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AI in education
6 September 2024Introducing Aila, our AI-powered lesson assistant
Rachel Strom
Head of School Support
Transform your lesson prep with our free, ground-breaking AI-powered lesson assistant: Aila.
Whether it’s creating bespoke resources or helping you tailor content to your class, Aila can help speed things along — giving you more time to bring your lessons to life.
Through an intuitive step-by-step process, use Aila to help you build a tailor-made lesson plan and resources. All in a matter of minutes.
(Upbeat music)
Ross, Year 6 teacher:
"Hey, there. Welcome to school. Let's go and have a look around. So I'm finding using the AI tools from Oak really useful as a teacher."
Use Oak's AI tools including Aila, Oak's AI lesson assistant, to create:
- Lesson plans
- Slide decks
- Quizzes, tasks and worksheets
"I've been using it quite a lot for some of the planning for things like history and geography, where I've been using it to find ideas for sequences of lessons."
Jan, Principal:
"First of all, I think it's important to address workload. We know, and we've been exploring that using tools like Aila are effective in helping us think and plan about what we're delivering in a lesson.
The content I've seen coming through in the lesson designs and in the lessons I've seen, there's integrity to the curriculum and fidelity to the curriculum, which is really important obviously to us."
Ross, Year 6 Teacher:
"As well as I think tailoring some of the resources to our particular demographics."
Anna, Year 2 Teacher:
"Let's get started. So how have you been getting on with using the AI tool?"
Ross, Year 6 Teacher:
"It kind of solves that blank-page syndrome where you've got to plan a sequence of lessons or a lesson itself, and you might not know the best way in, best way to start. These AI tools get you over that initial hurdle and get you going. And even if it does sort of 80, 90% and you've got to finish it off, I think that frees up a little bit of extra time to kind of catch people in the staff room, get a cup of tea, and get out of here in the afternoon just a little bit earlier."
Anna, Year 2 Teacher:
"Being able to wind down, that teachers really need to be the best person they can be in the classroom."
Ross, Year 6 Teacher:
"I think the main thing is that it is really easy to use. It's safe, it's reliable, and it produces content that is ready to use with only a few tweaks. I haven't seen anything that's out there that does the job half as well."
Jan, Principal:
"And it really adheres and aligns to the work we've done on teachers being even more confident and secure about the pedagogy, understanding about the key components of lessons and the effectiveness of the way to deliver those lessons. And I think they've been excited to learn professionally along with a trusted tool to be able to do that.
Yeah, that's the biggest advantage I've seen."
Search Oak AI tools for more.
Explore Aila, your AI lesson assistant, today. It is, and always will be, free - so why not take a look around to see what Aila can assist you with.
“Using Aila has been a game-changer, significantly easing my workload and optimising my time. Instead of spending hours searching for and compiling information, I can now prepare comprehensive lessons in a fraction of the time - saving me four hours a week. I'm excited to continue using it and exploring its full potential.”
Ibtisam, Teacher at The Charter School Bermondsey
How to use Aila
Getting started with Aila is easy. By the end of the process, you’ll have created a lesson plan with teaching slides, quizzes, worksheets with practice tasks and more.
Step one
Visit labs.thenational.academy to log in or create an account.
Step two
Tell Aila what you want to plan a lesson on. For example, you could try ‘key stage 3 history - the end of Roman Britain’ or ‘KS2 geography - features of a volcano’.
Step three
You’ll be guided through an intuitive step-by-step process to build your lesson plan and resources. Throughout this, you can ask Aila to adapt them to suit your needs. Aila can add additional case studies, make keywords easier or more challenging, change the context of your lesson, and so much more. Discover 8 things you won’t believe our AI lesson planning tool can do.
Step four
Download the lesson plan and resources in editable formats. After you’ve downloaded them, you can continue to tweak the resources if you wish to, as you plan how you’ll deliver the lesson, with more time to focus here, thanks to Aila.
Want to see Aila in action?
Watch this 3-minute walkthrough by Hannah-Beth, a former science teacher who is part of the team developing the tool.
Plus, there's more help to get started with Aila in this help article.
“Incorporating Alia into my teaching toolkit has the potential to not only save me time - around 30 minutes per lesson - but also enhance the quality and effectiveness of my lessons, ultimately benefiting both myself and my students.”
James, Teacher at St Cuthbert Mayne School
What makes Aila different?
Many teachers feel unsure about the reliability of AI tools, and whether they’re safe to use. That’s why we’ve worked with expert AI developers and education specialists to create a tool that’s purpose-built for teachers. It makes the process of planning and resourcing lessons more efficient without sacrificing quality.
So what makes it different to all the other AI tools for teachers out there?
You’re in control
As a teacher, you are the expert. Only you know your context and the pupils in your classroom.
Many AI-powered lesson planning tools ask you to input a little information at the start and then plan your lesson for you. With Aila, you’re in the driving seat throughout. We’ve designed it to pause intentionally during the lesson planning process and you can ask Aila to change and tweak the content to suit your needs.
Aila is underpinned by a strong pedagogical foundation
Aila draws on our curriculum plans and teaching resources which have been developed in line with our research-informed curriculum principles created by leading educators and subject experts. This means that content is aligned with the national curriculum and geared to UK classrooms.
Alongside the AI techniques we have used to build Aila, this base of human-created curriculum materials significantly improves the quality of resources you can produce using Aila.
You can trust what Aila creates
We’ve built quality checks into Aila that evaluate the lessons and resources produced against our curriculum principles. Checks for grammar, Americanisms and coherence mean you can feel confident in the quality of the resources you share in your classroom. Learn more about how we’ve worked on ensuring pedagogical integrity.
With AI-driven tools, such as Aila, you need to make sure that what you create for your classroom is safe for your pupils. Learn more about the protections we have put in place to ensure safe lesson creation.
Aila supports the wider education market
Aila is just one of the many ways in which products can be built off our content.
The code and prompts that underpin Aila’s accessible user experience, as well as the quality-assured curriculum plans and teaching resources that inform its outputs, are openly licensed.
This means that anyone can use our work as a basis to innovate further and create safe new AI tools and teaching products.
“Using AI to support my planning and teaching wasn’t something I’d really considered until I came across Aila. To say I was blown away would be an understatement!”
Avril, Deputy Headteacher at Bedford Drive Primary School
What’s next for Aila?
Aila is still in the beta phase, which means we’re still actively testing and developing the tool. By getting teachers to use Aila in real-life conditions, we can more easily identify issues and opportunities to improve it.
A huge thank you to the thousands of teachers who have already used Aila to plan many thousands of lessons and given us their feedback.
We’ll continue to iterate it over time in response to further feedback we receive. So why not give Aila a go and let us know what you think.
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