Tools and services
Choose a tool for the work you want to do
A list of AI tools can become outdated before a book reaches a reader. I would begin with the work instead. Do you need a partner for thinking, a way to investigate sources, or a place to make something? Choose one tool that fits the task, try a small experiment, and decide what you learned before adding another subscription.
This is a selective starting set, checked against official product pages on October 20, 2026. It is not a ranking or an endorsement of every output. Features, names, access, and terms can change. Use the options your institution supports, work with public or fictional material when experimenting, and offer a shared-screen or paper alternative when an account would exclude someone.
Think, explain, and revise
ChatGPT
Use a general assistant to examine an idea, explain a concept, or critique a draft. Try asking it to identify what a workshop plan assumes about its learners, then decide which observations deserve a revision. Check claims against their sources and compare the explanation with what you already know. A fluent response is a proposal to examine.
Claude
Use a general assistant for sustained work with text, feedback, and small prototypes. Give it a public lesson plan and ask for places where an instruction could confuse a newcomer. Test its suggestions with a reader. Feedback is more useful when it helps you notice a specific problem than when it merely makes the prose sound polished.
Gemini
Use a general assistant to explore a topic and develop explanations or study activities. Ask for three ways to explain a difficult concept to a particular audience, then compare the assumptions each version makes. Verify factual details and examine whether the activity develops understanding or only produces a plausible-looking answer.
Investigate sources and evidence
Google’s source-based notebook
The resource known as NotebookLM is reached through Google’s notebook service; its public landing page currently uses the name Gemini Notebook. Try working with a small set of public sources and tracing a generated summary back to the passages it cites. Ask what the collection leaves out. Grounding an answer in selected documents does not establish that those documents are complete or correct.
Perplexity
Use a search assistant to discover possible sources and vocabulary for a question. Choose one claim from an answer, open the cited page, and find the passage that supports it. Follow an article’s references to an original report when possible. The useful outcome is a trail you can inspect, rather than an answer you accept because it has citations.
Elicit
Use a research tool to find papers and begin comparing their questions, methods, and results. Try a narrow question, record the search wording, and inspect several full papers behind the summaries. Check whether a proposed comparison uses similar populations and measures. A convenient research table still needs someone to examine the evidence in its cells.
Consensus
Use a scientific-literature search tool to discover studies related to a question. Compare its overview with the methods and limitations of two papers it retrieves. Ask which kinds of evidence your question requires and whether the retrieved studies provide them. An automated synthesis is a starting point for reading, not a substitute for evaluating a body of research.
Build, visualize, and create
Lovable
Use a conversational builder to give a website or application idea enough form to test. Begin with one person, one task, and fictional data. Ask someone to try the result before adding features. The three project visits show how a website can extend an essay into a learning experience; their exercises focus on what a visitor can understand and do.
Adobe Firefly
Use image-generation tools to explore visual explanations, storyboards, or alternative compositions. Try illustrating one concept in two ways and ask readers what each image communicates. Inspect text, details, and unintended associations. Before distributing work, check the applicable terms and disclose AI generation where your educational or publishing context requires it.
Gamma
Use a presentation builder to produce an initial structure for a lesson or short explanation. Supply a clear learning outcome and your own verified source material. Then check whether each section helps the learner make progress. A finished-looking presentation can still contain weak evidence, inaccessible design, or too much information for the time available.
Suno
Use a music-generation service to explore how a lyric or musical intention changes across different outputs. Work with material you own or have permission to use. Keep a record of the choices you make and discuss what those choices contribute. Review current usage terms before distributing a result, and make the role of the tool clear to listeners.
Keep the evidence you find
Zotero
Zotero is a reference manager, not an AI generator. Use it to collect sources, correct publication details, and organize citations. Try saving a source from this book and checking its author, title, and date against the original. A citation manager can format a record accurately even when the information in that record is wrong.
For a first workshop, one general assistant and one source-evaluation exercise may be enough. For a making project, add the tool that lets learners test their idea. Let the learning outcome determine the toolkit.