I know, weird metaphor. Stay with me.
A good insole makes the whole shoe more comfortable. It reduces strain and makes a long day a little easier. But the insole isn’t the shoe. You still need the structure, the fit, and the person wearing it.
That’s how I think about AI and planning. AI can organize ideas, suggest activities, draft a first version, and offer supports for diverse learners. Used well, it makes parts of planning faster. But it shouldn’t become the whole system.
At CARL, we’re not building around the idea that teachers should open a blank prompt every time they need a lesson, rubric, or adaptation. (That’s a conversation on its own.) The bigger idea is this: teachers should be able to build from what already exists, adapt what already works, and use AI where it actually makes the process easier.
The Library Changes the Workflow
In one of our first surveys, we asked teachers where they find their teaching materials.
They pull from past lessons. They borrow from colleagues. They adapt things they’ve used before. They dig through social media, shared drives, curriculum docs, old handouts, and in one case, “dusty old files.”
That’s not a weakness. That’s how teaching works. Good planning is often recognizing what’s already useful and adjusting it for the students in front of you. Maybe the example needs to be more local. Maybe the assessment needs a choice option. Maybe the reading level needs support. Those are normal, thoughtful teaching decisions.
If every teacher always generates from scratch, the work disappears into individual documents and one-off outputs. But if teachers can build from a shared library, add context, and remix what already works, the work keeps growing.
That’s a very different model, and it’s where AI actually becomes useful: inside a system of shared resources, not as a replacement for them.
Remixing Beats Constant Regeneration
Remixing is one of CARL’s most distinct features. It means making contextual or instructional edits to an existing lesson or resource: changing the examples, adjusting the language for a different group, adding movement breaks, modifying the assessment, or adapting it for a different time frame.
It doesn’t mean throwing away the original. It means building from it.
Teachers shouldn’t have to choose between using a resource exactly as-is or starting from nothing. There should be a middle space where adaptation is expected, credited, and useful to the next person.
And remixing doesn’t require AI. You can adapt a resource yourself, with CARL-Assist there only when it helps. AI can suggest adaptations or fill gaps, but you know why the change is needed and what fits your class.
Contributing Helps the Library Grow
Remixing is one piece. Contributing is another. It means adding something connected to an existing lesson: an alternate assessment, a different format, a related activity, a handout, an ELL/EAL scaffold.
You don’t have to rewrite a whole lesson to be useful. Sometimes the most helpful thing is one strong rubric or a good visual organizer that connects to a lesson someone else already shared.
Over time, that builds a library that isn’t static. Lessons gain new supports, formats, and assessment options, and teachers can see how a resource has grown and pick the version that fits. (It helps with the environmental cost of AI too: the more teachers reuse and remix, the less everything gets generated from zero.)
That’s far more powerful than a folder of disconnected files. It’s also more human.
Collaboration Keeps People at the Centre
Planning can be isolating, especially when so much of it happens outside working hours. If a tool only generates private outputs for one person at a time, it misses the chance to help teachers learn from each other.
Collaboration doesn’t have to mean co-editing in real time. Sometimes it’s seeing how another teacher adapted a resource, or using a component they contributed because it fits your class too. Good materials don’t have to be “finished” when they’re uploaded. They keep improving as different educators bring different strengths to them.
AI can help organize that. It shouldn’t replace the people in it.
The Bottom Line
AI is part of CARL, but it’s not the whole story.
The bigger story is a resource library teachers can actually build with: easier to search, lessons adapted instead of recreated, contributions that stay connected, and teacher work that keeps growing instead of disappearing into one-time files.
AI supports the work. It doesn’t define it. Teachers stay the decision-makers, the library is the foundation, and remixing and collaboration are what make resources better over time.