Brisk Teaching

In today’s episode, we'll explore Brisk Teaching, an AI-powered teaching assistant and student feedback tool. Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

#311 — Brisk Teaching

Paul Beckermann  0:01  

Welcome to Tech Talk for Teachers. I'm your host, Paul Beckermann. 

Transition Music  0:06  

Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? So, what's in the toolkit? Check it out. 

Paul Beckermann  0:16  

The topic of today's episode is Brisk Teaching. There are more and more AI tools being created specifically for teachers, and that's a good thing. The topic I'm going to highlight today is another one of those that's been generating quite a bit of buzz among teachers. It's called Brisk Teaching, and it functions through the use of a Google Chrome extension. Brisk Teaching's website claims that it's the number one AI-powered Chrome extension, and that it helps to automate your workload without adding to it. That, along with the recommendations from other teachers that I've been hearing, was enough of an introduction to lure me into exploring this AI tool a little more deeply.

Transition Music  0:57  

Here's the, here's the, here's the tool for today. 

Paul Beckermann  1:00  

My first task was to gain access to the tool, so I Googled for it, and then went to briskteaching.com. From there, I clicked on the button that said, Add to Chrome for Free. This took me to the Google Chrome store, where I was able to add the extension. I followed the usual steps and quickly had the extension installed. If you do this, you want to make sure that you pin it to your toolbar for easy access. On a side note, I did need to close and reopen my document the first time in order to activate the plugin and get the little Brisk button to appear at the bottom right corner of my screen. So, you may have to do that. After that, all I needed to do was click on the little icon and the Brisk menu popped up. Now that I had Brisk ready to go, it was time for me to explore what it could do. Currently, there are six categories of AI-assisted tools available in the Brisk ecosystem. Those six include Creating Instructional Materials, Managing Administrative Tasks, Developing Student Interventions, Providing Feedback, Evaluating Student Writing and Adjusting and Translating Text. These are all very nicely aligned with common teaching tasks. I won't have time to dive all the way into all of the features in this podcast episode, but I do want to give you an overview of some of my initial favorites. 

Transition Music  2:20  

Here is your list of tips. Here is your list. Here is your, here is your list of tips.

Paul Beckermann  2:27  

Number one, I looked at Inspect Writing. Since I know teachers are concerned about students using AI to cheat, I decided to start here. I loaded my Google doc of notes for this podcast episode, clicked the little Brisk button, and chose the Inspect Writing option. This immediately began a video-like playback of my creation of the document. It was sped up so I could watch it quickly, and as it played, I watched as my content was typed, edited, and copy-pasted into the document. It was really fascinating to see. It even tracked how long I spent on the document, how many edits I made, and how many sections I pasted in straight from another source. This would be valuable insight into my students' workflow. I was amazed to see that in an hour and seven minutes, I had made 3,366 edits. Wow. Now some of those were simple spelling corrections, but still, that's a lot. If a student turned in a paper with just a few edits, or maybe none at all, that would be a little suspicious. After watching my writing process video, I clicked a button at the top, which looked like a magnifying glass. This started an AI detection inspection of my writing. I'm not a big fan on AI detectors because I know that research has indicated that they're notoriously inaccurate and produce false positives, so you want to be really careful with those. Still, I know teachers will be curious about this, and I was interested to see what it would do. In just a few seconds, it showed me a scale that rated my document as "Unlikely for AI writing." Well, that was a relief. In this case, the review seems accurate. 

Number two, I tried the Feedback Generator. As a former English teacher, I was immediately drawn to this one, and I was honestly a bit skeptical about what it might provide for feedback. Providing feedback on student writing is probably the most important and time-consuming task I had as an English teacher. If I was really fast, I could review an essay in 15 minutes. With 100 students, then it would take me about 25 hours to go through them all. At that pace, it never seemed reasonable to provide feedback on all student writing, even though I wanted to, because I know that providing targeted and timely feedback is one of the most important ways that we can help students improve their writing. Because of that, I wanted to find out if this tool could help me alleviate some of that workload. I started with the Glow and Grow Feedback option. I used a piece of student writing for this experiment because I thought it would be a little more realistic than my notes. When I clicked the Glow and Grow button, a pop-up menu prompted me to put in a description of what I wanted my document inspected for. I told Brisk to consider fluency, coherence, originality, and formatting. I also chose my target language and grade level. There are options to attach a rubric or select academic standards as well, so that you can target the feedback even more carefully. I left them blank for this example. Then I clicked Brisk It, which is kind of a clever little button name. Once I clicked the button, it almost immediately began providing feedback, and it was quite good. I was impressed. It gave me three glows, three grows, and three wonderings for me to consider about my writing. As a teacher, if I liked the AI-generated feedback, I could copy the responses and paste them into the student document for the student to review. I want to say that I'm not sure I would ever feel comfortable letting AI do all of the thinking for me. I want to be in the loop so I can help guide the student in the writing process. I want to have actual conversations and coaching sessions with them. Still, the Brisk process could save me a lot of time and give students a first round of feedback. I could then skim what Brisk suggested, keep what I liked, and revise what I didn't. This would definitely be better than letting dozens of student papers pile up because I didn't have time to read them and provide feedback. There are three other feedback options I didn't get to. There was feedback based on each criteria from a rubric, Next Steps, which offers suggestions to students, and Targeted Feedback, which is only available in the premium version of Brisk. The targeted feedback option apparently highlights passages based on identified criteria and then posts those comments in the margin using Google's comments feature. 

Number three, I tried out Change Level. This option did exactly what it suggests. It let me change the reading level of the writing on the document. I simply had to choose the grade level and click the Change Reading Level button. Brisk created a new document, and almost immediately began drafting a new version on this new file. It even provided a link to the original document at the top. Nice. The revision was well done, too. When it was finished, it offered a series of additional revision options: changing the length, adding or deleting detail, and translation. With the click of a button, I could have the draft revised. This is a huge time-saver for teachers needing to create differentiated text for different levels of readers. As a bonus, I had Brisk translate the current document to another language. This is awesome for my English language learners. 

Number four, I chose to explore the Create button. This is a big one. It includes all of the categories of Teacher Tools I listed earlier on the podcast. Everything from lesson planning to presentation creating to administrative task assistance. I've seen that the presentation creator is a popular feature, so I decided to try that one out. When I clicked the presentation button, it prompted me to choose my language and a template style. I could also attach standards, choose a grade level, indicate a number of slides to be produced, and if I wanted brisk to include images or not. The main text area prompted me to describe the topic of my presentation, so it knew what to create. I could have typed in an outline or attached my content in another document, but in this case, I told it simply to use the content in the current Google Doc, which included my notes. When I clicked Brisk It, I needed to allow access to Google Slides. Once I did, Brisk began immediately building my slideshow. It included titles, images, and bullet points on a series of 10 slides. While not all of it was up to my standards, I have to admit that it was a great starting point and was helpful in organizing my ideas and getting initial draft generated. Sometimes that's the hardest part. I don't think I'd ever use something like this in its first draft version, just like I wouldn't use my own first draft without any revision, but with some revision, the Brisk-generated presentation could be really useful and a huge time saver. 

And number five, the last tool I tried out was the Quiz Generator. When I clicked this shortcut, I noticed that most of the pop-up menus had looked very similar throughout the Brisk experience. This is always really helpful, since it makes the experience pretty intuitive all the way through, no matter where you are inside the navigation of the program. The first Quiz Generator screen allowed me to choose the grade, question type, number of questions, and language. I could, once again, upload standards or type in a summary of what I wanted generated. As I did with earlier examples, I asked Brisk to simply use the content that was already on my Google Doc. I was prompted to decide if I wanted the questions added to the current document or put into a new Google form that could be used with my students. I chose to put them in the Google Docs for the first run-through. Brisk quickly created 10 multiple choice questions based on the contents of my document and pasted them at the end of my notes. I was a little surprised that it did not provide the correct answers. I guess I can figure that part out. When I chose the Google Form option on a second run-through, I again had to grant permissions, and then Brisk immediately began creating the quiz. It quickly created the questions, and this time, it did tag the correct answers for auto grading. This might prompt me to use the forms option over the Google Docs choice, unless I was planning to export the quiz to a third party tool like Hoot, then it might be better on the Google Doc. Once the quiz was generated, Brisk asked if I wanted to add any short response, long response, or additional multiple choice questions. The whole process was really very easy. So that just scratches the surface. There are quite a few more options embedded in the Brisk Teaching experience than what I had time to explore here, and this initial exploration of the tool has me convinced that it can be a great time-saver and helpful teaching assistant. If you're looking for an AI assistant to help you out, Brisk Teaching is a good one to explore. 

To learn more about today's topic and explore other free resources, visit AvidOpenAccess.org. And, of course, be sure to join Rena, Winston, and me every Wednesday for our full-length podcast, Unpacking Education, where we're joined by exceptional guests and explore education topics that are important to you. Thanks for listening. Take care, and thanks for all you do. You make a difference. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai