Connected Classroom · Alignment
UNESCO AI Competency Framework Alignment
How the Intelligence Suite maps to UNESCO's AI Competency Framework for Teachers, dimension by dimension, so a school can see where these tools fit inside a framework it may already be working from.
Last updated 30 July 2026
Independent alignment. Connected Classroom resources are independently developed and aligned to UNESCO's AI Competency Framework for Teachers for educational purposes. They are not created by, affiliated with, or endorsed by UNESCO. The original framework documents are available from UNESCO and should be read directly rather than through this summary.
Why Align to This Framework
Schools adopting AI are mostly working without a compass. Vendor claims arrive faster than anyone can evaluate them, and the question of what a teacher should actually be able to do with these systems gets answered by whoever is selling.
UNESCO's framework is one of the few public, non-commercial attempts to answer that question in terms of competencies rather than products. Aligning to it is a way of being checkable: the framework exists independently, anyone can read it, and a school can judge whether the alignment claimed below is real.
The Two Frameworks
UNESCO published two companion frameworks in 2024. They are not interchangeable, and a school working from one should know the other exists.
AI Competency Framework for Teachers
Fifteen competencies across five dimensions, at three progression levels: Acquire, Deepen, Create. It describes what a teacher should be able to do. The alignment table below maps to this framework.
AI Competency Framework for Students
Twelve competencies across four dimensions, at three progression levels: Understand, Apply, Create. It describes what a student should be able to do, and is built around students as responsible citizens and co-creators rather than users.
The student framework is the harder of the two, and the more important one for anyone thinking about developing minds. Its competencies assume a student who can exercise critical judgement over AI output. That capacity has to be built before it can be exercised, during years when the same tools are offering to do the thinking instead. Which competencies a school can realistically expect, and at what age, is the question underneath the whole framework, and it is the question Protecting the Developing Mind takes up.
UNESCO also publishes a short explainer covering both frameworks together, which is the fastest way in if you are meeting them for the first time.
The Alignment
| UNESCO Dimension | How the suite addresses it |
|---|---|
| Human-Centred MindsetHuman agency and accountability in decisions | Every tool drafts options for a teacher to judge; none reaches a student directly. The Responsible Use policy names where AI must not decide at all: grading, discipline, placement, and anything a student would have a right to appeal.
Read further
Teaching Students to Control AI ·
Making Human Capability Visible ·
The Right to a Private Mind (CPP)
|
| Ethics of AIBias, privacy, data sovereignty, and do no harm | No accounts, no student data, nothing stored. Bias mitigation is built into the instructions rather than filtered afterward, with developmental scaffolding enforced per grade band and representation required in examples. The limits of that are stated openly in the AI Ethics Disclosure. |
| AI Foundations and ApplicationsHow these systems work, and where they fail | The model, the three services that touch a request, and everything recorded are documented in plain language at Data and Governance. Output is described as a draft written by something that has never met your students, because that is what it is.
Read further
The Comfort of False Analogies ·
You Were Different Yesterday ·
What Is Cognitive Security (CPP)
|
| AI PedagogyUsing AI to deepen learning rather than shortcut it | UDL Architect, Wonder Web, CrossLink, and REAL Connections are each constrained so that no output removes the thinking a lesson exists to produce. Choice changes how a student reaches an objective, never how much the objective demands. |
| AI for Professional DevelopmentTeacher growth, reflective practice, and agency | The tools are designed to be argued with rather than followed. The reasoning behind them is published openly at Protecting the Developing Mind and Research Foundations, so a teacher can evaluate the pedagogy rather than inherit it. |
Progression Levels
UNESCO describes competency in three progression levels. Schools are rarely at one level uniformly, and the same four tools serve differently depending on where a teacher is starting.
Basic safety, privacy, and understanding
Start with the policy pages rather than the tools. What is collected, what is not, and why the distinction matters is documented at Data and Governance and Privacy. The habit worth acquiring first is de-identification: never entering a student's name or details into any general AI tool.
Ethical integration into subject-specific practice
UDL Architect and CrossLink work inside an existing objective or an existing pair of subjects, which makes them useful for a teacher extending what they already do rather than replacing it. The judgment being practised is what to keep from a draft and what to discard.
Innovating with AI to transform learning
Wonder Web and REAL Connections start from something the tool cannot supply: a real student's question, or a local context. They are the two that require the most from the teacher and give back the most, because the thinking they scaffold is not the model's.
What This Alignment Does Not Claim
Alignment is not certification. UNESCO does not review, approve, or accredit tools against this framework, and no vendor claim of alignment, including this one, carries any authority beyond what a reader can check.
What is checkable here: the framework is public, every claim in the table above points to a page describing the practice behind it, and the tools are free to use without an account, so a school can evaluate them directly rather than take the alignment on trust.
How to check this yourself. Read UNESCO's framework directly. Then use one of the tools with a real objective from your own planning and judge whether the output does what this page says it does. That takes about ten minutes and is worth more than any alignment table, including this one.
What Is Recorded
The framework's data sovereignty principle is worth answering precisely rather than in slogans.
The tools require no login and no account. Nothing a teacher types is stored on any server, and no student information is requested, transmitted, or retained at any point. One anonymous count is kept: which tool ran, at what grade band, in what subject. Nothing that identifies a user, an institution, or anything typed. That is the complete record, and the full architecture is documented at Data and Governance.
Connected Classroom is the independent practice of Timothy Cook, a practicing international classroom teacher. There is no company behind it. The alignment logic on this page is his, informed by the research published at Research Foundations. The tools are free and published under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.