#390 – The AI Infused Classroom, with Holly Clark

What does it mean to truly infuse AI into classroom practice—not just as a tool but as a partner in learning? In this episode, edtech expert Holly Clark joins the Unpacking Education podcast team to unpack the evolving role of AI in education. With over 25 years of experience and a deep commitment to student-centered learning, Holly shares how generative AI can help educators personalize instruction, support neurodivergent learners, and reclaim valuable time. “We can’t say, ‘I’m just not AI literate,’” Holly explains. “That’s not fair to ourselves or our learners.” Tune in to hear how AI can elevate creativity, curiosity, and connection in every classroom.

With the right mindset, the right questions, and the right strategies, you can use AI to create and broaden meaningful learning experiences for every student.

Holly Clark, from her book, The AI Infused Classroom

Resources

The following resources are available from AVID and on AVID Open Access to explore related topics in more depth:

• AI in the K–12 Classroom (article collection)
• TeachAI, with Dr. Kristen DiCerbo (podcast episode)
• Free AI Courses (podcast episode)
• The Promises and Perils of AI in Education, with Ken Shelton (podcast episode)
• Learning Evolution: The New Era of AI in the Classroom, with Carl Hooker (podcast episode)
• The A.I. Roadmap: Human Learning in the Age of Smart Machines, with Dr. John Spencer (podcast episode)
• SchoolAI (podcast episode)
• AI Prompt Engineering (ed tip)

AI as a Thought Partner

Holly challenges educators to shift how they see AI—from a shortcut to a thought partner. She shares powerful classroom examples, including a second grader using a custom chatbot to develop a story character and high school students using AI to explore deeply personal writing topics. Holly emphasizes that when AI is intentionally designed and used, it becomes a scaffold for thinking—not a substitute. As she puts it, “Kids cheat because they’re stuck. AI can help them get unstuck.”

This episode dives into the mindset, strategies, and literacies needed to build AI-literate classrooms that keep human connection at the center. The following are a few highlights from this episode:

• About Our Guest: Holly Clark is a passionate educator and digital learning pioneer who has made significant contributions to the field of educational technology. With over 25 years of experience, Holly is an international speaker, bestselling author, and dedicated advocate for digital learning. She was one of the first teachers in the nation to have a 1:1 classroom, and she now shares her knowledge and insights to help other teachers tap into their blended learning genius.
• Student Inquiry: Holly reflects on how the internet and computer access opened up new possibilities for students. She looks back on an early lesson she taught, saying, “I saw the critical thinking that was happening there—the way they got to ask the questions—and I wasn’t just teaching them the American Revolution from this one kind of stance.” Now, AI is taking that type of interaction to another level. She says, “AI has allowed what I’ve always dreamed of to happen.”
• A Pathway to Possible: Technology advancements in AI are making more of our teaching goals realistic. Holly explains, “We’ve always wanted to do differentiation, but it was time-consuming. . . . And now, I can put that in the hands of the kid, as well as me, and I can do it in 5 minutes. So, all those things that have stopped us from differentiating—from putting students at the center of their learning—AI kind of has removed those barriers.”
• The AI Infused Classroom: Holly says that her new book, The AI Infused Classroom, “is trying to focus on inspiring teachers and new ways of thinking, and not just thinking of AI.” For example, she says that we should ask questions like, “How can AI stop us from needing to ask test questions because we’re learning in such different ways?”
• Use Large Language Models: “AI doesn’t really require prompt engineering anymore,” Holly says. “It will ask you follow-up questions. . . . Teachers really need to be in these large language models, and not using shortcut tools, because they’ll never understand the way they’re growing, adapting, and doing all these things, and then they’ll never understand what their students are going to need as skills.”
• Student Use of AI: Students in 11th and 12th grade need to be using large language models, so they can learn how to be successful with them. Younger students can use custom chatbots to scaffold the experience. SchoolAI is one tool that allows teachers to create these safe, custom chatbots. When she works with districts, Holly says, “I’m doing two things. I’m trying to get districts to look at getting teachers AI literate by having them in those large language models, and getting students AI literate by having them understand how they can use AI as a thought partner.”
• Instant Feedback: One of the powers of AI chatbots is that they can give students instant feedback on their work, even when the teacher is working with other students. Holly shares a recent example of when she was working with a second grader who used a custom chatbot to help her develop a character for her writing. Holly points out, “Some kids didn’t need it, nor want it, and some kids loved having it there. And this little girl, when I was leaving the classroom, she grabbed the side of my pants, and she said, ‘Ms. Clark, thank you for bringing this. I really didn’t understand what was going on or how to create this character, and this helped me so much.’”
• Cheating: To teachers who worry that students will use AI to cheat, Holly says, “Kids cheat because they’re stuck. Kids cheat because they’re not interested. We can take both of those out of the situation, and they’re not going to be cheating.” She adds that we can structure the writing experience so that AI chatbots function as thought partners with students to help them scaffold their learning.
• The Next Step in Blended Learning: AI can offer new blended learning opportunities in classrooms. Holly says, “I’m looking at learning outcomes. I’m looking at entry points with AI, and I’m looking at how I can have a safe thought partner for students along the way to get them unstuck. This is the next step in blended learning.”
• AI and Curiosity: Holly says, “Research tells us that curiosity has as big of an impact on your intelligence as intelligence itself, so when you are able to provide a kid with a way to tap into those curiosities through a thought partner, you uplift the learning experience.”
• AI and Research: “I think we need to still teach kids how to research,” Holly shares. “We need to teach them how to validate information. And that’s still going to happen, but now, maybe the research portion is a little shorter so that there can be more emphasis on the critical thinking.”
• ACE: Holly is writing a new book with Matt Miller that outlines a framework for working with AI chatbots. It uses the acronym ACE, which stands for awareness, critical thinking, and exploration. People need an awareness for different AI tools, they need to critique what’s happening with these AI and large language models, and they need to always be engaging in exploration. The book is scheduled to release in June 2025.
• Holly’s Toolkit: “I think SchoolAI is head and shoulders above everyone else in terms of student-facing AI.” She also likes Brisk Teaching because “it gives teachers insight into whether or not kids have written that paper.” Beyond that, she discusses the work that Laguna Beach Unified School District is doing to create their own Google Chrome extension to document the degree to which AI has been used in an assignment.
• Holly’s One Thing: Holly points out that large language models now remember you as a user and learn your tendencies and interests. This improves the quality of future responses since the chatbot generates information that aligns with you and your personality. She says, “ChatGPT knows all these things about me now and creates based on what I value.”
• For Ourselves and Our Students: Holly ends by saying, “I want teachers to experience all the things that AI can do right now because it will be our co-intelligence—period, end of story. . . . If we don’t understand that for a first grader today who graduates AI will be a billion times smarter than it is now, and it won’t be on our phones and computers, it’s going to be everywhere. And so, we can’t be like, ‘Oh, I’m just not AI literate.’ . . . We can’t do that to ourselves and to our learners.”