Lighten your Load: Using AI Tools to Enhance OER.
Discover the best AI tools for Open Educational Resources — their superpowers, their catches, and your best daily use cases.
Today's Agenda
Consider Tools for creating OER or other course content
Deep dive into Creating Ancillary Materials
Card Game on Keeping The Human Element (Analog Inspiration)
Claude
The Editor & Accessibility Expert
It is incredibly good at reading massive documents (like a 50-page PDF) all at once, remembering your instructions, and writing in a natural, human academic tone.

⚠️ The Catch
It can be a bit of a "hall monitor." It will sometimes refuse to summarize perfectly safe historical or social science texts because its safety filters are highly sensitive.
🎯 Your Best Daily Use Case
Translating & Formatting: Uploading a dense, public-domain text and asking Claude to rewrite it for a 1st-year reading level, or having it write ADA-compliant alt-text for all the images in your chapter.
ChatGPT
The Interactive Builder
It is great at taking raw text and turning it into structured activities, tables, or interactive study materials.
The Catch
The writing style screams "AI." Left to its own devices, it will write repetitive, robotic paragraphs full of words like "delve," "furthermore," and "in conclusion."
Your Best Daily Use Case
Building Assessments: Pasting in a chapter of your open textbook and asking it to generate a 20-question multiple-choice test bank, complete with an answer key and rationale for each wrong answer.
Google Gemini
🌐 The Localizer
Because it is deeply connected to the live internet and Google Docs, it is the best tool for pulling in real-time, current events and exporting them right into your workflow. Can be integrated into Canvas*

The Catch: It can sometimes lose the thread of the conversation if you give it too many complex, multi-step instructions in a single, incredibly long chat.
🎯 Your Best Daily Use Case
Refreshing Stale Content: Taking a generic, 5-year-old OER business case study and asking Gemini to rewrite it using 2026 economic data specific to the San Francisco Bay Area.
(* CC has the pro version)
Nano Banana 2.0 (Gemini 3 Flash Image)
Google's cutting-edge Gemini 3 Flash Image model excels in text-to-image and multi-image-to-image composition. Affectionately known as "Nano Banana 2," it empowers OER creators to generate custom, diverse, and inclusive illustrations and specialized diagrams. This is ideal when suitable Creative Commons images are unavailable. Be mindful of daily usage limits based on your service tier.
The OER Maintenance Cliff
OER often dies because faculty don't have time to update case studies or fix broken links. Position AI as the maintenance engine. You aren't asking AI to write the textbook; you are asking it to refresh the 2018 case studies with 2026 data.
The Bottom Line on AI & Copyright
  • Raw AI output is public domain. The US Copyright Office has ruled that AI cannot be an author. Therefore, you cannot put a Creative Commons license on a chapter or image generated entirely by AI.
  • Human editing changes the game. If you heavily revise, curate, or blend AI output with your own expertise, your human contribution is copyrightable.
  • Watch your inputs. It is unethical to upload someone else's copyrighted work into an AI tool. Always start with your own original work or openly licensed OER.
Deep Dive into Creating Ancillary Materials
  • AI Compliance
  • NotebookLM for Interactives, Infographics, and Activities
  • Gemini for Slides and Item Banks
  • NectirAI for Tutors, Coaches, and Helpful Bots
  • This presentation was created with GAMMA. https://gamma.app
AI as an Accessibility Engine
AI is exceptionally good at the tedious parts of OER compliance, like writing descriptive alt-text for complex charts or converting passive-voice academic jargon into clear, ADA-compliant reading levels.
Descriptive Alt-Text
Automatically generate detailed alt-text for complex charts and images across your OER materials.
Clear Reading Levels
Convert passive-voice academic jargon into clear, ADA-compliant prose accessible to all learners.
OER Compliance
Tackle the tedious but critical parts of making educational resources truly accessible to everyone.
ComplyBot (PlayLab)
Can remediate Canvas pages for alt text, headings, and ADA compliance.

www.playlab.ai

ComplyBot: Accessibility Remediator

Meet ComplyBot, your assistant for Canvas accessibility! It will correct your Canvas HTML to meet WCAG AA 2.1 guidelines. It also converts documents to ADA-compliant HTML code or into an accessible document, too.

NotebookLM
Infographic
Quiz (interactive)
Error uploading image.
Podcast (interactive)
Students can talk to the podcast hosts
Study Guide
You or your students can create and share study guides based on YOUR content
Sample Notebook from ENGL C1000 Syllabus and Intro Module https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/d5f4905b-fb13-4b07-9a07-5703275d8c4a
Before and After Text Heavy Slide
Slide Decks, Content Pages, and More with Gemini
Before using nice Template
Clicked Beautify this Slide
NectirAI Coach and Tutor

Nectir AI

Nectir AI

Nectir AI enables instructors to create personalized AI Assistants, offering 24/7 student support and a seamless LMS integration to improve student success.

Analog AI Card Game
Small groups
Draw a card and discuss
Reflection
Contact Us
Vincent Kang
Andrea Fuentes, CTTL Instructional Designer
Access our Gamma

ai-superpowers-oer-bzzwazv.gamma.site

Lighten your Load: Using AI Tools to Enhance OER.”

Discover the best AI tools for Open Educational Resources — their superpowers, their catches, and your best daily use cases. AI Tool The "Superpower" for OER The Catch (What to watch out for) Your Best Daily Use Case

QR to the this presentation