After reading about how Bonnie Nieves used Perplexity AI in her classroom and hearing Dr. Molly Bogad talk about how she uses it in her own work, I wanted to give it a try. I'll start by saying that I'm most familiar with ChatGPT, and after spending about an hour using Perplexity, I'd say it's a very similar tool. One thing I've learned from using AI is that prompting is everything. The more specific, clear, and detailed your prompt is, the better the results usually are. Even then, it doesn't always get it right. I'm still working on improving my prompting skills, and I often find myself having long conversations with AI models to refine exactly what I'm looking for, especially when I'm using a platform I'm not familiar with.
I posted a video above showing some of my dialogue with Perplexity AI if anyone wants to take a look. Part of the video shows me asking it to create a handout for an article from an Amplify lesson. After some back and forth, I was able to get a handout that I would actually consider using in class, although it still needed some revisions. The other part of the video shows me trying to create a reference sheet with helpful links and idea starters to support a research project my scholars complete when I'm absent from class. Perplexity didn't give me exactly what I wanted, but it did provide some useful ideas. I think if I had spent more time with it or watched a tutorial on YouTube first, I probably could have gotten much closer to the final product I was looking for.
One thing that impressed me was how long I could use its highest reasoning mode before reaching any limits. I used it for about an hour, and the quality and context of its responses stayed consistent the entire time—and that was without paying for a subscription. In comparison, I've noticed that ChatGPT's higher-level features reach their limits much more quickly without a subscription.
I like that you used a screencast to show the conversation! I also used screen recording for my tutorial. It feels meta - use tech to show how to use tech. As someone who has never used Perplexity before, I appreciate this tutorial! I can see it being helpful for scientific articles and worksheet creation. When I took special education class this past spring semester at RIC, I was shown that Newsela's AI system can be used to change reading levels of Amplify articles for students that may need that modification. I am wondering if you have ever tried to use that as well to help in your classroom?
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