Almanack

Almanack is an AI tool that helps teachers create lessons, slide decks, worksheets, report card comments, and more. Teachers can prompt the AI to generate content in any subject. Educators can select from hundreds of standards frameworks (like Common Core, NGSS, or ISTE) for Almanack to use when creating content. Choose which students can receive differentiated versions of presentations, worksheets, or lessons. Thankfully, after the AI generates content for the teacher, the teacher is brought to a simple editor to make basic edits. It's great that this step is baked in because, as with any AI product, tweaks and edits will be required. 

Overall, it's straightforward to use Almanack to generate simple editable content. Content can be exported as a PDF or Microsoft Office file, or to Google Drive. Teachers can translate worksheets, slides, and similar items into many languages. If possible, have someone who speaks and reads the language look over the translations to get a sense for how well Almanack does. Almanack is designed for teacher use only; there is no student-facing product.

The creation of slide decks is one of Almanack AI's strong points. Teachers can instruct the AI to generate a slide deck on anything, like the structure of matter, an introduction to the Civil War, or how to write a detailed paragraph. For example, for a Civil War slide deck, Almanack generated a title slide and several slides with pictures about important contributing factors to the cause of the Civil War, its impact on different peoples, and its lasting effects on the United States. It also included a YouTube video and several questions (discussion, multiple choice, true or false), as well as "fun fact" and "joke" slides. As created, the slides would need several adjustments before using them with students. For example, in the Civil War case, the teacher may want to rearrange some slides, add a bit more context, and remove the joke slide because it doesn't feel appropriate. Nevertheless, using Almanack as a starting point would almost certainly be more time-efficient than creating slides from scratch.

Teachers will likely be drawn to using Almanack to help create lessons and units. They can create lesson plans with simple instructions, with the option to identify frameworks such as Bloom's taxonomy, backward design, inquiry-based, etc., for Almanack to use. Many of the lessons generated in the process of writing this review tended to be simplistic. They would serve as a good starting point, and perhaps a way to get new ideas, but the lessons themselves won't be classroom-ready (which is true for any AI-generated lesson). As with many AI products like Almanack, the more specific your prompt, the better your results will be, so be sure to at least let Almanack know what your learning objectives are. As always, be sure to look at all AI-generated slides, lessons, and other content critically, as AI can produce content that isn't accurate or that includes bias or inappropriate material.

Editor’s note: Never input personal, sensitive, or confidential information into a generative AI model. Any information you put in can become publicly available and used as training data for future iterations of the tool. If there is ever any doubt about whether or not to enter particular information, do not include it. Be aware of privacy settings on your device that might be helpful. Keep in mind that these tools often don’t have their own privacy settings.