AI Tools for Teachers: 15 Tools Sorted by the Job They Do

Every list of AI tools for teachers I have read has the same problem: it is a list of names. Forty logos, a sentence each, and no way to tell which one you would actually open on a Tuesday evening. Teachers do not need more names. They need to know which tool does which job, and what it will get wrong.

I build AI tools for a living, I was a teacher before that, and I am a parent now. This post sorts 15 AI teaching tools by the job they do. TeachBuddy AI is one of them, and I have tried to describe the others as fairly as I describe ours. No prices, because they change; no "best" badge, because the best tool depends on the job.

How to read a list of AI tools for teachers

Three honest notes before the list.

• Most AI tools draft; none of them decide. A plan, a quiz, a comment: all drafts, all needing a teacher's eyes. A tool that hides this is a tool to be careful with.
• The big difference is context. Some tools know only what you type in the box. Others know your class, your textbook, your past lessons. The second kind gives you less to fix.
• "Free" has layers. Free tier, free trial, free for teachers but paid for schools. Our post on what is actually free explains the layers without naming prices.

The 15 AI teaching tools, by job

Planning: the lesson and the week

1. TeachBuddy AI. Ours. Lesson plans start from a classroom profile (who is in the room, groups, needs, language) and the actual textbook pages or scheme of work from your library, so the plan is for the class you have. From the plan, slides, a worksheet and a quiz come in one click, and a two-minute reflection after the lesson proposes updates to the class profile that you approve. It also covers materials, assessment, feedback and student practice, which is why it appears once here and not in every section. Free for teachers; paid plans add Drive, Canva, automations and sharing. Weak spot: it is built around the class profile, so if you skip that step you get a generic plan like anywhere else.

2. MagicSchool. A large set of small generators, one per task: lesson plan, rubric, email to a parent, behaviour intervention, and many more. Its strength is breadth and speed for a one-off task. Its limit is that each generator starts from what you type into it, so the class context has to be retyped each time.

3. ChatGPT. The general chat tool most teachers tried first. Good for thinking out loud, rewording, brainstorming a hook, or drafting anything when you give it enough detail. It knows nothing about your class unless you tell it, every time, and it will not say no to a bad request. Our post on ChatGPT lesson plans explains why a fast plan for the wrong class is still the wrong plan.

Materials: text, slides and pictures

4. Diffit. Give it a text, a topic or a link, and it produces reading passages at different levels with vocabulary and questions. Strong for differentiated reading. It does one job and does it well; it is not a planner.

5. Canva. Design first, AI second. Posters, slides, worksheets, with AI writing and image tools inside. Its strength is that things look good with little effort. Its limit is that the AI parts do not know your lesson, so the content still comes from you.

6. Gamma. Slides from a prompt or an outline, fast, with a clean look. Good when you need a deck in minutes. The slides follow the prompt, not a lesson plan, so the structure of the lesson has to be in the prompt.

7. NotebookLM. Google's tool for asking questions of your own documents. Upload a syllabus, a chapter, a policy, and it answers from those sources rather than from the whole internet. Useful for summaries and study guides from material you trust. It is a reading tool more than a making tool.

Assessment: quizzes and checks

8. Quizizz. Quizzes played live or set as homework, with AI help to generate questions and a large shared library. Good reports per question. The game format can get in the way of the thinking for some classes.

9. Kahoot. The live quiz game most students already know, with AI question generation added. Excellent for energy and review. Less suited to questions that need explanation, because speed is the point.

10. Google Forms. Not an AI tool on its own, and it is on this list because it is where many AI-generated quizzes end up. Free, simple, auto-marks closed questions, and students already have the account. Our comparison of Kahoot, Google Forms and AI quizzes goes deeper.

Feedback: comments on student work

11. Brisk. A browser extension that works inside Google Docs and similar tools: feedback on a student's writing, levelled versions of a text, and a few other tasks, right where the work already is. Strong for teachers whose classes live in Google Workspace. The feedback is as good as the rubric and instructions you give it.

12. Grammarly. A writing checker, now with AI rewriting. For teachers, it is useful on their own reports and emails. For students, it is a support tool that can also hide what they cannot yet do on their own, so use it with a rule about when it is allowed.

Student practice: tools students use themselves

13. Khanmigo. Khan Academy's AI tutor, built to guide rather than give answers, tied to Khan Academy's own practice content. Good for maths practice at home. It works best where Khan Academy's content matches what you teach.

14. Quizlet. Flashcards and practice modes, with AI that turns notes into study sets. Students know it. It is practice, not teaching: it rewards recall of what is on the card.

Admin: the work around teaching

15. Microsoft Copilot. AI inside Word, Outlook, Teams and the rest of Microsoft 365, for schools that use it. Drafts emails, summarises long threads and meetings, tidies documents. Nothing about it is teaching-specific, which is also why it fits the admin job well.

Picking the tools that fit your week

Do not pick 15. Pick one per job you actually have, and start with the job that costs you the most time. For most teachers that is planning, which is why the first group matters most. Then ask each tool the same two questions: does it know my class, and does it let me decide? Our post on the AI lesson plan generator is the planning-tool version of that test.

How TeachBuddy AI helps

TeachBuddy AI was built for the context problem in the first note above. You describe each class once in a classroom profile, keep your textbooks and schemes in the Resource Library, and the lesson plan generator, the worksheet, quiz and slide generators, the assignments and class voice activities in Spaces, and Buddy, the chat assistant on the home page, all read the same profile. AI drafts, the teacher decides, and nothing is written to a profile silently.

It is free for teachers, used by teachers in 80+ countries, and it is one tool among the 15, not the only one. If your classes live in Google Docs, Brisk will suit you for feedback. If you need a game, Kahoot is a game. Use what fits the job.

Frequently asked questions

What are the best AI tools for teachers?

The best tool depends on the job. For planning, a tool that knows your class; for live review, a quiz game; for feedback, a tool that works where the student's writing already is. Pick one per job, not one of everything.

Is AI for teachers safe to use with student data?

Only if you check what the tool stores and who can see it. Avoid pasting names and personal details into general chat tools, and prefer tools where the teacher approves anything written to a student record.

Do AI teaching tools replace lesson planning?

No. They replace the blank page. The decisions about objectives, groups and what to check still belong to the teacher, and the tools that work best are the ones that make those decisions easier to see, not the ones that hide them.

Want to try the planning tool on this list that starts from your class? Create a free TeachBuddy AI account and describe one class.