Canvas + Andi= Chatbot in your Instruction

The Hope

Getting started with AI tools in your classroom might be a challenge. There are lots of factors to consider such as cost, student privacy, and age appropriateness. However, one of the best ways to being integrating AI into your classroom is by swapping your search engine. Here is where Andi comes in. It can function as bot a "chatbot" and a search engine which will allow you to avoid having to train and maintain a bot on your own.

The Dope

1. Andi is private and easy to navigate. Andi does not require any exchange of user data which is great for the classroom. Users do not have to log in and the interface is clean enough that even our youngest users will be able to navigate it.
2. Andi "shows its work." Andi doesn't pull information from the ether. Once prompted, the user's screen will divided so that they can continue prompting (left) or explore the results of the search (right). On the right, users will have the option to visit the site, read the information on Andi without traveling to the site, read a summarize version of the resource, or have the resource explained to them. This allows for better transparency and empowers the user to better assess the output from the prompt.
3. Andi can be embedded into your LMS. This is very useful especially if you're using Canvas. All you need is your friendly neighborhood iframe generator and you can play this search engine anywhere you'd like in your course.

The Nope

1. No logins? No history. Since you're not logging in, there is not option to save conversation beyond copy and paste or taking a screenshot.
2. It's free. Free is good, right? Not really in this case. Due to the fact that they're not charging for the tool, there is a possibility that there might be an outage. I've only experienced it once since I've been using the tool, but it has happened. The nature of the tool also means the creators might be interested in selling to a larger entity so this tool might not be "free" for long.