Here’s what caught my attention: Bri Marie Jackson, a third-grade teacher, turned Wordle into a phonics powerhouse. She’s got kids reasoning through letter patterns on the board, building vocabulary through play, and actually asking to do more spelling practice.(Scary Mommy) This isn’t an isolated story. Teachers across the country are hacking Wordle for bell-ringers, phonics practice, and critical thinking—because the core mechanic is beautifully simple to remix for different levels.(We Are Teachers) The uncomfortable truth: Teachers already create engaging learning experiences. What they don’t have is time and tooling to scale that creativity for every learner, every day.
I’m an angel and advisor focused on applied AI. In this series, I unpack what I would like to invest in. If you’re working on this or if it resonates, reach out.

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The Creative Educator’s Dilemma

Walk into any great teacher’s classroom and you’ll see the magic: cardboard fraction pizzas, handmade phonics games, timeline walls crafted from scratch. This is differentiation in action—instruction tailored to specific kids with specific needs. But here’s the problem: U.S. teachers are already working 49–54 hours per week, with much of that happening outside contract time.(RAND Corporation) They’re burning the candle at both ends just to cover core planning and feedback.(National Education Association) Meanwhile, the research is crystal clear on what works:
  • Active learning beats lectures every time—higher achievement, lower failure rates.(PNAS)
  • One-to-one tutoring creates ~2σ gains—the gold standard classrooms aspire to.(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
  • Immediate feedback accelerates learning outcomes.(Frontiers)
  • Universal Design for Learning gives every student multiple ways to access content.(UDL Guidelines)
The blocker isn’t imagination. It’s bandwidth.

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Here’s Where Things Get Interesting

Enter Claude Artifacts. Anthropic just reported that millions of users have created over half a billion artifacts—everything from study aids to interactive apps.(Anthropic) These aren’t just static outputs; they can be published, shared via link, and remixed by others.(Anthropic Help Center) Picture this: Ms. Garcia has an idea. “I need an interactive fraction game where students run a pizza shop—scaffold it for beginners, but let advanced kids explore mixed numbers and percentages.” Sixty seconds later? She’s got a runnable, shareable artifact. No coding required. Here’s the key insight: AI doesn’t replace teacher judgment. It scales it.

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What Real Differentiation Looks Like

With artifact-speed authoring, the same learning standard suddenly has multiple pathways: For struggling learners: Simpler language, visual scaffolds, step-by-step hints that adapt as they build confidence.(Frontiers) For on-level students: Appropriately challenging problems with interactive simulations and rapid comprehension checks.(PNAS) For advanced learners: Extensions that connect to deeper concepts—like the proportional reasoning behind fraction ordering, or the economics of pizza pricing. For students with learning differences: UDL-aligned options built right in—multiple representations, adjustable text size, audio narration, simplified interfaces.(UDL Guidelines) The research backs this up: well-implemented differentiated instruction consistently improves outcomes across different settings.(Frontiers) The problem has never been knowing what works—it’s been having the time to create it.

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The Real Goal: Student Agency

But here’s where it gets exciting—the endgame isn’t just better lesson delivery. It’s learner agency. Self-directed practice: “Give me 10 more quadratics like the one I missed, with step-by-step hints.” Boom—immediate, targeted feedback loop.(Frontiers) Interest-driven exploration: That curious biology student can spin up a food-web simulation to test pollution scenarios in real-time. Choice and control build intrinsic motivation.(PubMed) Adaptive learning: As students interact, the system learns which explanation styles click for each kid—and research shows this kind of choice dramatically improves engagement.(Digital Promise) This frees up class time for what teachers do best: mentorship, complex problem-solving, and higher-order thinking.

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What It Takes to Win in Schools

The infrastructure exists. The guidance is clear. Artifacts already handle real-time creation and remixing,(Anthropic) while the Department of Education has outlined responsible AI frameworks emphasizing human oversight and student safety.(U.S. Department of Education) But winning educator trust requires getting three things right: 1. Quality and safety first
Teacher review loops, age-appropriate content filters, vetted knowledge bases. Evidence-based instruction beats flashy demos every time.(PNAS) 2. Privacy by design
Minimize student PII in artifacts, build in policy controls, make data protection the default—not an afterthought.(U.S. Department of Education) 3. Fit existing workflows
Shareable links, LMS integration, classroom-safe embedding. Artifacts already have the publish & share foundation.(Anthropic Help Center)

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The Numbers Tell a Story

Let’s talk market reality: 3.8 million public school teachers and 49.6 million students in U.S. K–12.(National Center for Education Statistics) That’s substantial surface area for a bottoms-up teacher tool with district expansion potential. Even modest penetration—think teacher-paid Pro subscriptions plus a handful of district pilots—creates meaningful revenue. The upside? A remixable artifact library that grows with every teacher interaction, plus professional development services that districts actually value.

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The Bottom Line

Teacher creativity is the engine. Artifacts are the turbocharger. When you combine classroom-proven pedagogy—active learning, immediate feedback, Universal Design—with seconds-fast authoring and built-in sharing mechanics, something powerful happens: equitable personalization becomes possible without burning out the educators who make it all work. This isn’t about replacing teachers. It’s about giving every teacher superpowers—and every student a learning path that actually fits.

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References