Perplexity AI for Teachers: A CSD Project Flow and Teaching Citation Checking

On a Friday before home time, a Secondary 4 Citizenship and Social Development form teacher reads draft projects in the staff room: "References say 'Source: AI' — he is not lazy, the tool just never showed its sources." She opens Perplexity on the same topic, healthcare and population ageing in Hong Kong, and every sentence carries a clickable [1][2]. "Finally something I can teach them to verify." She pauses. "But the terms say 13-plus, so primary is out — and I cannot see what they asked."

Perplexity's value is not how clever the synthesis sounds. It is that provenance sits in front of the pupil, which gives information literacy a handle. Before recommending it to a class, handle the age clause, parental consent, and the hard fact that there is no teacher monitoring.

Answer engine versus chatbot

Perplexity searches the open web first, then synthesises a cited reply. A typical chatbot often generates from model memory first and only then decides whether to search. The product comes in three parts: web and mobile apps, the Comet browser (Chromium-based with a sidebar assistant), and the Sonar API for developers.

It is built for knowledge workers who need sourced answers quickly — analysts, journalists, researchers. There are no classes, assignments, teacher monitoring or pupil safety gating. Education Pro is a discounted subscription for individually verified students and educators through SheerID, not a school product. By phase, senior secondary fits best — CSD, History, Geography and English project work with reference lists; junior secondary under supervision; primary does not meet the age terms.

Features teachers actually use

Cited answers with clickable sources behind each statement. Pro Search for deeper multi-source searching with model choice. Pro users switch models at the bottom left of the prompt — Best (automatic), OpenAI GPT models, Anthropic Claude models among others. Deep Research runs multiple search rounds and produces a report. Education Pro includes Learn Mode. Comet is free with Ask and Summarize for the current page, Chrome extension support, translation and ad blocking. Max adds Model Council — one frontier model each from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, then a synthesiser that shows disagreement. Enterprise tiers add organisation management, collaboration and security controls. Perplexity publishes third-party models used (OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, xAI, Google) and notes its Sonar model is fine-tuned from Meta Llama 3.1 70B.

A seven-step CSD project flow

Teacher trial and Space setup

You teach Secondary 4 CSD on healthcare and population ageing in Hong Kong. Pupils have three weeks for a 1,500-word project citing at least six reliable sources. Register a free account with your school email and run your own topic first — Census and Statistics Department and Hospital Authority, or a content farm. That answer decides what you will teach pupils to look for. Create a Space (some versions call these Projects) named "S4 CSD healthcare and ageing" and put the task, set readings and rubric inside.

Model prompt and citation sheet

Project the prompt below and explain each line — why years, source types and "say when you cannot find it" matter.

Topic: pressure on Hong Kong's public healthcare system from population ageing, 2015 to 2025

Answer the four points below. Every point must cite its source. Prefer Hong Kong government departments, statutory bodies or university research:
1. Change in the proportion of the population aged 65 and over, with specific years and figures.
2. Change in waiting times for new specialist outpatient cases in public hospitals, with specialties and median figures.
3. Three relevant government policies or schemes introduced in this decade, one sentence each.
4. Two main points of contention from academics or policy commentators, with one source for each opposing position.

Constraints:
- If no official source exists for a figure, write "no official source found" rather than substituting secondary reporting.
- State the statistical year for every figure; do not place figures from different years side by side as a comparison.
- Label each source as a government document, a news report or a commentary piece.

Hand out the citation sheet — one row per source for all six:

Citation check sheet, submitted with the project, one row per source

Source number:
Title and website:
Source type: government / statutory body / academic / news / commentary / other
Publication date:
Did I open the original: yes / no
Where in the original did I find the AI's claim: (copy one sentence)
Do figures in the original match what the AI quoted: match / do not match (explain)
Does this source hold a position: yes / no (explain)
If I quote this in my project, how would I rewrite it:

Rule: any source where "did I open the original" is no may not be cited in the project.

Find an error, split stages, Comet cautions

Require every pupil to locate at least one place where the answer departs from the original — an out-of-date figure, news presented as official statistics, a district number described as territory-wide — and share findings in class. State explicitly: Perplexity is for stage-one gathering; analysis and argument are written by the pupil, and put that in the rubric. If you use Comet on long government reports, brief pupils first: Comet is a full browser that sees browsing history; school-machine installation goes past the IT coordinator.

The checking sheet is worth more than the tool. Perplexity will faithfully cite unreliable sources and can place figures from different years side by side. The lesson is opening the original yourself.

2026 pricing and whole-school maths

Free US$0; Pro US$20/month or US$17/month billed annually; Max US$200/month; Education Pro discounted via SheerID with unpublished official price; Enterprise Pro US$40/seat/month or US$400/year; Enterprise Max US$325/seat/month; Comet free. One hundred staff on Enterprise Pro annual is about US$40,000 (HK$312,000) with no pupil seats; discounts require negotiation. Individual subscriptions fragment the same assignment; Deep Research with 30 pupils in one lesson is not viable — demonstrate instead.

Alternatives and Edor.ai in different roles

ChatGPT search cites less clearly; Gemini Deep Research suits full reports; Gemini Notebook cites only teacher uploads — better for junior secondary. For open-web verification, Perplexity's interface still wins. Edor.ai adds gating, monitoring, a school knowledge base and grant reporting up to HK$500,000. Information literacy: Perplexity; everyday school teaching: knowledge base. See RAG, student AI safety and 12 procurement questions.

Common misreadings

• The claim: A citation means the answer is correct. What actually happens: Perplexity will faithfully cite a content farm or an out-of-date report and can place 2018 and 2023 figures side by side. A citation is a starting point; the sheet and opening the original are what the rubric grades.

• The claim: Comet is free, so pupils can install it on any school machine. What actually happens: Comet is a full browser that sees browsing history and signed-in sessions. IT should assess school installation, and class time should cover what stays on the local browser.

• The claim: Education Pro at roughly US$10 a month means every pupil can afford it. What actually happens: The exact price is unpublished officially; third parties report around US$10 and eligibility may be limited to post-secondary institutions. Even if individuals can buy it, there is still no teacher monitoring — it does not replace a school platform.

Three things to try on Monday

1. Open a Free account with your school email, run the prompt on "Hong Kong population aged 65, 2015–2025", and note which domains appear — write the government / statutory / other ratio on page one of next week's lesson plan.
2. Turn the citation sheet here into a Google Form or Word template in the CSD shared drive, and add a rubric line: "Six sources each with one sheet row; any source not opened in the original may not be cited."
3. Send a short note to parents (Secondary 4 and above): Perplexity requires age 13-plus with a guardian accepting terms for minors, and class use is gathering only with analysis written by the pupil — keep replies on file.