Teachers spend the first few weeks of each school year trying to figure out where their students are instead of where the lesson plan says they should be. This is an old problem that has been around for a long time, before algorithms were invented. But slowly and without much fuss in most staff rooms, that gap is beginning to get a lot more interesting to close.
This week at the ISTE education technology conference, Google announced more than 30 AI-powered tools that will be used in classrooms. These include tools that help teachers plan lessons and make personalized study guides using NotebookLM. Everyone with a Google Workspace for Education account can now get the full Gemini AI suite for free. A lot has changed with that move, and many teachers may not have a clear picture of what it means.
There’s something that’s worth pausing over. These days, teachers can make what Google calls “Gems”—customized versions of Gemini AI that were trained on their own classroom materials. Students who are stuck on photosynthesis at 9 p.m. no longer have to copy and paste their question into ChatGPT. Gemini can be asked about what the teacher talked about on Tuesday, what the unit test looks like, and how that idea relates to the next chapter. That’s not what most people think of when they hear “AI in schools.”
It’s hard not to notice how practical Google is being in this case. AI chatbots were already being used by students to get help with their homework, sometimes to better understand something and sometimes to skip it altogether. Instead of pretending that doesn’t happen, Google seems to be saying, “Okay, let’s put that behavior back in a place where the school can see it and control it.” It depends on the person you ask if that is a solution or a workaround.
Also, Google Vids is now available to all school users. It lets teachers make and share how-to videos, and students can use it for things like book reports and creative projects. At first glance, that sounds quiet. But when you add in the AI-assisted tools on top of that—help with scripting, editing suggestions, and real-time language adaptation—it looks like schools finally have a production tool that meets students where they are in their skills.
The analytics part might not be the most exciting, but it could be the most important. With the new features, teachers will be able to keep an eye on engagement data, track student progress against learning standards, and decide who can use which AI tools. That level of openness is important for school administrators who have felt like AI was happening to their schools instead of for them for the past two years. The infrastructure is now there, but it wasn’t there a year ago. It’s still not clear how much most districts will actually use it.
Class tools is a new teaching mode that is being rolled out for managed Chromebooks. It lets teachers send content directly to students’ screens and limit their browsing to certain tabs. It sounds like a simple way to run a classroom, and in some ways it is. But the bigger idea that Google keeps coming back to is built into that tool: AI works better when a person is still controlling it. The tech company purposely paired these tools with the phrase “responsible AI.” This can sometimes feel like corporate hedging, but in this case, the products seem to match the real philosophy. Gems don’t take the place of the teacher. They take the teacher to places and times that the teacher isn’t allowed to be.
It seems like education technology has been promising change for a long time but only causing trouble. These tools aren’t perfect, and getting them into schools that don’t have enough money or reliable internet access is harder than just announcing them at a conference. But the difference between what AI can do for students and what most classrooms actually use feels really close for the first time in a while. If teachers take the time to look at what’s new in their Google accounts, they might be surprised at what’s been there waiting.
