Aila vs Common Planner

Aila is Oak’s free web-based AI lesson assistant for teachers. It creates editable, downloadable lesson packages containing one lesson plan, one slide deck, two quizzes, and one worksheet. Teachers can also request glossaries, tasks, and quizzes for Oak lessons or their own material. Lessons can be adapted by changing content, reading age, geographical context, tasks, and activities. Aila uses retrieval-augmented generation from Oak content written by teachers and checked by subject experts, with emphasis on the English national curriculum. Its FAQ says the system is built to use ChatGPT-4 while Oak evaluates other models. Usage is subject to request limits for lessons and resources, and fair-use limits may apply. Aila is in beta and under active development, so Oak advises checking generated material. It does not currently make images or diagrams, and results are weaker in some subjects, particularly STEM and modern foreign languages. Use requires a laptop or computer with internet access; mobile use is unsupported.

Common Planner is a web-based collaborative lesson planner for teachers, schools, and districts. Teachers can create lesson and unit plans, organize classes, and reuse planbooks and lessons across school years. They can search for standards, attach them to units, and track which standards have been taught. Shared planbooks support co-planning, sharing plans with administrators, and borrowing plans from other teachers. School leaders can review planning status, standards coverage, and pacing, then comment on lesson plans. The school product page describes AI-assisted insights for identifying missing standards, pacing issues, or instructional gaps. Basic for Teachers includes an AI-powered lesson assistant, daily, weekly, and monthly planning, up to 50 Google Classroom posts, and file uploads from a computer or supported storage services. Pro includes unlimited Classroom posts, unit planning, automatic standards tracking, and up to five collaborators. The Basic plan is free forever; Pro is listed at $5.59 a month, with a one-payment amount of 71.88 USD. The Schools plan includes school-wide templates, membership management, staff training, and ongoing support. There is no app, but the service works through a browser on tablets and smartphones.