Brisk Teaching

Brisk Teaching is a web-based, AI-powered tool for automating some key classroom tasks. To use it, visit the developer's website and download the free Chrome extension and install it on the Google Chrome web browser on your device. Then, explore how to use the 20+ built-in AI prompts to automate key tasks like creating lesson plans, quiz questions, and presentations. It also offers teachers tools for differentiation, like translating text into 20+ languages and adjusting the reading level of digital texts. Other prompts give teachers a head start on offering feedback on student writing: After uploading their assignment prompt and a rubric, teachers can prompt Brisk to offer "glow and grow" feedback, assess whether students have met rubric requirements, and offer next steps for improving their writing. Premium plans offer even more features, including a Targeted Feedback Generator (which adds comments directly to students' Google Docs) and tools for creating standards-aligned and Universal Design for Learning (UDL) lesson plans. 

In the increasingly crowded world of AI-powered tools for teachers, Brisk stands out for its focus on helping teachers learn how to use AI to complement and improve their work, not replace it. The teacher-created videos are especially good: They show how using AI tools is an ongoing process where teachers refine what they put into a template prompt and then refine and add to the materials that the AI tool generates as a result. Brisk is an especially powerful tool for helping teachers purposefully experiment with an AI tool: There's a lot of scaffolding available to inform new users getting started and inspire seasoned AI users to find more powerful ways to leverage AI-powered prompts. The tool's main drawback is that its premium features are available only through a school-wide or district-wide paid subscription; at the time of review, there was no option for teachers to purchase their own premium subscription to access some of the more powerful tools for differentiation. Nicely, when teachers sign up for a free account, they get access to those premium features for a limited time; this may offer teachers some opportunity to experience the features and then make the case to their administrators about purchasing a subscription. 

To try Brisk, visit the developer's website and download the free Chrome extension. Then, be sure to complete the 20-minute orientation course (you'll earn a badge!) and browse the teacher-created videos linked from the same resource page. Experiment with the tools for changing the reading level of a text and creating quizzes from YouTube videos or digital texts; consider how the AI-generated text can be a starting point for creating assessments that meet your students' learning goals and align with relevant standards. Take a look at the 30+ built-in tools and consider which ones could be a good fit for your classroom. Test how the AI does when you prompt it to offer different kinds of feedback; for example, include text from the rubric for an assignment and tweak your prompt until the tool offers feedback on a sample assignment that helps you speed up your grading process. Consider how using the tool might improve your workflow: How might you be able to add deeper, more detailed feedback on student writing if you use Brisk to do a first pass of an essay and identify whether the essay addresses the items on your rubric? 

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.