best practices

by Victoria Berasaluce Guerra (LTL Contributor)

Incorporating AI into the classroom has never been easier with Mizou, a powerful tool that allows educators to create personalized chatbots for student practice in a target language or subject of choice. By tailoring AI interactions, teachers can ensure that students engage in meaningful, guided conversations based on custom prompts they design.

Getting Started with Mizou

When signing in to Mizou, you can select your role as a teacher to receive personalized feedback and content that aligns with your curriculum. Mizou supports various educational frameworks, including:
✅ AP
✅ IB
✅ Common Core
✅ IGCSE, and more.

This customization ensures that chatbots align with your specific learning objectives and classroom needs.

Creating a Chatbot: Custom vs. AI-Generated

Mizou offers two chatbot creation options:

🔹 Custom Chatbots – You write the prompt from scratch, allowing for full control over the chatbot’s responses.
🔹 AI-Generated Chatbots – Mizou generates the chatbot’s prompt based on your learning objectives, which you can refine and tweak for better accuracy.

Regardless of the option you choose, teacher input is crucial to fine-tune the chatbot’s instructions, ensuring the conversation stays on track.

A screenshot of a chat

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

When selecting “Custom”, you will work within a split-screen interface:
➡️ One side lets you adjust the chatbot’s instructions.
➡️ The other side allows you to test and refine the chatbot in real time.

Why Choose Mizou Over ChatGPT for Your Classroom?

Unlike ChatGPT, Mizou offers enhanced teacher control over chatbot interactions. With Mizou, you can:

✅ Set a title for the activity.
✅ Define AI instructions to shape the conversation.
✅ Choose a grade level for age-appropriate responses.
✅ Customize the chatbot’s name and avatar for a more engaging experience.
✅ Establish rules to guide student interactions.
✅ Add a welcome message and audio to introduce the chatbot.
✅ Upload a knowledge file to ensure the chatbot focuses on specific content.

Mizou also offers access to a community of educator-created chatbots, allowing you to explore and adapt existing resources.

Creative Ways to Use Mizou in the Classroom

Here are some exciting ways to integrate Mizou into your lessons:

🎭 Role-Playing Interviews – Have students interact with historical figures or fictional characters.
🗣 Debates & Discussions – Students can debate global challenges (e.g., AP curriculum topics) with an AI character designed by you.
📖 Language Practice – Mizou can help students practice conversations in a target language, following teacher-set guidelines.
📊 Assessment & Feedback – Teachers can review student chatbot sessions, track conversation length, and even use AI-assisted grading based on rubrics.

💡 Pro Tip: Always review and tweak chatbot prompts to ensure they align with your learning goals!

Enhance Your AI Skills with Mizou AIcademy

To maximize the potential of Mizou, teachers can enroll in Mizou AIcademy, an online certification program that covers:

✅ Prompt engineering for effective chatbot creation.
✅ Best practices for ethical AI use in education.By becoming Mizou-certified, you can confidently integrate AI into your teaching while ensuring meaningful and responsible student engagement.

by Maureen Gassert Lamb (LTL Contributor)

As educators strive to meet the various needs of students in language learning and acquisition, differentiation in assessment has become essential. Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers a powerful tool to create personalized, adaptive assessments that align with learners’ proficiency levels. This article explores how AI can be leveraged to design differentiated assessments, ensuring meaningful, impactful, and effective language assessment.

AI technology enables educators to create assessments that cater to various proficiency levels by generating customized questions, passages, and real-time feedback. Through adaptive learning techniques, AI can modify assessments based on students’ responses, ensuring that they are challenged appropriately while receiving necessary support to thrive.

1. AI-Generated Reading Passages Aligned with Proficiency Levels

One of the most effective ways AI supports differentiation is through the creation of tiered reading passages. By adjusting vocabulary, syntax, and complexity, AI can generate texts that match students’ proficiency levels.

Novice Level (Basic Sentences, Simple Structures)
- Example (Topic: Daily Life in Rome): “Romani in urbe magna habitant. Multi viri et feminae in foro ambulant. Ibi cibum emunt et amicos salutant. Pueri in ludo discunt.”
- AI Tool: ChatGPT can generate beginner-friendly texts with controlled vocabulary and structure.
Intermediate Level (More Complex Sentences, Some Subordination)
- Example (Topic: Aesop’s Fable – The Tortoise and the Hare): “Olim testudo et lepus certare volunt. Lepus celeriter currit et testudinem ridet: ‘Tu es tardissima!’ Sed testudo lente et constanter ambulat.”
- AI Tool: QuillBot can help rephrase sentences for increased complexity.
Advanced Level (Subjunctives, Participles, Indirect Discourse)
- Example (Topic: Julius Caesar and the Rubicon): “Cum Iulius Caesar Rubiconem transiret, milites eum sequebantur. Dicebat: ‘Alea iacta est!’ Senatus Romam servare conabatur, sed Caesar urbem sine magno proelio cepit.”
- AI Tool: ChatGPT and DeepL can refine passages to include complex grammatical structures.

2. AI-Generated Question Types for Various Levels

AI can create multiple-choice, open-ended, and inference-based questions that align with language proficiency benchmarks.

Novice: Focus on basic comprehension and word recognition.
- Example: What do the Romans do in the forum?
  - A) Sleep
  - B) Walk ✅
  - C) Eat
  - D) Fight
- AI Tool: Google Forms + AI-based question generators like Quizlet.
Intermediate: Introduce sentence structure analysis and cause-effect relationships.
- Example: Why does the tortoise win the race?
- AI Tool: AI-driven platforms like Quizlet and Kahoot! can generate dynamic quizzes.
Advanced: Require inferencing, paraphrasing, and interpretation of nuanced meanings.
- Example: How does Caesar’s decision to cross the Rubicon reflect his leadership style?
- AI Tool: Brisk Teaching AI tools help generate higher-order thinking prompts.

3. Adaptive Assessments for Personalized Learning

AI-powered assessments can adjust in real-time based on student responses. If a student struggles with a concept, AI can generate additional scaffolded questions or provide explanatory feedback. Conversely, if a student excels, the AI can present more challenging questions to encourage deeper engagement.

Example: If a student consistently answers correctly at an intermediate level, AI can introduce an advanced-level passage and related questions.
AI Tools: Conker offers AI-driven question banks. Quizlet can give feedback to track progress in real time.

4. Using AI for Formative and Summative Assessment

Formative Assessments: AI can provide immediate feedback, helping students understand mistakes and adjust their learning strategies accordingly.
- Example: AI detects frequent errors in verb conjugation and suggests practice activities.
- AI Tool: Grammarly for grammar feedback and Socrative for real-time formative assessments.
Summative Assessments: AI-generated tests can evaluate students’ overall progress while ensuring alignment with proficiency standards.
- Example: AI generates an end-of-unit comprehension test with a mix of multiple-choice, short-answer, and essay questions.
- AI Tool: EdPuzzle for AI-enhanced comprehension checks.

5. Best Practices for Implementing AI in Language Assessments

To maximize the benefits of AI in assessment, educators should ensure that AI-generated questions align with proficiency guidelines such as ACTFL standards. They should use AI to generate varied but plausible answer choices that challenge students while focusing on comprehension rather than simple translation-based questions. Additionally, leveraging AI tools that adapt to students’ learning trajectories allows for personalized feedback and continuous improvement. By thoughtfully integrating AI into assessment strategies, educators can create meaningful, proficiency-aligned evaluations that support diverse learners in their language acquisition journey.

Generative AI presents an innovative approach to differentiated assessments in language education, allowing teachers to create adaptive, proficiency-aligned evaluations. By leveraging AI’s capabilities, educators can support students at all levels, enhancing their language acquisition journey through personalized learning experiences.

Mizou: Making Chatbot Experiences Better for our Classrooms