What is LessonLab and why did you create it?

LessonLab is a collection of over 80 AI tools specifically designed to support teachers and educators navigate the challenges of the profession. As a primary school teacher myself, I began to experience some the benefits that AI Large Language Models (LLMs) offer but felt that this needed to be refined and tailored to the requirements of a teacher. LessonLab was officially founded in 2023 and has grown to support over 30,000 teachers since. It is in no means designed to replace a teacher but instead is an assistant to a teacher to help ease their time-consuming admin tasks whilst creating unique learning experiences for students. 

What are the challenges of being a teacher and how does LessonLab overcome them?

I believe that when you strip back the job of being a classroom teacher to its fundamental duties, you are expected to plan a lesson, teach a lesson, mark a lesson. Let’s say an average working day is 8 hours and you teach 6 lessons in this time. That leaves you with 2 hours to plan lessons (30-45 minutes each) and mark the lessons (20-30 minutes per lesson). I don’t need the help of AI to tell you those numbers don’t quite match up. Now imagine you have to email 3 parents about a minor incident, update the school’s social media accounts, support a student who doesn’t speak English and have a restorative justice session with the 3 friends who fell out. The list of the real duties of a teacher is endless and so if any time can be saved using AI, it really should be. Let LessonLab craft those emails in a matter of seconds; let LessonLab create a Language Board so your ELL student can communicate with you; let LessonLab give you a structure for the restorative session dialogue and let LessonLab help you by giving you a starting point for your lesson plan!

How does LessonLab leverage technology to enhance education and learning experiences?

In its current state, LessonLab utilises a collection of different AI platforms, tailored for education, to provide a quick and easy solution to minimise teacher workload. I personally don’t believe there is a single role of a teacher that is too demanding. What I believe the dissatisfaction amongst teachers is, is the combination of many small tasks which, when piled up, is beyond reasonable expectations. So, for example, rather that compiling the perfectly toned and structured email to let a parent know about a minor concern in the classroom, AI can write that email for the teacher so that they can have an extra 15 minutes to focus on the most important aspect of their job, the students.

What is the pushback you receive with regards to AI and education? 

This is a great question and a very easy one to answer. ‘AI creates lazy teachers’. AI in education is all about efficiency and streamlining the duties of the profession. My biggest fight is with AI reports. ‘AI doesn’t know my child and so this report isn’t tailored’. This is a huge a misconception. LessonLab only takes the truthful data collected throughout the year by the teacher and turns it into paragraphs rather than bullet points. I challenge anyone to read a conventional report, and one written by LessonLab AI, and accurately tell them apart. Why spend 45-60 minutes writing one student’s report when the whole class can be done as accurately in 2 hours? 

What is the future of LessonLab?

Currently, LessonLab is very much focused on ways to support teachers in schools and we have started rolling out some tools to support students such as our Chat With History, a fantastic way to hook students into a new topic, and Language Boards, a unique way to use AI to help students communicate. Our next focus is going to be on data-driven learning pathways. We want LessonLab to be engrained in a school’s pedagogy and not just be a tool to use ‘as and when needed’. Constant data analysis and assessment to help personalise a student’s learning pathway is the future of AI in education. 

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