Parlay is an AI-powered teaching platform positioned as "the future of student-driven classroom discussion," designed to help teachers organize meaningful, measurable, and inclusive classroom discussions. According to the official introduction, it is already used by over one million teachers and students, and teachers can start using it in the classroom for free.
Key capabilities and features:
- RoundTable: A threaded discussion board activity equipped with secret identities, guided peer feedback questions, "model" submissions, and other features.
- Socratic seminar tools: Used to guide and assess Socratic seminars in the classroom, giving every student a chance to speak and making it easy to track student participation.
- Parlay Genie: An AI-powered tool that can read articles, videos, and past Parlay discussions to generate higher-order discussion prompts and follow-up questions in seconds.
- Discussion stacking and sequencing: Multiple discussions can be arranged in order so that each RoundTable builds on the ideas from previous discussions; Parlay Genie uses AI to intelligently design follow-up questions based on student responses.
- Discussion prompt library: Contains more than 5,000 discussion prompts created by teachers in the Parlay community, allowing users to browse topics suitable for the classroom or contribute their own prompts.
- Integration capabilities: Integrates with more than 30 external tools, supporting single sign-on, class rosters, and assessment syncing.
- Tracking and assessment: Can track student participation and skill development over time, and present student participation and assessment throughout the year in a portfolio view.
How to use: Teachers can register for free and use it in the classroom, organize discussions through features such as RoundTable, Socratic seminars, and Parlay Genie, quickly create discussion topics using the community prompt library, and sync class and assessment data through integration tools.
Use cases: Suitable for classroom discussions in online and asynchronous learning environments, helping teachers guide students to deepen learning, engage in equitable collaboration and reflection, and cultivate well-rounded students adapted to work and life in the 21st century.
Limitations: Information such as pricing, specific subscription plans, platform compatibility details, and technical requirements is not currently provided in the materials.
