Switched from Grammarly to a local AI writing tool for lesson planning

I spent three years using Grammarly Premium for writing my lesson plans and parent emails. Last month I tried a local AI tool called Ollama that runs completely offline on my laptop. The difference was night and day for privacy since I don't want my students' names floating around some cloud server. Also, the local tool actually lets me customize the tone better for middle schoolers without talking down to them. Grammarly would flag perfectly fine sentences just because they weren't formal enough for a business setting. Has anyone else made the switch from cloud-based tools to local AI for sensitive work stuff? How do you handle the setup hassle?

2 comments

2 Comments

gracethomas1d ago

Five bucks says Grammarly would have flagged "yo" as a grammatical error if a student wrote it in an essay. I tried the same switch for my freelance writing gigs and honestly, the setup was a pain at first because I had to figure out how to download the right model without my wifi dying halfway through. But now I just laugh at the thought of any cloud tool knowing what I'm writing about at 2am. Totally worth it if you're patient enough to sit through one more YouTube tutorial.

wells.christopher15h ago

Yep, I bet Grammarly would choke on "yo" and then suggest replacing it with "you there" or something equally robotic. The wifi thing is real too, I had to download a 7GB model overnight because my connection kept timing out. But honestly, once it's done you can write about whatever you want and no company gets a copy of your half-baked drafts.