UNESCO recently hosted a Campus Masterclass called “AI in the classroom: tool or teacher?” aimed at educators around the world. The session is part of the UNESCO Campus programme, which connects teachers and students with experts on today’s biggest social and technological questions. (Teacher Task Force)
The core question was simple:
As AI shows up in more and more classrooms, what role should it play?
After watching the video and reading UNESCO’s follow-up article on the event, my takeaway is this: AI should be treated as a powerful teammate in learning — but never as the teacher of record. (UNESCO)
Below are some key threads from the masterclass and how I think they translate into practical moves for educators.
AI is Not “Coming” to Education — It’s Already Here
One thing UNESCO is very clear about: AI in education is not hypothetical anymore. The masterclass description and related materials frame AI as already integrated into teaching and learning — from adaptive platforms to automated feedback and analytics. (UNESCO)
The University of Pretoria even includes this specific video in a study guide on globalisation and education, highlighting three key points tied to the masterclass:
- Current applications of AI in education
- Challenges and risks of AI in education
- The need for global ethical frameworks (Studocu)
In other words: AI is now part of the professional landscape for teachers. Treating it as “future tech” just pushes your students toward using it on their own, without guidance.
Blog takeaway:
If we want equity, we can’t simply “opt out.” Teachers need time, training, and space to try AI with students, not pretend it doesn’t exist.
Teachers Stay at the Center — AI Doesn’t Replace the Human Work
UNESCO’s write-up of the masterclass emphasizes that AI is reshaping education, but the education system has to redefine and adapt itself so AI “serves learning without replacing the human essence that defines it.” (UNESCO)
That “human essence” is exactly what teachers bring:
- Understanding a student’s mood, home context, and motivation
- Building trust and community
- Framing content in culturally relevant ways
- Modeling curiosity, ethics, and resilience
AI can generate explanations, quizzes, or practice problems in seconds. It cannot care about a student. It cannot read the room after a hard test or spot that one learner who’s shutting down.
Blog takeaway:
The real shift isn’t “AI vs teachers.” It’s moving teachers from content deliverers to learning designers, with AI handling some of the grunt work.
The Real Risk Isn’t AI Itself — It’s Over-Reliance
A big concern raised in the masterclass and in UNESCO’s broader AI work is over-reliance. When students lean on generative tools for structure, wording, and ideas, they can end up outsourcing the very thinking we’re trying to grow. (UNESCO)
UNESCO’s article on the masterclass notes that “AI does not hold absolute truth and can make mistakes,” and that teachers have to help students question AI’s answers, not just copy-paste them. (UNESCO)
So the problem isn’t just “cheating.” It’s that:
- Students may skip productive struggle.
- They may absorb hidden bias in AI-generated content.
- They may start to believe AI outputs are “right by default.”
Blog takeaway:
Over-reliance on AI is a pedagogy issue. We have to design tasks where students still show their thinking and use AI as a helper — not as the main author.
Why UNESCO Keeps Pointing Back to Ethics
This masterclass doesn’t live in a vacuum. It’s grounded in UNESCO’s 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, the first global standard on AI ethics adopted by all UNESCO member states. (UNESCO)
That recommendation is built on four core values:
- Human rights and human dignity
- Living in peaceful, just, and interconnected societies
- Ensuring diversity and inclusiveness
- Environment and ecosystem flourishing (UNESCO)
In the classroom, those values show up as questions like:
- Who owns and controls student data when we use AI tools?
- Which languages, cultures, and bodies show up in the examples AI generates — and which are missing?
- Are we teaching AI literacy in a way that helps students spot bias, not just use tools faster?
- What is the environmental cost of always-on AI systems?
UNESCO’s article on the masterclass ends with a clear call: educators, students, and citizens need to “create normative instruments” so AI stays human-centered and doesn’t displace the human core of education. (UNESCO)
Blog takeaway:
Policy isn’t just for ministries. Every school needs shared norms about how AI is used, not only “is it allowed.”
So… Tool or Teacher? My Answer: Teammate
The title of the session sets up a binary — either AI is a tool or it’s a teacher. After sitting with UNESCO’s framing, I think there’s a third option that’s more useful:
AI as a teammate in the learning process.
Here’s how that looks in practice:
- For teachers
- Use AI to brainstorm lesson ideas, analogies, and examples — especially for differentiating by language level or background knowledge.
- Offload some repetitive tasks (drafting rubrics, rephrasing instructions, generating extra practice problems), then edit them with your professional judgment.
- For students
- Encourage them to use AI to clarify, not to originate: “Explain this in simpler language,” “Give me three examples,” or “Ask me questions to check my understanding.”
- Require process evidence: first draft, outline, screenshots of AI prompts, and a short reflection on how they used the tool.
- For school leaders
- Align any AI roll-out with values from UNESCO’s ethics recommendation: human dignity, diversity, environmental responsibility, and justice. (UNESCO)
- Involve teachers and students in forming your policies instead of dropping rules from the top down.
In this model, AI isn’t the star of the show. It’s on the team — a very fast, very capable assistant that still needs a human in charge.
Practical Questions to Bring to Your Staff Meeting
If you’re sharing this video or article with your colleagues, here are some simple prompts to spark discussion:
- Where is AI already present in our classrooms (even if we’re not naming it)?
- What parts of our work could AI reasonably support — and what parts are non-negotiably human?
- How will we teach students to question AI’s answers instead of trusting them blindly?
- What guardrails do we need around data, privacy, and plagiarism in our context?
- What’s one low-risk experiment with AI we can try this term and reflect on together?
You could even assign the UNESCO masterclass video as “pre-work” and then use these questions for a PLC or professional learning day. (Teacher Task Force)
Final Thought
UNESCO’s message is pretty steady across the masterclass, the Campus programme, and their AI ethics recommendation: AI is staying. The real decision is how we shape it. (UNESCO)
If we treat AI as a teammate — powerful but not in charge — we keep teachers at the center, protect students’ agency, and build classrooms where technology amplifies what’s most human about learning instead of replacing it.
