AI in Education: a sneak peek at BookWidgets’ prototype for creating digital exercises

At BookWidgets, our mission has always been to make digital lesson creation easy, engaging, and efficient for teachers. Today, we’re excited to share that we’re working on something new: an AI-powered assistant designed to help teachers with content creation.

But let’s set the tone right away: this isn’t a big product launch. In this blog post, we want to inform you, our community, that we’re exploring how AI could support your teaching journey. We give you a behind-the-scenes look at this development process and offer a sneak peek of what you might expect in the near future.

For those who might be new to BookWidgets: we’re an EdTech platform that allows educators to create interactive exercises and automatically graded assignments in minutes. With over 40 digital exercise templates — from quizzes to crossword puzzles — BookWidgets empowers teachers to create interactive lesson content, save time grading, provide immediate, meaningful feedback to students.

Why AI? Why Now?

It’s no secret that artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming a part of the education landscape. More and more teachers are asking about it, curious about how it could help them save time or enhance their lessons. And we hear you. We also know that with great potential comes great responsibility. Instead of rushing onto the AI hype train, we’ve made a deliberate choice to take our time. We want to listen to teachers, understand your needs, and explore the possibilities and limitations of AI in education — thoughtfully and responsibly.

So… what are we working on?

Over the past year, we’ve been quietly developing and testing an AI-powered assistant within BookWidgets. It’s still very much a prototype, but it’s an exciting step forward. Our goal is to explore how artificial intelligence can support teachers behind the scenes — not by replacing them, but by helping with the more repetitive parts of lesson creation.

What can this AI assistant do?

Right now, the AI prototype lives on the content creation side of BookWidgets. Think of it as a creative assistant that helps generate questions for quizzes or ideas for interactive games like Crossword puzzles, Pair Matching, Snowman, and more. The goal? To save teachers time by helping with repetitive tasks, while keeping you in control. You remain the expert, the editor, and the final decision-maker. That’s something we believe in deeply.

Overview of AI features

Here’s an overview of the types of content the AI prototype in BookWidgets can generate:

• Text, e.g. for a reading assignment;
• Questions for Quizzes and Worksheets (Multiple Choice, Fill-in-the-blanks, True or False questions, and more);
• Verb conjugation exercises for English and French;
• Rationales (allowing you to provide a model answer or explanation that students will see after submitting);
• Images;
  
• Games like Crossword puzzles, Word Search, Pair Matching, and more;
• Flash Cards;
• WebQuest lesson ideas;
• Checklists.
  

💡 At the moment, the prototype is available in English, French, and Dutch; but it can generate content in many more languages.

⚠️ Since our AI integration is a prototype, the features mentioned in this blog post can still be modified.

Examples of content generation with AI

Here are some examples showing how the prototype works.

Creating a crossword puzzle with the AI prototype in BookWidgets

Creating Multiple Choice questions with the AI prototype

Creating True or False questions with the AI prototype

Creating a checklist with the AI prototype

The journey so far

We’ve been testing this AI integration for over a year — not in a vacuum, but in classrooms, with real teachers and students. Thanks to a collaboration with UCLL University College and EdTech Station, we’ve set up a dedicated testbedding program. Several test schools have participated and provided invaluable feedback, helping us refine the tool to better meet teachers’ expectations and classroom realities.

What About Privacy and Security?

We know that when it comes to AI — especially in education — privacy and data security are top of mind, and rightly so. Even though this is still a prototype, we’re building it with those concerns in mind from day one.

👉 Your data is not used to train AI models, and we’re committed to aligning our work with regulations like the EU AI Act and GDPR.

As we continue developing the prototype, we’ll keep these principles front and center, and we’ll be fully transparent about how everything works when the time comes.

What’s next?

We’re still in learning mode. There’s no release date yet, and that’s intentional. We want to fully understand the technical challenges, implementation needs, costs, and — most importantly — the real value this assistant can bring to educators. We’re also exploring how AI might support teachers in other areas of BookWidgets in the future — always with the same guiding principle: the teacher stays at the center.

Want to know more?

If you’re a teacher or school leader curious about this prototype, or if you’d like to be part of the ongoing conversation, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to us at support@bookwidgets.com. As always, thank you for being part of our journey. We’re building the future of digital education — carefully, collaboratively, and with teachers at the heart of every decision.

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