Overview
CraftPad is a design workspace for teachers to craft their lesson designs.
CraftPad is positioned as a counterargument against efficiency-driven narratives about AI for teachers. It recenters AI use on educators’ professional expertise and judgment, with a dual focus on iterative design and critical reflection.
Goals
Designing effective environments for learning represents a sophisticated craft that demands deep understanding of learning theories and design principles, careful balancing of structure and emergence, and a design-oriented mindset. While generative AI has gained popularity in supporting teacher lesson planning, current systems—even the most advanced ones—operate within rigid templates that constrain teacher agency. These limitations discourage educators from engaging in the skilled, iterative actions essential to the craft of teaching.
Our work adopts an alternative approach that positions teachers as designers—rather than mere “end-users”—of AI tools. This perspective necessitates meta-design—designing for design itself—which empowers educators to configure and adapt tools in service of their professional craft and educational aspirations.
By centering teachers’ expertise and creative agency, we aim to develop AI-enhanced environments that genuinely support the complex, nuanced work of lesson design by teachers.
CraftPad Design
Moving beyond these limitations, we design CraftPad as a flexible workspace that centers teachers’ expertise and creative agency. CraftPad features: (1) an infinite canvas (similar to designer tools like Figma) providing space for open-ended ideation and flexible organization; (2) an embedded prompt library informed by pedagogical principles to guide various AI generation tasks in support of teacher design; and (3) a flexible workflow enabling teachers to quickly initiate designs, iteratively refine specific components with their professional input, and compile design artifacts (e.g., lesson designs) that incorporate AI-generated content while preserving the primacy of teacher judgment.
CraftPad also embeds an AI coach that is aware of the design canvas and knowledgeable of relevant pedagogical principles, guiding teachers toward deeper reflection and understanding throughout the design process.
CraftPad embodies our meta-design philosophy by supporting teachers as designers rather than mere consumers of AI outputs.
CraftPad for Knowledge Building Teachers
CraftPad v1.0 was piloted with a group of teachers striving to incorporate Knowledge Building into their practice. Below is a tutorial video:
Related Projects
- Wonderbits — A collaborative environment for growing ideas, bit by bit.
- KBIN — Knowledge Building Innovation Network for teacher innovation and sustainable infrastructure.
Publications
- Cheng, J., Gao, Y., Liu, X., Barany, A., & Chen, B. (2026). Educators’ AI Journey: Developing AI Competencies in a Professional Development Program. In G. Carmona, C. Lima, M. J. Santos, H. Benítez, L. Montero-Moguel, & B. Galarza-Tohen (Eds.), Advances in Quantitative Ethnography (Vol. 2677, pp. 21–36). Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-12229-2_2
- Chen, B. (2025). Beyond Tools: Generative AI as Epistemic Infrastructure in Education (No. arXiv:2504.06928). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2504.06928