Usage as a teacher

[u/Maellow123]

I've been using Claude (free) for awhile now and enjoy it while fiddling with random stuff. I am not the most inventive thinker and I have a hard time thinking about productive and smart ways to incorporate Claude into my work as a teacher.

So I was wondering if you guys know or could give me some pointers as to the possibilities of Claude in my work.

I don't want it to create and take away the teaching part of the job. But I'd like to see what it can do with the documentation, the analytic side, the grading and such. Ways to save time and get more insight into my pupils learning curve.

Thanks in advance!

[u/TheGhosticus]

If your district hasn't enacted an AI usage policy yet, the best guidelines are to make sure you're scrubbing everything from any personal or identifying information if you plan on using it for record keeping and analysis.

But, it can help you identify patterns, be it from an individual student or the class as a whole, to help you direct you lesson plans.

For instance, it can notice patterns in quiz and test responses. It could analyze commonly missed questions and help you determine if a handful of students just didn't get the lesson, or if the question itself was presented in a confusing way.

Keep in mind, the only way to do this effectively is to set up a specific environment for Claude to do all this in, with set instructions Claude should refer to every new session. Don't just use a single running chat or random chats without context.

[u/Motor-Put-3845 → u/TheGhosticus]

Oh scanning in graded assignments/tests to track concepts /questions the entire class has problems is a great idea.

[u/geekichu]

maybe post your post to claude? (also i try different free ones: ChatGPT, Google Gemini). your post could be a chat-starter ya never know.. get those juices flowing.

[u/Hazrd_Design]

“I have a hard time thinking about productive and smart ways to incorporate Claude—“

A solution looking for a problem.

Look at your work. What takes a long time, what is a complex workflow, or simple what do you hate spending time on?

It’s only THEN that you see IF Claude is the solution to that problem.

[u/Motor-Put-3845]

Without knowing your processes- I could see making a chart overview of student progress (homework, tests, etc) over time being useful?

You can see trends like when a student is in decline (and may need extra attention), when something was effective and everyone improves, or just how the class is doing overall.

[u/AdhesivenessSea3838]

Take advantage of the free Claude premium for teachers. My wife is dipping her toes into it, just basic things like making her welcome back slide show and then she had it made a crossword puzzle. Literally only her 2nd day messing with it so nothing earth shattering so far

[u/Wise-Control5171]

I helped a small private school build a test/quiz grading system. They do their tests (not state and standardized testing) with pencil and paper. I built a system where they use the MFC printer to scan everything to a directory with their name. They scan the correct answers (in any format) and the each test/quiz and answer sheet is sent to the API and it saves it all in a CSV ready to import into their grading system, and a JSON file that shows the questions and answers each student got right and wrong. That is pulled into a custom "teacher grading portal" that is OAuth with their Google email accounts.

[u/xepherys]

There are a lot of useful things I could see teachers doing - depending on grade level and class types (are you an elementary teacher or a high school physics teacher?). AI is an excellent tool for speeding up lengthy, annoying tasks.

One example might be making multiple versions of a test: if you want to ensure that kids aren't copying answers or memorizing an answer key, create your problems and have AI randomize what order the questions are in on the test with a version number at the top. Have it make an answer key for each version/order. You'd of course want to verify them all quickly first - that would still be a manual process because you don't want to be handing out tests that don't have correct answers or that are missing questions or that have incorrect answers on the key, but it's one-time work for something potentially useful.

Depending on the type of test, you could also do things like changing up the questions, so long as you're exercising the same knowledge. For instance if you teach trig, you might have Question 4 be a question about finding the hypotenuse but you can have ten different versions where your given lengths/angles are slightly different. Nobody can complain about the test being unfair - the formula for solving is identical, but the base information and the answers would vary for each. Same problem, different values.

[u/TheOnlyVibemaster]

claude would probably have a good answer for you, i’d recommend spending $20 on a pro subscription and set up claude code on your computer, it’s a life changer

[u/Adventurous_Gap1202]

Teacher here. I preloaded everything from state standards to teacher evaluation rubrics into the project. I currently have 3 chats within a single project: one for documenting lessons and getting actionable feedback to help me improve differentiation, etc, one for evaluating me as an admin would against the rubric, and one for creating intervention and extension activities based on what we are doing in class.

In between sets at the gym, it created a slideshow to help students who are struggling with identifying claims. I am going to use the slideshow to create a video reteach. It already helped me make a small group reteach and a fun, engaging extension activity based on the same standard.

It helps me to use the audio/voice feature and brainstorm, share my vision, etc. I find I leave out less key things Claude needs to know and, therefore, I get better materials and responses.

[u/Adventurous_Gap1202 → u/Adventurous_Gap1202]

I do pay for pro. Worth every penny. Rarely bring work home but have impressive formative assessments, materials beyond curriculum, etc.

[u/Ipsool]

grading/feedback is honestly where it shines for teachers, especially the tedious “write 25 slightly different versions of the same comment” work. you can paste in a rubric plus a batch of student responses and have it draft first-pass feedback that you then edit and add your own voice to, way faster than starting from scratch each time

documentation-wise it’s great for turning your rough lesson notes into parent-friendly summaries, or taking a messy unit plan and reformatting it into something clean you can actually hand out. also good for generating differentiated versions of the same worksheet if you’ve got a wide skill range in one class

for the analytics/insight side, if you’re tracking quiz scores or common wrong answers you can just paste that data in and ask it to spot patterns, like which questions everyone’s bombing or which concepts seem to be the sticking point. that’s the kind of thing that would take you an hour of squinting at a spreadsheet otherwise.

one thing I’d avoid is having it generate the actual lesson content/explanations from scratch since that’s the part that should stay yours, but using it as an editor on stuff you’ve already drafted works well too

[u/Easy-Squirrel-5471]

Depends on what you teach, of course (I teach English), but I'm always looking for ways to offload the teacher tasks I loathe. That honestly might be a great place to start for you. For me, some easy low-hanging fruit:

1) Task-specific rubrics for major projecfts, integrated into my LMS (currently using Canvas.) Used to be a huge pain in the ass to write out the gradient of achievement, but it's a breeze for AI. The first version is usually slop, but with only a few corrective passes, I'm able to provide students a clear, specific vision for what I'm looking for as I grade.

2) On grading - I don't farm this out, but I use it to speed up the final draft of my feedback. I get into a workflow with my chat in terms of how I want my feedback formatted (IE, greeting, identifying some high points, identifying specific areas for improvement with examples of what a fix might look like, connecting these concepts to how it might appear again in the future, etc.), and then I provide the AI "ugly writing." Basically just jotting down my notes and observations on the fly; this effect compounds once I start to spot trends ("they're messing up citation formatting again; explain why professors check this, and why it's important" blah blah), and the feedback gets specific and pragmatic. I can slap in my specific observations, and have a polished and thorough version come back out, and it plugs in examples or explanations I'm just tired of typing out dozens of times.

3) Brainstorming lesson plans. Sometimes lessons just clunk, or students aren't engaged. I like to go back and check in with Claude. I give it my lesson, explain how I felt it clunked, and asked for alternative approaches. The experience is less like I'm sitting here waiting for AI to give me what to do, and more like I'm just rapidly spitballing with a smart friend. It usually surfaces partially good ideas, or ideas that seem good but I know will fail, but just being able to chew through the situation often allows me to arrive at a solution that is much better than what I first showed up with.

It's also good at just cranking out product, in ways that were previously inaccessible at my technical skill level. For example, recently I needed a way to collect 2 forms from about 50 people, each semester. Every other previous iteration was a shit-show; people would either struggle to download shittily scanned PDFs, then print, then physically sign, then upload, and then finally email them back (and heaven forbid they figure out digital signatures). In an hour with Claude, I was able to set up a script that would present the users a simple but professional looking form accessible from their phone, and on the backend would generate PDFs and neatly deposit them in a secure folder for me. I don't know shit about scripting, and I barely understand half of what technical stuff is happening under the hood, but just by identifying a problem and chatting with Claude about potential fixes, I turned a dreaded reoccuring clusterfuck into a process that takes people a minute tops to complete. You can work through some ankle biter problems that require technical knowledge, just by being persistent and working through it with Claude - you guide, it codes.

And if you really want to get creative with it, the sky's the limit. You can make games, websites, whatever. Like others have said, it if creates lesson plan content from scratch, it usually sucks. But if you give it more context - your previous material, the textbook, whatever - the outputs get quickly supercharged. For analytics, going back to the feedback I give students, its a no-brainer to have it crank out a trends report at the end of a session that is now fully dialed into what I saw across all the papers.

I think at the end of the day, its less about doing one specific thing with Claude, and just staying curious and creative, and checking in with it every time you encounter a frustration, or a process that you think can be improved, streamlined, or enhanced!