Which AI Tool, When?
A quick-decision guide for Claude, Gemini, NotebookLM, and MagicSchool — for the moment you'd otherwise default to whichever one you saw first.
Already working inside a Google file — Doc, Slide, Sheet, or Gmail.
It's right there; nothing to copy back and forth.
You need careful reasoning, writing, or feedback that holds up across a longer document, or a real back-and-forth.
Claude is built for the long conversation rather than the one-shot answer.
You want the answer locked to specific sources you chose — nothing pulled in from outside them.
Everything it says traces back to what you uploaded.
You're handing an AI experience directly to students, inside limits you set ahead of time.
See the separate section below.
A rough set of standards and a topic, nothing written up yet.
Paste your standards into the Doc you're already using and ask for a first-pass, week-by-week skeleton. It's a starting shape, not a finished plan.
Reworking an assignment so AI use deepens the thinking instead of shortcutting it.
This is a conversation, not a one-shot draft. Paste the assignment, talk through where each part sits on Brain Only / Supporting / Replacing, and let it push back on your first instinct.
Turning a bullet-point outline into slides the night before.
Ask Slides for a rough first draft from your outline doc, then fix the wording yourself. This is exactly the kind of imperfect live demo that builds trust rather than intimidation.
A pointed parent email needs a reply tonight.
Draft it right inside Gmail, adjust the tone, send from the same window. No copying between tabs.
One announcement that has to go out three ways — staff email, family newsletter blurb, and a slide for Monday.
Write the full version in a Doc first, then ask for the shorter cuts. Keeping all three in one file means they stay consistent when the details change.
A conversation with a colleague or an administrator that you want to think through before you have it.
Describe the situation and what you want out of it, then ask it to argue the other side. Useful for finding the sentence you will regret before you say it out loud.
An hour of messy meeting notes that needs to become decisions and action items.
Notes already in a Doc are the fastest case: ask for who owns what and by when, then correct it — it will attribute at least one thing to the wrong person.
Four documents — new state standards, last year's pacing guide, a journal article — and you need to know what actually changed.
Upload all four as sources and ask directly. The answer stays grounded in what you uploaded, with a citation back to the page, instead of a general answer pulled from the open web.
A long PD article or policy document to get through before tomorrow's meeting.
Two different jobs. NotebookLM if you want a summary and follow-up questions that stay inside that one document. Claude if you want to think out loud about what it means for your classroom — one checks comprehension, the other is a conversation.
A review session that should only use what you actually covered in class.
Upload your notes and slides as sources, then generate an Audio Overview — a short discussion students can listen to that pulls only from your material, not the open internet.
Two survey cycles need to become a narrative for the board.
It can hold both data sets at once and help build the argument — what moved, what didn't, why it matters — in a shape that's ready to turn into slides.
Committee work tends to be the same few problems: too many documents, too many opinions, and a deadline. These are the cases where a tool actually saves the meeting.
A folder of prior minutes that has to become an agenda and a pre-read.
Ask what was left unresolved across the last several meetings. Recurring items that never close are much easier to see this way than by rereading.
A forty-page report almost nobody on staff will read.
Ask for a one-page version written for the people who have to act on it, then check every number against the original yourself before it goes out.
A proposal you are bringing to leadership next week.
Ask it to take the position of the person most likely to object, then answer those objections. Cheaper to hear them now.
Scheduling or budget scenarios you are trying to compare.
In a Sheet you already built, it can lay out the options side by side. Verify the arithmetic — it is confident about numbers whether or not it is right.
Claude, Gemini, and NotebookLM are staff tools — you're the one prompting. MagicSchool works differently: it's mainly how JA builds Rooms, guided AI chat spaces that students use directly, inside limits set ahead of time.
Students need a supervised AI tutor for tonight’s homework, staying inside boundaries you set.
Build a Room. Students talk to the AI themselves, but only within what you configured ahead of time.
A self-check practice space for unit vocabulary or quiz prep.
Same idea — a Room built for that one task, not an open-ended chat.
No student names, IDs, or identifiable work go into any of these four tools. Generalize or anonymize first — same rule as always, regardless of which one is open. See Data Privacy for the full guidance.