🗑 What's an "AI classroom" exactly?

📺 Join the FREE Wakelet Community Week 2025

Wakelet Community Week is going on RIGHT NOW, and it’s one of my favorite online PD events of the year EVERY year.

• 📅 5 Days

• 📽 40 Sessions

• 👩‍🏫 50+ Speakers

• 🌎 20,000 global attendees

Catch these keynote presentations — Redesigning Creativity in a World of AI; Becoming A Literate, Ethical, and Impactful Leader in the Age of AI; and Making Meaning in the Mess (Productive Struggle, Curiosity, and Growth).

I’ve been a keynote / featured speaker at EVERY Wakelet Community Week (I think?) since it started years ago. This year, my travel / speaking schedule didn’t make it possible, but you can still join and enjoy every moment!

📝 GUEST POST 📝

🖼️ Reframing the future of education

Tired of feeling overwhelmed by FUD—Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt—about the future of education? Between AI headlines and the relentless pace of change, it’s easy to feel anxious.

But what if we could reclaim our agency and become the designers of the future, not just its bystanders?

In his book, 2059: The Future of Education, author Dr. Micah Shippee introduces the Fusion Model. This powerful framework helps us move from simply reacting to new trends to proactively leading change. By focusing on people first we can trade panic for a plan.

A way to future-proof our practice without burning out.

As Micah shares in his book, AI can't coach a struggling student or create the safe, nurturing classroom where curiosity thrives.

That is your superpower. And the truth is, your superpower cannot be replaced.

To learn more about this mindset shift and discover the full framework, check out Micah’s guest post.

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🤖 What is an AI classroom anyway?

“What does an AI classroom look like?”

This was pitched to me as a topic for a virtual workshop I recently conducted. At first, I hesitated. But the more I thought about it, the more relevant it seemed.

Since ChatGPT was released in late 2022, lots of us have been trying to identify what role AI should play in education.

Whether we’ve used these words or not, I think we’ve been wondering – “Will we end up with AI classrooms? AI schools?”

“And what does that even mean, exactly?”

Let’s start to pin it down …

What is an AI classroom?

When we give a classroom an adjective, it’s dangerous, in my opinion. Inaccurate. It reduces it down to one dimension – even though we know that classrooms are multifaceted, nuanced, and layered.

• What’s a happy classroom?

• What’s a productive classroom?

• What’s a rigorous classroom?

When we describe classrooms with a technology, it can be even worse. It assumes that the technology is the focal point.

A decade ago, we were asking what a “1:1 classroom” was when schools started adopting one device (laptop, Chromebook, iPad) per student. Even worse was the “paperless classroom,” which not only assumed that the technology was the focal point, but that the focus was to render another technology (paper) obsolete.

(And here I was, thinking that the focus of a classroom was learning, not the implementation of a technology!)

What changes to make it an “AI classroom,” exactly?

• The goals? Well, whether we use AI or not, the goals are still to help prepare our students to succeed and thrive in their future lives.

• The physical space? Not really. Whether we’re using AI or digital devices, classrooms haven’t changed substantially in the last century.

• The curriculum? The curriculum and standards drive what we teach … while the tech just helps us to teach it.

• The devices? When we got 1:1 devices (laptops, Chromebooks), the goal wasn’t the devices. It was the learning. (Still is. Hopefully.)

So, now that we’re talking about how AI fits into the classroom, here’s the conclusion I’ve drawn about what the “AI classroom” looks like …

The AI classroom looks a lot like, well … “the classroom”

It’s been decade or more since we started creating “1:1 classrooms.” For comparison, let’s explore … how would we describe a “1:1 classroom” today?

• The 1:1 devices are available for students to use.

• Some teachers lean on them more … some less … some not at all.

• You can (generally) be a great teacher with technology – and without.

• HOW you use them has more to do with success than IF you’re using them.

Interestingly enough, we can use these bullet points above to describe the “AI classroom.” Let’s pull them down and change the wording a bit …

• AI is available for students (sometimes) and teachers (mostly) to use.

• Some teachers lean on AI more … some less … some not at all.

• You can (generally) be a great teacher with AI – and without.

• HOW you use AI has more to do with success than IF you’re using it.

Here’s what I’ve discovered. An “AI classroom” doesn’t have robots or holograms. It doesn’t have futuristic furniture or modern architecture.

An “AI classroom” has access to AI … and how we use it to support learning has EVERYTHING to do with whether it’s successful.

An “AI classroom” doesn’t use AI for everything. But it does use AI to support teaching and learning when it helps — and makes a difference.

So … what does that look like on a day-to-day basis?

Here’s where I’m seeing it most.

🤖 5 features of an “AI classroom”

After spending time this summer talking to teachers at schools and conferences all over the United States — and planning for my own classroom — I’ve narrowed down the five features of what I’d call “the AI classroom” (a classroom that uses AI to support teaching and learning) in August 2025.

Note: Some teachers and schools are leveraging AI to do big, transformative things that go beyond what I’ll describe here. But for the majority of schools that are using AI and getting results out of it, these are the commonalities I’m seeing.

1. Teachers use AI to plan lessons and get teaching ideas.

This is the start, the entry point for so many educators. It’s a quick win. An easy way to see how AI can be helpful. It supports what teachers are doing. It saves them time and empowers them with some new, creative ideas they didn’t think of before. It also supports my big idea about responsible AI use in classrooms — human thinking before AI.

• 💡 Example: Asking for lesson ideas, but also asking for next-level ideas like:

  • What misconceptions might my students have about what I’m teaching?

  • What’s an analogy that would help my students better understand?

  • What might be missing in my lesson?

  • How can I connect my lesson to student interests or the real world?

2. Teachers use AI to create teaching materials.

This is where AI really acts as your “new teaching assistant.” (Just like my t-shirt says — and the stickers I hand out at conferences.) Teaching still depends on teaching materials — assessments, readings and learning resources, discussion questions, etc. I like to use the 80% rule of AI: if it can do 80% of the work and I only have to do 20% to make it perfect, it’s worth using. Anything less than that, I’m probably going to make it myself. The big caution: don’t use AI to make crummy worksheets more efficiently. Let’s use this power to make learning better — not to make mediocre learning faster.

• 💡 Example: Use tools like the ones below — and others you may have found that you love — to help you create resources. Why? So you can use that time on what matters most.

  • Brisk Teaching (briskteaching.com)

  • SchoolAI (schoolai.com)

  • MagicSchool (magicschool.ai)

  • Diffit (diffit.me)

3. Teachers use AI to assist with instruction.

For the first two, we focused on teachers preparing to teach. Now, it’s time to teach. AI can be your teaching partner, helping you during in-class instruction. In fact, if your school is still squeamish about students using AI directly, it can even be used to help you teach — without students needing to interact directly with it at all.

• 💡 Example: Do the “Be the Bot” activity. Tell students that you’re going to have AI tell you something about some content they’ve been studying. But first, you want the students to tell you what they think AI is going to say. Let them brainstorm together … and then prompt the AI. Students compare the AI response with what they anticipated. Here’s a Google Slides/PowerPoint template students can use. (FYI: I’m planning on writing a post soon to better describe how to do this activity.)

4. AI interacts with students.

This is where it gets a little more controversial — and where we need to proceed with more caution. K-12 AI edu companies are making chatbots that are customized for student use. They’re built with guardrails to keep students save and to keep them on task. But students still need to proceed with caution (i.e. don’t share personal info, understand that they’re AI and not human, etc.). The big questions we need to be asking: Will AI chatbot interactions with students be better than what we were doing before? And if so, how? What might we be losing if we do an activity with AI?

• 💡 Example: I used Brisk Boost — Brisk Teaching’s free student-facing AI chatbots — as activities for students in my Spanish 3 classes this week while I was absent. The Boost chatbot asked students questions about a learning resource (a reading, a video, etc.). It helped them with verb conjugation struggles. It asked them about strategies they used when the read. It’s adaptive and more interactive than a worksheet.

5. AI provides teachers (and students) with insights on learning.

It isn’t only about making teaching resources and putting chatbots in front of students. AI has the potential to inform our instruction, giving us valuable insights and data about our students’ performance that will help us adjust our lesson plans for tomorrow — and the rest of the year. Lots of student-facing AI tools give teachers a data dashboard with info, little “aha” moments, and suggestions to better inform their teaching.

•  💡 Example: One of my favorites at this is MirrorTalk (mirrortalk.ai). MirrorTalk has students describe what they’re working on (a project, an essay, a research paper, even a summary of a lesson or topic they’re studying). MirrorTalk asks them follow-up questions to get them to think more deeply about what they’re working on (which is fantastic). But when the student finishes, MirrorTalk tells the teacher (and the student, too) how well the student understood. It summarizes the interaction. It tells whether the student showed a positive mindset — and even where they are in the zone of proximal development. (!!!)

Do you have an “AI classroom"?

Please don’t take that question as a passive aggressive suggestion that you need to use more AI in your instruction (or with your students).

Remember: having an “AI classroom” isn’t the goal. We’re not trying to get some achievement or badge because we used AI technology a certain number of times.

The technology is here to serve us — the teachers (and our students). Not the other way around.

Use it if you think it’s helping you and your students to meet your needs and goals.

If it isn’t, then, well … using it just to look techy or to impress your principal (or your tech integration specialist)? That’s just … that’s just not good enough.

It’s here to support us. (And you get to choose whether you use that label “AI classroom” or not. Me? Personally, I think I’ll pass.)

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!