochure highlighting its key features and historical importance. | Symbol Sketch Draw a detailed sketch of one landmark, labeling its symbolic elements. Explain how these symbols represent American values or history. |
|---|---|---|
| Create a 3D Model Use clay, paper mache, or digital tools like Tinkercad to create a 3D model of a landmark. Present your model to the class, explaining its historical significance. | Landmark Legacy Explore U.S. | Postcard from the Past Design a postcard as if you were visiting the landmark when it was first built. Write a message explaining its importance to someone back home. |
| Time Traveler’s Tale Write a short story about traveling back in time to witness the construction or dedication of one of the landmarks. Include historical details and the landmark’s significance. | Landmarks | Digital Scavenger Hunt Create a Kahoot! quiz about the landmarks for classmates to play, focusing on their historical importance and interesting facts. |
| Landmark Rap Compose and perform a rap song about one or more landmarks, highlighting their significance in American history. Record your performance if possible. | Monument Meme Create a meme that cleverly explains the importance of one of the landmarks. Share and explain your meme to the class. |
As powerful as designing your own prompts can be, it requires a little more time. The results may be better, but you may not want to spend the time.
Wait, One More Point!
Want an open-ended chatbot to remember your lesson plan formats, UDL 3.0 guidelines, and ELPS? Then, consider paying for a Pro or Plus account. Both ChatGPT’s Custom GPT and Claude’s Projects offer long-term memory chats. These types of chats differ from drive-by chats free users use. These not-free tools allow you to set the context and detailed instructions ahead of multiple queries. They rely on tailored instructions (a.k.a. long prompts or mega prompts) with supporting documents.
Here’s what a Claude Projects’ Lesson Design Helper looks like:
Introducing EduSphere
Unlike TeacherServer which offers 47 premade prompts, EduSphere starts out with six. These include:
Let’s take a quick look at three popular ones.
Tool #1: MindMap Generator
This tool offers to create mindmaps on any given topic. Once you submit your specifications for the mindmap, EduSphere will do some research, sharing resources referenced. Then, it generates a mindmap, as you can see below.
It’s easy to export the content to PDF or Microsoft Docx formatted files. The generated mindmap is not as sophisticated as you might get from a chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude.ai as a Mermaid chart.
See an example generated from the research EduSphere provided via this Claude.ai Artifact.
Claude. “Copygraph TD I…” A.I. Archives, 8 August 2024,
https://aiarchives.org/id/Ny83CdhNLxOh4tTemkFM
You might consider EduSphere’s mindmap a starting point or worthwhile only for simple mindmaps.
Tool #2: Quiz Generator
The Quiz Generator tool allows you to generate a quiz. EduSphere will decide what content it uses for the quiz, so it’s not customizable up front. You can’t give it certain content standards or background information to generate a quiz from. While you can upload content, the questions won’t reflect that content. That means that you are at the mercy of the quiz generator. It’s only at the end of the process that you can edit the quiz, and make changes to it.
This tool is only good at basic level, getting you past the blank page but not much else.
Tool #3: Rubrics Generator
Once you submit the learning objectives, set the difficulty level, EduSphere’s Rubric Generator will take off. It will generate scoring criteria, points, and more.
Points to Ponder
Many school-centric and open-ended AI tools are finding their way into the education market. Use a standard prompt of your design that challenges these paid and free options. If the AI tool’s pre-created prompts or assisted chatbots can’t get the job done, don’t waste your time. More sophisticated tools are in the wings waiting for you.