For most instructional coaches, two tools do most of the work: Gemini Notebook (the tool formerly called NotebookLM) for turning observation notes, research and your district's new AI policy into coaching prep, and AILitKit for building the AI literacy sessions every school now has to run. SchoolAI, Brisk Teaching, ScreenPal and Otter.ai each earn a place for one narrower job: modelling monitored student AI, feedback inside Google Docs, video of model lessons, and transcribing adult-only debriefs. None of them coaches a teacher. That is still your job, and this week it matters more than usual.
On 1 September 2026, Washington DC's Office of the State Superintendent of Education published a model AI policy that puts "evaluations of teacher performance" in its red, prohibited category and "providing supplemental coaching" in yellow, allowed with safeguards (OSSE). That line, coaching yes, evaluation no, is the one every coach will be asked to hold this year. Meanwhile an NPR/Ipsos poll of 545 K-12 teachers found that only 33% say their school has a formal policy on student AI use, and 52% say their school has offered no guidance or they are not sure what it is (Ipsos, June 2026). Who fills that gap in most buildings? The coach.
This post is for instructional coaches, and for the principals and directors of curriculum (chief academic officers, in larger districts) who decide what coaches are allowed to use. It is not a list of tools for teachers; we have that post already.
How This List Was Built
The pool was the 21 tools in the aieducator.tools directory that list professional development as a use case, plus the 33 in the collaboration and communication category. I judged each on four things: whether it does a job a coach actually has (prep, PD design, feedback, documentation), whether the vendor documents what happens to recordings and notes, whether it can be used without ever touching student data, and whether the pricing is honest enough to put in a budget request. Nobody pays to be included, and vendors cannot buy placement.
Two directory tools were left out on purpose. Alder Branch describes itself as "a personalized instructional coach with you every step of the way", but it is paid-only, has one review, and its privacy policy is a published Google Doc, which is not enough to recommend to a district. TecAdRise sells services and training on a quote basis rather than a product I could assess. Two well-known coaching platforms, Edthena's AI Coach and TeachFX, are not in the directory yet, so they get a verdict line below rather than a full section.
Pricing, free tiers and privacy pages were checked on 7 September 2026.
What the Directory Numbers Say About PD Tools
Of the 21 directory tools that list professional development as a use case, 9 declare FERPA compliance, 11 state that they collect no student data at all, and only 2 carry the independent 9ine security assessment. Nine host data in the United States, four in the United Kingdom, three in the European Union, and three do not say. Across the whole directory of 126 tools, 45 leave their FERPA status blank. A blank is not a failing grade; it means the record has not been filled in, and it is a prompt to read the vendor's privacy policy yourself before you upload a single observation note.
The Six Tools at a Glance
The privacy column is what each vendor declares on its own pages, not an audit. The 9ine column is the independent one.
| Tool | Best use | Strengths | Limitations | Price / free tier (checked 7 Sep 2026) | Privacy considerations |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini Notebook | Coaching prep from your own notes, research and policy | Answers only from the sources you upload, with citations; audio overviews for PD | Free-tier caps no longer published as numbers; personal accounts differ from Education accounts | Free; Education Fundamentals 100 notebooks, 50 sources each, 50 chats a day | Education editions: not reviewed by humans, not used to train models; FERPA blank in directory |
| AILitKit | AI literacy PD and lesson guides for non-specialists | Coaching language written for the teacher; three of four activities unplugged; 11 frameworks | Teacher-only; priced in pounds; one review | 3 free guides then 1 a month; £59 a year per teacher; £999 a year per school (up to 50) | Vendor declares FERPA, COPPA, GDPR; EU-hosted; collects no student data; 18+ |
| SchoolAI | Showing teachers what monitored student AI looks like | PD Hub free; teacher sees every student chat; critical alerts on every plan | Free plan now 5 Space sessions a year; paid plans only via district purchase | Free (5 Spaces a year); Pro and Scale: no public pricing | Vendor declares FERPA, COPPA, SOC 2 Type 2; US-hosted; collects student data; no minimum age |
| Brisk Teaching | Modelling AI feedback inside the Docs teachers already use | Works in Google and Microsoft; free plan is unlimited; 9ine-assessed | Feedback tools are built for student work, not lesson plans; Pro price not shown | Free (unlimited, standard model); Educator Pro and district plans: no public pricing | Says it acts as a FERPA "school official"; data stored in the US; 9ine-assessed |
| ScreenPal | Recording model lessons and video feedback | Free plan has no watermark; transcripts and captions; education pricing | 15-minute cap on free recordings; 10 hosted videos | Free; Solo Deluxe EDU $2.25 a month annual; Team Education $3 a user a month (10+) | FERPA "school official" clause; iKeepSafe certified; US-hosted; 60-day deletion for schools |
| Otter.ai | Transcribing adult-only debriefs and PLC meetings | 300 free minutes a month; summaries and action items; 9ine-assessed | Trains its AI on de-identified recordings; no FERPA clause; 13+ | Free (300 min a month, 30 min a conversation); Pro $16.99 a month or $8.33 a month annual; 20% education discount | Not for classrooms with students; check your state's recording-consent rules |
Best for coaching prep from your own evidence: Gemini Notebook
Gemini Notebook is the best fit for turning a week of observation notes, a district policy and a research paper into a coaching conversation, because it answers only from the sources you give it and cites them, which is the behaviour a coach needs when the stakes are a colleague's practice (Google). The directory rating is 4.84 from 90 reviews, more reviews than any other tool in this post.
Here is the workflow. Upload your typed, de-identified notes from three visits to the same classroom, the coaching goal the teacher set, and the relevant pages of your district's AI guidance. Ask: "Across these three visits, where did the lesson's cognitive demand drop, and what did the teacher do just before it dropped?" You get an answer with a citation to your own notes, which you then check against your memory of the room. The doing (sorting three pages of notes) is outsourced. The thinking (what to say to the teacher, and how) stays with you.
For PD, the audio overview feature turns a policy document into something staff can listen to in the car; a coach can hand it out before a session so the meeting starts at the questions rather than the reading.
Watch out for: On 2 September 2026 Google moved Gemini Notebook to "compute-based usage limits" that depend on prompt complexity and the models used, and its help page now describes the free tier only as "standard limits" with paid tiers at two, four or more times that (Google). So the free plan has no published number you can plan around. The Education editions still do.
Pricing: Free with a personal Google account. Through Google Workspace for Education, the Fundamentals edition allows 100 notebooks per user, 50 sources per notebook, 50 chats a day and 3 audio overviews a day; Education Plus raises those to 500, 300, 500 and 20 (Google). Checked 7 September 2026.
Safety: Google states that in Education editions "your uploaded files, chats and model outputs won't be reviewed by human reviewers or used to improve generative AI models"; on a personal account, content you flag with a thumbs up or down can be human-reviewed (Google). The directory record leaves FERPA, hosting and minimum age blank. Use the district account, not your Gmail, and keep student names out of anything you upload regardless.
Best for AI literacy PD that teachers can deliver: AILitKit
AILitKit is the best fit for a coach who has been told to "do something about AI literacy" by October, because each lesson guide comes with coaching notes, "exact words the teacher can say, written for non-specialists", and three of the four activities need no devices (AILitKit). That matters in the districts that have just paused student-facing AI: New York City from its 2-K programme for two-year-olds through grade 8 for the whole of 2026-27, and Los Angeles Unified, which has restricted student AI use (K-12 Dive, 2 September 2026). Unplugged AI literacy is the version of the mandate those schools can still deliver.
The workflow: upload the teacher's own lesson, any subject, and in about a minute you get four to six activities with support and challenge versions, mapped to frameworks including UNESCO, the OECD AI literacy framework and, for UK readers, the DfE's generative AI guidance (AILitKit). A coach can run one guide with a department, then leave the teacher with the coaching language rather than a slide deck.
Compared with writing AI literacy sessions from scratch in ChatGPT, the difference is the alignment map and the framework coverage heatmap, which lets a curriculum director see which grades and subjects have had nothing yet.
Watch out for: It launched in 2026 and has one review in the directory, so the evidence base is the product itself, not a track record. It is priced in pounds, which will irritate a US business office.
Pricing: Three free lesson guides to start, then one a month, no card required. Teacher plan £59 a year or £7.99 a month; School plan £999 a year for up to 50 teachers (AILitKit). No dollar pricing is published. Checked 7 September 2026.
Safety: Teachers only; the vendor states students never use the platform, prompts are not stored or used for training, and uploaded files are deleted after processing. The directory record declares FERPA, COPPA and GDPR, EU hosting, no student data collected, and an 18+ minimum. Because no student ever logs in, there is no student data agreement for your district to sign, which is the simplest safety case in this post.
Best for showing teachers what monitored student AI looks like: SchoolAI
SchoolAI is the best fit for a coach who needs to demonstrate, in a staff meeting, what a student-facing AI session looks like when the teacher can see every message, because the free plan keeps Dot (the teacher assistant), the tools and the PD Hub open without limit (SchoolAI). Directory rating 4.92 from 13 reviews.
The job for a coach is not tutoring students. It is calibration, and this is my view rather than the vendor's. Teachers who have only seen ChatGPT assume student AI means an open chatbot; ten minutes inside a Space, watching the Mission Control view populate with student messages, changes the conversation about what a policy should permit. The PD Hub, with certifications and live sessions, is free, so a coach can assign it as pre-work.
Compared with MagicSchool, SchoolAI's edge for this job is the live monitoring view; compared with Khanmigo, it is teacher-built rather than pre-built.
Watch out for: From 15 July 2026 free accounts get five Space sessions a year, and the paid plans "are only available through a school or district purchase" (SchoolAI). Five sessions is enough to demonstrate, not to run a pilot. You will need a district contract before teachers can use it properly.
Pricing: Free plan with five Space sessions a year; Pro and Scale plans are sold to schools and districts only, with no public pricing (SchoolAI). Checked 7 September 2026.
Safety: The vendor states it is FERPA and COPPA compliant, SOC 2 Type 2 certified and a member of the Student Data Privacy Consortium (SchoolAI). The directory record shows US hosting, no minimum age, and that it collects student data and shares some with third parties. If your demonstration uses real students, that is a student-data question for your district's agreement, not something a coach signs off alone. Demonstrate with colleagues playing students instead.
Best for modelling feedback inside Google Docs: Brisk Teaching
Brisk Teaching is the best fit for a coach who wants to sit beside a teacher and model AI-assisted feedback on the documents that teacher already has open, because it runs as a Chrome or Edge extension inside Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, and the free plan is unlimited (Brisk). Directory rating 4.77 from 35 reviews, and it carries the independent 9ine assessment.
The coaching move is to open a real (de-identified) student essay with the teacher, run Brisk's "glow and grow" feedback, and then spend the session on the part that matters: which of the machine's comments the teacher would keep, which they would cut, and why. In my view teachers learn more from editing AI feedback than from hearing a talk about it. The same session can cover the batch-feedback view, which shows classwide trends a teacher can plan from.
Compared with MagicSchool, Brisk's advantage is that the teacher never leaves the Doc; compared with ChatGPT, the feedback is structured for a classroom rather than a chat window.
Watch out for: Brisk's feedback tools are designed for student work. Running them on a lesson plan to give the teacher feedback is a workaround, not a feature, and the output reads that way. The free plan has an upload limit for batch feedback that the plans page does not quantify, and the Educator Pro price is not shown on the plans page, so I cannot give you a figure (no public pricing).
Pricing: Free plan, described as unlimited usage on the standard model; Educator Pro, Premium (schools) and Intelligence (districts) plans require contacting sales, with no public pricing (Brisk). Checked 7 September 2026.
Safety: Brisk's privacy notice says it operates as a "School Official" under FERPA, uses student data only to provide the service on the school's behalf, and stores data in the United States; it offers a Student Data Privacy Addendum to schools that contract with it (Brisk). The directory record leaves FERPA, COPPA and hosting blank and needs updating; the 9ine assessment is on file. A district agreement is still the thing that makes student work safe to upload.
Best for recording model lessons and video feedback: ScreenPal
ScreenPal is the best fit for a coach who records model lessons and short video feedback, because the free plan records without a watermark and the education plans cost $2.25 to $4.50 a month (ScreenPal). Directory rating 4.67 from 3 reviews.
The workflow that works for coaching is not filming a teacher. It is filming yourself: a ten-minute model of a number talk or a Socratic seminar opener, captioned automatically, with a two-question quiz at the end so the teacher has to notice the move you wanted them to notice. Video feedback on a teacher's own plan, screen-recorded with your voice over their document, lands better than a comment thread.
Compared with recording on a phone, ScreenPal gives you transcripts, captions in 100+ languages and hosting; compared with TeachFX, it analyses nothing, which for a coaching relationship can be a virtue.
Watch out for: Free recordings are capped at 15 minutes and free hosting at 10 videos. Video of a classroom that contains students is student data; the safety note below applies the moment a child's face or voice is in frame.
Pricing: Free (15-minute recordings, 10 hosted videos, no watermark); Solo Deluxe EDU $2.25 a month and Solo Max EDU $4.50 a month, both billed annually; Team Education $3 a user a month, annual, minimum 10 users (ScreenPal). Checked 7 September 2026.
Safety: The privacy policy states ScreenPal processes student data as a "School Official" under FERPA, that student data is owned and controlled by the school, that it is hosted in the United States, that it deletes or de-identifies student data within 60 days of a school's request, and that it holds iKeepSafe FERPA and COPPA certifications (ScreenPal). The directory record is blank on all of these and should be updated. Record yourself freely; record students only under your district's consent process.
Best for transcribing adult-only debriefs: Otter.ai
Otter.ai is the best fit for a coach who runs post-observation debriefs and PLC meetings and wants to be present in the conversation rather than taking minutes, because the free plan gives 300 transcription minutes a month with summaries and action items (Otter.ai). It is 9ine-assessed, with a directory rating of 4.20 from 5 reviews.
The value is specific: a debrief transcript lets you check, a week later, what the teacher actually committed to rather than what you remember them committing to. The action-item detection is good enough to seed the next coaching plan.
Compared with Gemini Notebook, Otter does the capture and Gemini Notebook does the synthesis; many coaches will use both, exporting the transcript into a notebook.
Watch out for: Otter's privacy policy says it trains "our proprietary AI technology on de-identified audio recordings and on transcriptions (which may contain Personal Information)", and it has no FERPA clause at all (Otter.ai). That is why this section is titled adult-only. Do not run Otter in a classroom, and tell the teacher you are recording the debrief before you press the button; recording-consent law differs by state and your district will have a rule.
Pricing: Basic is free with 300 minutes a month, 30 minutes per conversation and 3 lifetime file imports; Pro is $16.99 per user per month, or $8.33 per user per month billed annually; teachers with a .edu address get 20% off Pro, which makes the annual plan $79.99 (Otter.ai). Checked 7 September 2026.
Safety: Minimum age 13, data stored with Amazon Web Services in the United States, deletion on request; no FERPA or COPPA statement and, as above, recordings are used for training (Otter.ai). The 9ine assessment covers the platform's security posture, not whether a coach should record a debrief; that judgment, and the consent, is yours.
What About Edthena, TeachFX, MagicSchool, ChatGPT, Khanmigo, Quizlet, Diffit and Perplexity?
Edthena's AI Coach is the closest thing to a purpose-built coaching platform, a conversation-based virtual coach with video analysis, priced from $1,980 a year for a building of up to 20 teachers and rising to district plans between $15,150 and $66,650 (Edthena); it is not in our directory, its evidence is case studies rather than published research, and its claim of full FERPA and COPPA compliance is the vendor's, so treat it as a serious candidate to pilot, not a recommendation. TeachFX records a lesson and measures teacher talk against student talk; the teacher owns the recording and administrators cannot see it without permission, and pricing is by school or district quote (TeachFX); the same caveats apply. MagicSchool is a teacher tool with a strong free tier and Plus at $12.99 a month or $8.33 a month billed annually (MagicSchool), but its pricing page lists no observation or coaching tools, so it belongs in the teacher's kit, not the coach's. ChatGPT and Perplexity are fine for drafting a PD agenda; neither should ever see an observation note about a named colleague. Khanmigo and Quizlet are student tools and do not belong in this list. Diffit is a text-leveller, useful for the teacher you are coaching, not for the coaching.
How Can Instructional Coaches Use AI Without Turning Coaching Into Evaluation?
The answer is to decide, before you open any tool, which of four questions you are asking. Coaching stays coaching when AI touches the doing and never the judgment.
1. Whose data is going in? If the answer includes a student's name, face or voice, stop and find the district agreement. Gemini Notebook with de-identified notes, AILitKit and ScreenPal (filming yourself) never need one. SchoolAI with real students, Brisk with real essays and any classroom recording do.
2. Who can see the output? DC's model policy is explicit that AI-assisted evaluation of teacher performance is prohibited (OSSE). If a transcript, a talk-time ratio or an AI summary of a lesson could reach the person who writes the teacher's evaluation, it is no longer a coaching artefact. Keep coaching outputs in the coach's and teacher's hands only, and say so in writing.
3. Is the tool doing or thinking? Sorting notes, transcribing a debrief, generating four activity options: doing. Deciding what to say to a teacher about their questioning: thinking. Outsource the first; never the second. The early research agrees with the caution: a pilot in which nine coaches used AI-generated feedback across 41 coaching conversations found that over half said it saved them time, while an earlier study found many teachers given automated feedback without a coach never found time to read it (Learning Forward, February 2026). The coach is what made the feedback land.
4. Can the teacher see what you did? If you used AI to prepare, tell them, and show them. A coach who models transparent AI use teaches more about AI literacy in one debrief than a slide deck does in an hour. Microsoft's 2026 survey of 3,345 respondents found that 66% of educators want AI training monthly or quarterly and 53% have had none (Microsoft, June 2026). Every coaching cycle is a training session in disguise.
AI can sort a coach's notes. It cannot sit across from a teacher and decide what to say next.
What I'd Do This Week
Pick one teacher already in a coaching cycle: say a sixth-grade math teacher whose goal is more student talk during problem-solving. Before the second visit, type up your first-visit notes with no student names, upload them to Gemini Notebook on your district account with the teacher's goal, and ask where in the lesson student talk fell away and what preceded it. Check the answer against your memory. Bring one finding, not five, to the debrief. Record the debrief on Otter only after the teacher agrees, then export the transcript into the same notebook. Measure one thing over the cycle, minutes of student-to-student talk per lesson, counted by you with a stopwatch, and let the tools carry everything else.
The Bottom Line
Instructional coaches need two tools and four questions. Gemini Notebook for prep, AILitKit for the AI literacy PD that policies now require, and SchoolAI, Brisk, ScreenPal and Otter for the single job each does well. Ask whose data goes in, who sees the output, whether the tool is doing or thinking, and whether the teacher can see what you did. Then compare the rest of the directory against the same four questions. The tools will change by January. The questions will not.
Dan Fitzpatrick is a Forbes contributor, three-time bestselling author and founder of The AI Educator, and has trained more than 150,000 educators across 30+ countries. Read more from Dan.
