Most Flint activities have specific learning objectives in mind. If teachers or students want to ask more general questions and would like a more general AI assistant, the general AI is a good way to get that support. The perks of having students use this instead of ChatGPT or similar tools include:
Access to the best models for free (we use Claude 4 Sonnet)
Ability to use math notation, calculation, graphing, code editing, image generation, web search, citations, and whiteboarding.
Data privacy (free tools like ChatGPT feed all conversations back into their training for new models, whereas in Flint, no conversations are sent back to model providers like OpenAI)
Administrator oversight (admins at your school can see all the conversations students are having with the general tuto,r and inappropriate/dangerous messages are flagged by Flint for admins to review)
For a more comprehensive comparison between ChatGPT and Flint, see here. The rest of this page will cover how to access the general chat and view past sessions with it.
Chatting with the general AI
Start a chat
You can start a chat in three different areas in Flint:
Via the input bar on the homepage
Through a chat shortcut
On the "My chats" page
The input bar that can be found at the bottom on your homepage gives you quick access to starting a chat with Sparky, your AI assistant in Flint. Here, you can type in or speak any question or request, as well as attach content for Sparky to reference.
Alternatively, you can start a chat by selecting one of our chat shortcuts. These will start you off with a beginning message to Sparky and guide you in providing the necessary information to get an output you want.
Finally, you can also create a new chat on the "My chats" page. Here, you can also see and continue previous chats within Flint.
Chat with Flint
You can chat about anything within Flint chats, including asking about current events, asking various questions, or requesting image, rubric, or worksheet creation.
If your workspace has distinguished between users (teacher vs student) through an LMS/SIS integration, then this chat will treat those roles differently. Flint will be more like a helpful assistant to teachers and act more like a responsible tutor to students. This means, with students, Flint will not write essays/responses for them and would guide them on how to solve problems rather than outright giving answers.
Viewing past sessions with the general AI
Owners of the workspace can view all chat sessions. Members will be able to view their own past conversations only.
Viewing your own sessions
You can view your own sessions on the "My chats" page. You can navigate to this page using the "My chats" button on the left-hand sidebar on the homepage.
Viewing other users' sessions (only for workspace owners/admins)
Owners of the workspace can search through and view all activity with activities and chats within the workspace. They can do so by clicking "Search" in the sidebar.
In the Search menu, chat sessions are listed at the bottom based on recency. You can click on "See all session results" to expand this list and see more items.
You can also type in the search bar at the top a name or keywords to narrow down your search.
