Educator, author and trusted guide to families navigating AI
Dan Fitzpatrick writes about AI in education for Forbes and is the author of The Educators' AI Guide 2026, The AI Classroom and Infinite Education. He founded aieducator.tools after working as a teacher, school leader and education strategist.
He also hosts the AI for Educators Daily podcast and advises schools and education bodies in the UK and abroad.
No. The OECD's PISA 2025, the largest evidence yet on AI and children's learning, found no sign that AI makes children less clever. What it found is narrower and far more useful at home: what your child asks AI to do matters more than whether they use it at all.
You do not need to understand how AI works to parent well around it. Here are the five things that matter, the jargon you can skip, and what to say to your child by age.
Most of the AI in a school sits on the teacher's side of the desk, and the bans in the news stop pupils rather than teachers. Here is where it actually is, what a school's "AI policy" usually covers, and the one question that gets a real answer.
In August 2026 Google switched Gemini on by default inside Google Classroom for students of every age, and Common Sense Media rates it High Risk. Which Gemini your child has, what the rating actually means, four questions to ask the school, and what to do at home by age.
New York City has paused student AI use through 8th grade for a year. A former school leader explains what the ban covers, what it leaves to parents, and what to do at home this week.
It depends on which part of the work the AI did. A former teacher explains the line between help and cheating, the test teachers really use, and what to say at every age.
ChatGPT's parental controls are worth setting and cover about a third of the problem. Checked October 2026: what starts on and off, what no parent can see, and the two layers the app cannot reach.
Tell your child AI is a guessing machine that does not know when it is wrong. A former teacher gives the explanation, the example for each age, and a ten-minute game to play this week.
Character.AI ended open-ended chat for under-18s in November 2025, so the real question is whether your child talks to any AI as a friend. A former assistant head on when to worry and what to say.
