Reviews, field notes and practical guidance for teachers and school leaders working out where AI helps, and where it gets in the way.
I write about lesson planning, assessment, AI literacy and school policy. Each piece starts with a question I hear from educators, not a product brief.
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Only two of these seven do the job most teachers mean by “make a lesson video.” Seven tools sorted into the four jobs hiding inside that request, with prices and privacy positions read from each vendor's own pages on September 24, 2026, and a three-question consent test for any video a student appears in.
Only two of these six AI tools import your Google Classroom roster and send grades back to the gradebook. The other four stop short, and the Google integration on one of the best-known tools turns out to be a login. Six compared on what the integration does, with pricing checked on September 23, 2026 and the data-hosting gaps named.
Seven AI tools for the school front office, sorted by the job: attendance letters, meeting minutes, records requests and the questions families ask forty times a week. Every price checked September 22, 2026, and the student-record limits named.
Seven AI tools that fit a school psychologist's actual work, from the report draft to the family summary, with prices checked this week and a clear line around the one thing AI must never do, which is decide who qualifies.
The seven AI tools that do real work at department scale, what each one lets a team share, dated pricing checked September 20, 2026, and the four questions to ask before you recommend anything to your colleagues.
Eight AI tools that do the planning and paperwork around a PE lesson, the one that was actually built for physical education, what each costs as checked in September 2026, and the three jobs that stay with the teacher.
Six AI tools that take the paperwork around classroom behavior off a teacher's evening, the three jobs the research and two new state policies keep off AI, and a four-question test for anything else a colleague recommends.
No AI tool is built for art teachers: of 125 tools in the directory, the 19 that claim art are general planners with a subject box ticked. These six do the unit plan, the demo, the art history, the artist statement and the exhibition, five of them free for K-12, and leave every mark on the paper to the student.
Six AI tools that help a student working two or three grade levels below their age, sorted by the job you need done: leveled practice, a scaffolded unit, supervised practice, handwriting analysis, IEP progress data and free fluency work. Four of the six need no student login.
A school improvement plan is an argument and a pile of paperwork. AI is now genuinely good at the paperwork. Here are five tools mapped to the five jobs a plan contains, and the one job you should never hand over.
New York City and Los Angeles Unified both closed student access to generative AI on September 2, 2026, and four states now require a district AI policy. Six tools cover the work that lands on the technology director: counting what is already in use, building vendor files, drafting the policy, and handling the student, staff and records jobs that follow.
Six AI tools that hold up in a computer science classroom where students can already generate the code, with what each one costs, what it will not do, and what your district has to check first.
