KI macht Schule is a project that educates students in grades 9 to Q2 about the basics and applications of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) and also discusses ethical issues. In addition, the project offers courses for students and training for teachers on various topics such as image recognition, speech processing, robotics, ethics and society. These can be attended both digitally via a teaching platform and on-site in workshops.

Why not give it a try!

The AI-supported writing assistance tool Grammarly guides students and teachers through the entire writing process in real time and provides individual feedback on grammar, spelling or style. Writers can thus concentrate on content-related aspects while Grammarly takes care of the linguistic details.

Interested? You can try out the tool free of charge via this link.

Are you already familiar with the OPAL function for defining and displaying usage licenses for your own learning content, documents or even entire courses?

In OPAL, this is done via the internationally used CC licenses. These also allow teachers to define and specify different degrees of permission to use content they have provided themselves (rights and restrictions). This eliminates questions and uncertainties for third parties as to the extent to which the available material may be reused.

We recommend labeling learning materials with a license that is as open as possible to enable free use, editing and redistribution in the sense of Open Educational Resources (OER).

Further information on the labeling of OER in OPAL: click here

Tired of ChatGPT? Then we recommend you take a look at Pi. This "more emotional alternative" to the popular ChatGPT is more than just an answer generator, because it is specially programmed for appreciative, personal conversations with people. Pi stands for "personal intelligence", and advises you on how you can develop your skills, for example, or helps you in everyday life with useful relaxation and motivation tips. The application tries to understand and respond to the context and emotions behind your input.

Pi is free to use and can be accessed via the following link: https://pi.ai/

No time for elaborate presentations? Then take a look at the Gamma app. This AI-based application analyzes your text and automatically generates a first version of your presentation, website or documents - without any design or coding knowledge.

Gamma App is free to use and can be accessed via the following link: gamma.app/create/generate

Why not give it a try!

TU Dresden's FIS provides central key figures on research performance and makes selected information publicly accessible. Teaching materials include all printed, audiovisual and electronic-interactive materials that teachers use to convey learning content, achieve learning objectives or facilitate learning. This includes lecture notes, handouts, worksheets, exercises, textbooks, assignments and supporting resources for university lectures, seminars and tutorials.

The FIS is accessible to all academic members and associates of TU Dresden and can be accessed via the following link: https: //fis.tu-dresden.de/intern.

The Hasso Plattner Institute's digital education platform openHPI offers interactive and free courses on various topics such as web programming, generative AI, digital health and data protection and security in German and English. These are so-called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) with personalized learning environments and digital learning platforms. The offer is data protection compliant. It's worth a look!

University-wide teacher training is significantly supported by the wide range of subjects offered by the Faculties in the field of GSW. In today's digital tip, we would therefore like to introduce you to the ZLSB team(https://tu-dresden.de/zlsb/digitalisierung), which is dedicated to the digitalization of teacher training. A very special highlight, which is not only interesting for teachers and students in teacher training courses, are the media profiles, which are provided as OER at Medien-Steckbriefe - Digitalisierung in Lehrkräftebildung und Schule - TU Dresden (tu-dresden.de). The Tool-One-Pagers provide an initial orientation to various digital media and give an insight into possible usage scenarios to digitally support learning situations.

Revolutionize your research with Research Rabbit

Research Rabbit is an innovative AI-based tool that supports scientists in their search for relevant literature sources. The platform offers a user-friendly interface and uses artificial intelligence to optimize the literature search. A special feature of Research Rabbit is the visualization of connections between a reference paper and similar papers. Visit the official Research Rabbit website for more information.

Try it yourself https://researchrabbitapp.com/

It's catchy: audio contributions and podcasts as a captivating teaching and learning medium.

Teaching content can also be conveyed via audio contributions/podcasts, e.g. in the form of lecture recordings or evaluations of practice exams. For students, it can be an interesting alternative to presenting their work/exercise results. The minimum equipment required is a smartphone, but the SLUB also provides a professional recording studio. The OER course at the University of Marburg explains the creation of podcasts and their didactic applications in an easy-to-understand way.

Click here for the course: https://ilias.uni-marburg.de/goto.php?target=crs_1843818&client_id=UNIMR

Discover Obsidian - the ultimate tool for creative minds!

With its intuitive user interface and powerful features, Obsidian allows you to organize and connect notes. Connect ideas, create links and keep track of your knowledge. Find information quickly with powerful search functionality and easy-to-use tags. Download Obsidian and experience the limitless creativity and productivity this tool offers.

Try it for yourself: https://obsidian.md/

Using images in teaching

The use of images and visualizations is a suitable and uncomplicated way to illustrate, break up and reduce text in and from lecture slides. One of many extensive and freely usable collections of image material can be found at https://unsplash.com/de. Unsplash photos can be downloaded without permission and used free of charge. The author's name is requested. The Digital Teaching GSW team hopes you enjoy browsing!

To Unsplash: https://unsplash.com/de

Everyone is familiar with the Windows operating system and the basics of using it. Small tips and tricks can also help us to save time and effort, or provide a little "gimmick" that is fun to use. For example, this inconspicuous but practical everyday function: the emoji area in Windows. Press the Windows key and the dot key at the same time and you can choose between different common emojis. The Digital Teaching team at GSW wishes you lots of fun trying it out 👋

More info

The chatbot ChatGPT is the subject of lively discussion at universities, colleges, schools and all over the world. ChatGPT is able to independently write essays, term papers or entire scientific papers. The GPTZero app has now been developed at Princeton University with the aim of recognizing texts generated by an AI and distinguishing them from texts written by humans. However, GPTZero is not yet a universal solution for identifying AI-based texts, because: As with many plagiarism programs, there are reports of a non-negligible error rate.

The GSW Digital Teaching Team recommends: Test it yourself!

Many humanities disciplines work with historical artifacts. Often, handwritten text material must first be digitized. The Unicode standard for character encoding can already be used to represent a large number of paleographic features, such as allographs or diacritics. However, as Unicode primarily represents the typographic heritage, the Medieval Unicode Font Intiative has set itself the goal of encoding characters from the manuscript tradition according to ISO standard 10646 and thus making them digitally representable. Here you will find abbreviation markers, ligatures, punctuation marks, decorative characters, runes and all kinds of characters that are no longer in use today.

Pictures, illustrations and diagrams are essential for a good PowerPoint presentation. However, while references and source citations for quotes and written content are usually included directly and instinctively, source citations and the authors of image material are often forgotten.

The CC-Stamper is a simple tool that allows you to add the correct Creative Commons license and copyright information to your image files with just a few clicks. Simply upload your images to https://ccstamper.edu-sharing.org/, select the correct license and add the information about the authors. The information is automatically "stamped" at the bottom of the image; you can easily download the new file.

Just give it a try!

The Digital Teaching team in the GSW department has discovered the "avataaars generator". This can be used to convert your own profile into a modifiable and virtual version that can be used in digital formats as a little gimmick. For example, the avatar can be an alternative to the dark and faceless tile in video communication programs when the camera is switched off. The tool is free, uncomplicated to use and the resulting images can be downloaded as image files.
to the avatar tool

With the extended clipboard in Windows 10 it is possible to copy up to 25 different entries without having to use another program. This means that more than just the last copied element is retained. To use the function, the clipboard history must be switched on in the Windows system settings and the desired entries copied individually as usual using the Ctrl+C key combination. Then press the Windows key+V instead of Ctrl+V to select the desired entry. If you have any questions, the Virtual Teaching team at the GSW department will be happy to help. There is also a tutorial on YouTube on how to use the function under the following button:

" To the tutorial on YouTube

Are you still looking for an interactive tool that will enable you to make your course more attractive for learners? Then the LumiH5P Editor is the right choice for you! With the free Lumi H5P Editor, you can create various interactive H5P task formats via a desktop app on all mobile devices (even without an internet connection). The big advantage: these can be embedded as course content in your new or existing courses in OPAL! Give it a try. The Digital Teaching team in the GSW department will be happy to answer any questions or problems by email.

The integration of digital tools in teaching arrangements can be used in a variety of didactic ways. However, it can be overwhelming for students if many different links have to be opened on just one or more screens. There is a wonderful solution for this: interactive content from the internet, such as content from collaborative tools like Padlet, Miro or even Cryptpad, Etherpad and ARS systems, can be integrated in many places in the OPAL learning platform via the text editor using embed code. This means that everything is in one place and students do not have to switch between different windows and have everything right at their fingertips.

Let's get started: Give it a try. The Digital Teaching team will be happy to support you with the implementation and explain the exact procedure.

Whether working with text in a course or designing visual slides and courses, it is worth taking a closer look at tools for creating word clouds. One such tool can be found at https://www.wortwolken.com/ or https://kits.blog/cloud/, for example. Here, word clouds can be individually created and designed using various setting options. This word cloud for the Digital Teaching team in the GSW department was also created with the help of the first tool: If you have any questions or need support with (partially) digital teaching, the Digital Teaching GSW team is available at any time.

The Mentoring Workbench (MWB) is a working environment for teachers and students. It contains information about the learning process as well as tools that encourage learners to regularly engage with the content of the course. Currently, the MWB is used at the TUD in the lecture Educational Technology I&II, among others. If you are interested in integrating the MWB into your own teaching format, you can contact the tech4comp project team or the Digital Teaching team in the GSW department to participate in further training.

OPAL link

With kits (= competent in technology and language), the Lower Saxony State Institute for School Quality Development provides a digital space for media education in a wide variety of contexts. We recommend taking a look at the free, data protection-compliant and highly intuitive collaborative tools: Under Tools - kits you will find, for example, organizational tools for brainstorming or mind maps, as well as a whiteboard, a text editor or a word cloud generator. Would you like to try out a collaborative tool before using it? The colleagues from the GSW Digital Teaching team are happy to be your test subjects:

To the kits blog

From students for students: TUfast is a tool designed to make life a little easier, especially in digital semesters. TUfast is a browser extension and provides, among other things, AutoLogin to TU Dresden portals and an overview of all OPAL courses. TUfast also makes access and organization of courses easier for those responsible, so it is also recommended for lecturers.
Some functions are

• automatic login to all online portals
• Quick access to OPAL courses in the dashboard
• Shortcuts in the Google search, e.g. "tumail" opens OWA
• Shortcuts for the online portals, e.g. Alt+O opens OPAL
• Personalizations for degree programs

The download can be started at www.tu-fast.de! Try it out and save time!

Dilemma: Most people will be familiar with the situation in online courses - the widespread silence of participants in response to activating methods and questions from the teacher. Many are reluctant to the teacher asking someone to make a contribution. Didactically, this is also tricky, as it can easily trigger fear of exposure, which runs counter to successful learning processes.

Solution: A function has now been implemented in the BigBlueButton video conferencing tool that randomly selects one of the participants for an oral contribution. Didactically, this can be used, after appropriate announcement, e.g. in introduction rounds or as the conclusion of individual or group work phases, i.e. whenever all participants are prepared to actively participate in the course. This function can be found in the presentation window at the bottom left in the "+" button

The BigBlueButton portal allows you to create your own digital conference rooms with the same access link and no time limit. This eliminates the tedious creation of individual conference rooms for each event date, which is familiar from previous semesters. The portal also allows you to configure additional room options, such as activating a waiting room, assigning moderator rights in advance or password-protected access. To access your personal portal, all you need to do is log in with your ZIH login.