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Blog · AI in education

AI in Education Blog

Practical AI teaching for Hong Kong principals and teachers: lesson planning, marking, AI tutors, student data, safety and the AI Education Grant. Every article is written to be used in school-based planning.

AI Tools for Educators 11 September 2026 8 min read

Nine AI Tools Hong Kong Teachers Keep Asking About in 2026: What Each Is Really For, What It Costs, and Whether Students May Use It

Gemini, Gamma, Edpuzzle, Khanmigo, Perplexity, OpenAI Codex, Claude Code, Cursor and Base44 — nine tools with nine entirely different purposes. Using official September 2026 sources, this hub sets out who each one is really built for, what the free tier allows, whether students are permitted under the terms, a which-tool-for-which-job decision list, and the four things no general-purpose tool will ever do for a school.

LLM & Model Insights 11 September 2026 8 min read

The 2026 All-Model Roundup: 15 Providers and One Selection Framework for Schools

From OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, xAI, Meta and Mistral to DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, GLM, MiniMax, Doubao, Hunyuan and ERNIE, plus the coding-only Cursor Composer. One school usage model, applied to every vendor's published pricing, puts all 15 on a single table — followed by a four-question framework for choosing between them.

AI Tools for Educators 11 September 2026 12 min read

Base44 for Teachers: The Complete Guide (September 2026) — Build a School Web App by Describing It, and the Credit Trap

Base44 is Wix's vibe-coding app builder, letting teachers create an app with a database, login and hosting without writing code. This guide covers the September 2026 official plans (Free, Starter US$16/month, Builder US$40, Pro US$80, Elite US$160, all annual), the difference between message credits and integration credits, the age-13 minimum, and a full walkthrough building a Primary 5 reading-log tracker.

LLM & Model Insights 11 September 2026 8 min read

China's LLMs Compared: DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, GLM and Five More — What Can a Hong Kong School Actually Use?

DeepSeek costs one sixty-seventh of GPT-6 Astra per input token and is no weaker in Chinese. So why does a school platform not simply plug into it? This roundup compares DeepSeek, Qwen, Kimi, GLM, MiniMax, Doubao, Hunyuan and ERNIE, explains the crucial difference between open weights and a cloud API, and sets out the three routes that are genuinely workable under the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance.

AI Tools for Educators 11 September 2026 11 min read

Claude Code for Teachers: The Complete Guide (September 2026) — Pricing, the 18+ Policy and Auto-testing Student Code

Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding tool, included with every paid Claude plan and unavailable on Free. This guide covers the September 2026 official prices (Pro US$20/month, Max from US$100, Team standard seats US$20–25 per user, Enterprise US$20 per seat plus usage), how the rolling five-hour usage window works, what Claude's 18-and-over policy means for pupils, and a full walkthrough building an auto-test harness for a Form 6 ICT class.

AI Tools for Educators 11 September 2026 11 min read

Cursor for Teachers: The Complete Guide (September 2026) — Pricing, the 18+ Rule, and Marking Student Code

Cursor is Anysphere's AI code editor. As of September 2026 the plans are Hobby free, Pro US$20/month, Pro+ US$60, Ultra US$200, Teams US$40/user and Teams Premium US$120/user. This guide covers Composer 2.5 pricing, the Cursor Token Rate surcharge on Teams, why the 18-and-over terms rule out student accounts, and a full walkthrough of marking a Form 3 ICT class's Python homework.

AI Tools for Educators 11 September 2026 12 min read

Edpuzzle for Teachers: Flipping a Junior Science Lesson, and the Truth About the 20-Activity Cap

Edpuzzle is free for teachers, but the free Basic plan stores only 20 activities. This guide flips a Secondary 2 science lesson step by step, covering auto-generated questions, Autograde, Supported Assignments and anti-cheating settings, then breaks down what Pro Teacher and Pro School really cost, the parental consent duty, and the fact that there is no Traditional Chinese interface.

LLM & Model Insights 11 September 2026 7 min read

From Chatbot to AI Agent: Tool Calling, Multi-Step Automation, MCP, and What a School Should Not Automate

A chatbot only talks. An agent acts — it looks things up, reads documents, calls systems and runs several steps in sequence. This article explains tool calling and the MCP standard in terms a teacher can use, compares published tool-call charges, and offers a should-automate and should-not-automate list. The question is not what AI can do, but which step a person must confirm.

AI Tools for Educators 11 September 2026 12 min read

Gamma for Teachers: A Parents' Evening Deck in 15 Minutes, and the Age-16 Clause

Gamma meters AI usage in credits rather than a flat monthly allowance, and a free account gets 400 one-off credits that never refresh. This guide builds a Hong Kong parents' evening deck step by step, breaks down how credits actually burn, works out the per-seat cost across 100 staff, and flags that Gamma's terms require users to be at least 16.

AI Tools for Educators 11 September 2026 12 min read

Google Gemini for Teachers: A Full Tutorial, Workspace for Education, Gemini in Classroom and the Real Bill

Gemini for Education is included at no cost in every Google Workspace for Education edition, but the Gemini sidebar inside Docs and Gmail needs the Google AI Pro for Education add-on at US$20 per user per month, and that add-on is restricted to users aged 18 and over. This guide walks a Hong Kong teacher through building a differentiated Chinese worksheet, then breaks down what 100 staff licences really cost.

AI Tools for Educators 11 September 2026 12 min read

Khanmigo for Hong Kong Teachers: The Teacher Tools Are Free Here, the Student Tutor Cannot Be Bought

Khanmigo for Teachers is now free to educators in more than 180 countries and territories and Hong Kong qualifies, but the paid Khanmigo learner and parent subscriptions at US$4 a month or US$44 a year are officially available only in the United States. This guide builds a Secondary 1 maths hint ladder with the teacher tools, reviews what pupils have been working on, and states plainly what a Hong Kong school can and cannot do.

LLM & Model Insights 11 September 2026 8 min read

OpenAI vs Anthropic vs xAI vs Google: Which US Provider Actually Suits a School?

In September 2026 the four leading US flagships range from $0.75 to $10 per 1M input tokens — a 13x spread. This head-to-head compares them on the six axes a school actually cares about (price, context, Chinese-language handling, content safety, platform availability and cost cliffs) and explains why the strongest model is usually not the one a school should be running.

LLM & Model Insights 11 September 2026 7 min read

Safety, Hallucination and Risk Control: Prompt Injection, Real Consequences, and the Guardrails a School Platform Needs

An AI drafted a parent notice citing a curriculum guideline number that was perfectly formatted and did not exist. That is not a glitch; it is a structural property of language models. Using the OWASP Top 10 and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework as scaffolding, this article maps each risk to a real Hong Kong school scenario and sets out the guardrails and audit arrangements a school AI platform must have.

LLM & Model Insights 11 September 2026 8 min read

Open Weights or Closed API? The Real Cost Maths of Self-Hosting, and Where Privacy Flips the Answer

Many schools assume that buying a machine to run an open model must be cheaper. Put real usage through September 2026 published pricing and the answer usually reverses — the annual cloud API bill is too small for hardware to beat. This article works through both sides honestly, lists the open models that are realistic on school hardware, and identifies the point at which data policy tips the balance towards self-hosting.

AI Tools for Educators 11 September 2026 11 min read

OpenAI Codex for Teachers: The Complete Guide (September 2026) — Plans, Credit Pricing and Building a Classroom Utility

Codex is OpenAI's agentic coding product — a terminal CLI, IDE extension, cloud tasks and an iOS app — included with ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus, Pro, Business, Edu and Enterprise. This guide covers the September 2026 official prices, the credit rate card, the difference between GPT-5.6 and GPT-6 Astra usage, why the free US K-12 teacher plan does not reach Hong Kong, and a full CLI walkthrough for building a classroom utility.

AI Tools for Educators 11 September 2026 12 min read

Perplexity AI for Teachers: A Sourced Project Research Flow, and Teaching Pupils to Check Citations

Every Perplexity answer carries its sources, which makes it the best available tool for teaching verification. The Comet browser is free, Pro is US$20 a month or US$17 a month billed annually, and Enterprise Pro is US$40 per seat per month. This guide runs a Hong Kong Citizenship and Social Development project, supplies a citation-checking sheet for pupils, and flags the age-13 clause and the absence of teacher monitoring.

LLM & Model Insights 11 September 2026 8 min read

The Reasoning Revolution: From Chain-of-Thought to Adaptive Thinking, and What It Changes for Marking, Maths and Science

Models in 2024 blurted out an answer. Models in 2026 think first, and decide for themselves how long to think. This article explains chain-of-thought, reasoning effort and adaptive thinking in terms a teacher can use, compares the four vendors' effort dials, and sets out what has genuinely changed for marking, maths and science teaching — and what has not.

Foundations & Grant 1 September 2026 4 min read

AI in Hong Kong Schools: 10 Requirements a School-Based AI Platform Must Meet in 2026

A checklist for principals and IT coordinators choosing a school-based AI learning platform — curriculum alignment, student safety, teacher oversight, data ownership and grant compliance, ready to paste into a tender.

Foundations & Grant 28 August 2026 3 min read

How to Get the Most Value from the HK$500,000 AI Education Grant: Commitments, Timeline and Budget

The EDB AI Education Grant (『智』啟學教) explained — amount, deadline, the four commitments (3 subjects × 2 grades, 6 teaching exemplars, 3 demo lessons, 3 sharing sessions), report dates, and a ready-to-adapt budget split.

Foundations & Grant 24 August 2026 4 min read

12 Questions to Ask Before Buying a School AI Platform: Data Ownership, Full Export, Freedom to Switch

For principals, IT coordinators and procurement teams — 12 questions covering data ownership, export formats, lock-in, token fees, multi-model support, custom domains and on-premises vs cloud, each with a "passing answer" and "red flag".

Safety & Compliance 20 August 2026 3 min read

On-Premises vs Cloud Deployment for Schools: How to Choose — the Data Belongs to the School Either Way

Comparing on-premises (school server / private cloud) and cloud hosting for an AI learning platform — cost, maintenance, update speed, data location, compliance and portability. Spoiler — with either option the data belongs to the school, can be downloaded in full at any time, and can be reached through the school's own domain.

Teaching & Learning 16 August 2026 3 min read

AI Lesson Planning in Practice: A Lesson Plan and Tiered Worksheets in 30 Minutes

Using P4 Chinese (expository writing) and S2 Mathematics (linear equations) as examples, see how teachers start from a school curriculum unit and use AI to produce a lesson plan, slide outline, three-tier worksheets and reflection prompts in 30 minutes — with a reusable prompt structure.

Teaching & Learning 12 August 2026 3 min read

The Scaffolded AI Tutor: Why an AI That Won't Give Answers Is the Right One for Students

The 4-level hint ladder, Socratic questioning and teacher-set "hint ceiling" behind a scaffolded AI tutor — why answer-giving AI weakens learning, with dialogue examples from primary maths and secondary English.

Teaching & Learning 8 August 2026 2 min read

AI Question Generation, Marking and Instant Feedback: Practice and Limits in Maths, Chinese and English Writing

How AI marking works in three subjects — step-by-step maths marking (including handwritten photos), Chinese composition feedback against a rubric, English writing grammar and structure suggestions — plus the three checkpoints teachers must keep, with a rubric template.

Teaching & Learning 4 August 2026 3 min read

Differentiated Instruction with AI: Three Difficulty Tiers and SEN Adaptations from One Topic, Automatically

The biggest barrier to differentiation has always been time. This article shows how AI generates foundation, core and challenge tasks under one learning objective, plus adapted versions for dyslexia, ADHD and non-Chinese-speaking students, with a practical flow for assigning and tracking.

Teaching & Learning 30 July 2026 2 min read

Spaced Repetition + AI Flashcards: The Science of Helping Students Remember Longer

Why spaced repetition (the SM-2 algorithm) beats last-minute cramming, how AI generates flashcards from lesson texts and schedules reviews by each student's performance, and how teachers use review data to find the class's weakest concepts.

Teaching & Learning 26 July 2026 2 min read

Flipped Classroom 2.0: AI-Generated Video Summaries, Subtitles and Pre-Lesson Check Questions

Flipped classrooms usually fail because students "watched but did not absorb". See how AI turns any teaching video into subtitles, segment summaries, 3–5 check questions and misconception alerts, and collects student responses before class so lesson time goes to discussion and application.

Teaching & Learning 22 July 2026 2 min read

AI Oral Practice: Daily Speaking Practice for Primary English and Putonghua with Speech Recognition and Read-Aloud

Speaking improves only by speaking every day, yet one teacher cannot listen to 30 students individually. This article walks through AI oral practice — scenario dialogues, speech-to-text, read-aloud models, pronunciation and fluency feedback — and how teachers use practice records to plan the next lesson.

Teaching & Learning 18 July 2026 2 min read

Designing Science Inquiry (STEAM) Activities with AI: From Question to Record Sheet

Aligned with the new primary Science curriculum, this article shows how teachers turn a topic into a complete inquiry activity in 20 minutes with AI — question, hypothesis, variables, procedure, safety notes, record sheet and extension — with three worked examples and an inquiry quality checklist.

Data & School Management 14 July 2026 2 min read

Student Data Analysis (SDAS): From Mark Sheets to Multi-Year Tracking — 8 Questions Principals and Panel Heads Should Ask

A mark sheet tells you who scored what; a Student Data Analysis System answers why, what the trend is and what to do next. Eight questions show how standard scores, percentiles, progress rates, multi-year tracking and teacher analysis are used — and how AI natural-language queries let every teacher ask.

Data & School Management 10 July 2026 2 min read

How AI Reduces Teacher Admin Workload: Notices, Minutes, Parent Letters and eAdmin in Practice

Teachers can spend 8–10 hours a week on paperwork. Six examples show how AI admin agents (eAdmin) draft eNotice, eCircular, parent letters, meeting minutes, event proposals and iPortfolio comments — and why grounding in the school knowledge base and matching the school's voice are the keys.

Data & School Management 6 July 2026 2 min read

The PIE Cycle Meets AI Dashboards: Evidence-Based School Decisions

Every school runs Plan–Implement–Evaluate, but "evaluate" often relies on impressions. See how PIE KPIs link directly to platform data — AI usage, objective mastery, teacher training records, SDAS results — so planning has a baseline, implementation has tracking, evaluation has evidence, and grant interim and final reports come out automatically.

Safety & Compliance 2 July 2026 2 min read

A Safety Net for Students Using AI: Designing Four-Layer Guardrails, Personal Data Protection and Teacher Monitoring

When primary pupils use AI, schools worry about three things — inappropriate content, personal data leaks and no oversight. This article lays out a workable architecture — input guard, system prompt, output review, audit & quotas — plus PII encryption, no-training terms, human review and PDPO mapping.

Safety & Compliance 28 June 2026 3 min read

The School Knowledge Base (RAG): Letting AI Cite Your Own Materials and Policies

Generic AI does not know your school rules, pacing or notice format. A school knowledge base uses RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) so the AI searches school documents before answering and cites its sources. This article covers how it works, what to upload, permissions and export, and six use cases for teaching and administration.

Resource centre

AI model database

Specs, pricing, release timelines and platform support status for 15 major model providers

28 lessons of teacher AI literacy: from Transformers and the three training stages to RAG, quantisation and local deployment

Prompt Engineering Classroom

18 lessons of classroom prompting: planning, question setting, marking, differentiation and student prompt literacy