Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Citations in the world of AI #EngChat #EdChat

I encountered a great question about citing things students finding using AI resources. If students were using a Space in SchoolAI and they were given information they wanted to use in an essay, how might they go about citing that? Well, the folks at MLA and APA are one step ahead and have provided examples on how to do that. I was able to take that work and build a Space that will help students with their citation questions that you can use with your students. 

What is nice about this Space is that it will not only properly format their citations, it will provide help with in-text citation as well. In-text citation was one of my big focus points when I taught writing to my grade nine and ten students. I really drilled it home because I always viewed proper citation as a mechanical function that should be completed and checked during proofreading. I was probably a little too hard on it, but I feel like it payed off for students. 

I once had a former student visit the classroom during their Fall break and they told me their professor told them that they were the only one in the entire lecture hall sized class to have accurate in-text citations and they wanted to make sure to tell me. It made my entire week. It was even better because they came in and told me while I had my Freshmen with me, so they got to hear the story as well. 


Citation can be a tedious part of any writing process, but it is much easier than it has ever been. There are plenty of programs out there that will create citations for you and and you no longer have to worry about having too many spaces or not enough spaces in the citation. You do not have to worry about the punctuation in the citation. I remember being marked down for these thinks in high school. With the advent of AI, how the heck to you cite ChatGPT? I remember when we asked the same question about wikipedia and other websites. Well, MLA and APA do not let their writing community down. There are guidelines on how to cite chat conversations with AI. There are even guidelines on citing memes! 

To help cut through the noise, I built a Space that will help users with their citations. It is built to help with citing AI specifically, but I also built in examples and pdfs from MLA and APA to help with all citations types and to even provide examples to showcase what they user should have. I have also built the Space to NOT write essays for students, but help them insert in-text citation as needed. 

If you want to explore the Space, give it a look over and see how it might help you or your students. 

MLA and APA Citation Space