A pilot gives you a controlled way to test Flint's impact before you roll it out to everyone. A well-structured one surfaces best practices, gives concerns somewhere to land, and builds teacher confidence before the whole staff is watching.
Setting up your pilot
Define your purpose
It's important to align with your school leadership on why your institution wants an AI platform:
- Students: Enhancing learning experiences and developing AI literacy
- Teachers: Reducing administrative workload and gaining data and insights into student thinking
- Administrators: Providing oversight and measuring educational impact
Invite at least 5-6 teachers with diverse perspectives:
- Include teachers from different subject areas and grade levels
- Seek both technology enthusiasts and thoughtful skeptics
- Identify potential champions who can help with broader onboarding later
💡 The key here is to find tinkerers—individuals who will be willing to push the product, finding its limits and unexpected opportunities.
Set your pilot team up for success by providing:
- A basic introduction to Flint's capabilities and educational value.
- Somewhere to share inspiration, questions and findings throughout the pilot — a staff channel, a shared doc, or a standing meeting.
- Dedicated, scheduled time for collaborative exploration alongside structured training.
- Teacher account access or importing users via your LMS/SIS.
The comprehensive guide to rolling out Flint at your school covers the rest of the setup.
Where available, teachers can open AI Literacy for Teachers · Level 1 or Level 2 from Learn more about Flint in the sidebar. This free, self-paced in-app course adapts to what they teach, with a shareable certificate for each level. It is not available on the UK deployment; the external resources below remain useful alternatives.
Agree on your school's AI expectations before inviting students. In Admin → Settings → AI policy, use Import to add policy materials, review them, then Save. These materials help customize Sparky's teaching and AI use at your school.
Policy files give Sparky context; they do not guarantee adherence or replace moderation and access settings. See Rolling out Flint at your school.
Below is an email draft you can copy, customize and send to your teachers:
Subject: {School name} // Flint AI Pilot
Hi team,
As part of our effort to explore safe, structured AI adoption at {School Name}, we're launching a school-approved pilot with Flint—an AI platform built specifically for K–12.
Flint lets teachers and students use AI in a secure environment and build AI-powered activities. You can create activities where Sparky, Flint's AI, quizzes your students on a topic, speaks with them in another language, helps them work through a problem, or gives them feedback on their writing.
We're inviting volunteers across various departments and grade levels to start trialing Flint with students over the next few weeks to help determine fit across our campus.
Next steps:
- Join our pilot school: {insert school link}
- Review the Getting Started Guide: Get Started with Flint (for Teachers)
- Try building student-facing activities, quizzes, or chatbots over the next two weeks
This 30-day pilot is key to shaping {School Name}'s school-wide AI strategy. Please plan to engage and share feedback with me along the way.
Please reach out if you have any questions or need support from me.
Thanks in advance for your participation—this is an exciting step forward for {School Name}.
Best,
{Name}
Pilot timeline
A pilot duration of 30 days for a whole-school rollout is typically enough to know whether Flint is the right fit for your community because:
- A time constraint encourages earlier adoption and testing
- Most teachers will form clear opinions within 2 weeks of active usage
Key success indicators
Focus on these achievable metrics and evaluation techniques:
- Aim for 2-3 teachers to have consistent Flint usage, particularly with activities
- Have each teacher use Flint with at least two classes
- Monitor school analytics to track usage patterns over time
- Collect qualitative feedback through conversations with teachers and students
Where the in-app course is available, open Admin → Professional development → AI literacy course to monitor staff training. Filter by Not started, In progress or Finished, select staff for Send reminders, or use Download everyone as CSV. Course completion complements classroom-usage checks; it is not evidence on its own that teachers have used Flint with students.
Use your pilot's usage trend alongside teacher and student feedback. Counts of activities and chats do not establish whether people like Flint or whether learning improved. Ask what participants tried, what helped, and what they would change before deciding to expand the rollout.
Beyond the pilot: sustaining engagement
Strategies you employ in the initial pilot can also help to sustain engagement beyond the pilot. Regular communication with teachers, showing your support of them exploring, and expanding their perceptions of what AI can do can help them learn to embrace Flint more and transform their teaching.
| Method | Implementation/Examples | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Timely nudges | Share about Flint's capabilities when addressing other pain points teachers mention (e.g. grading, report writing, etc.) | Teachers find new uses for a tool they already have access to |
| Teacher collaboration | Pair teachers who are excited about Flint with those who are hesitant | Teachers teaching teachers is often far more effective than top-down training |
| Promote reflection | Run surveys and conversations covering what has gone well, what could be better, and what is worth trying next | You get insight into usage and impact, and teachers are prompted to reflect and think of new applications |
| Emphasize support | Make yourself available and give teachers a clear place to raise feedback and concerns | Problems surface early, and you can pass them to the Flint team while they are still small |
| Inform about product updates | Share relevant product updates (covered in our newsletters and What's new page) with relevant teachers | Teachers who maybe found Flint lacking in aspects before might be inspired to give it another shot with new updates |
| Host lunch and learns | These can be themed for specific grades, subjects, tasks, or assignment types. | Creating bite-sized learning opportunities can feel more accessible and digestible to teachers |
| Visit department meetings | Encourage department heads to talk about Flint, or drop in yourself to show how it applies to their subject | Departments align on expectations, and brainstorming as a group turns up uses nobody had alone |
| Develop AI literacy | Have both teachers and students go through AI literacy training and/or courses (Flint offers some, linked at the end) | Not understanding AI is often what holds people back from using it more and/or what causes misuse |
| Train students how to use Flint | Show students how to use Flint: how to prompt chats and create activities for themselves and their peers | Student use can inspire teachers to want to learn more about Flint |
| Recognize and award usage | Host competitions and award users who are promoting creative uses of Flint | Positive reinforcement is a great way to encourage more exploration and promote word-of-mouth |
Successfully integrating AI requires patience and persistence. Even schools that have used Flint for years are still finding new uses for it. When setting up your initial pilot, consider multiple factors including teacher comfort, student readiness, and alignment with educational policies. As you evaluate your pilot, ask:
🤔 Does Flint offer a means for us to fully explore the possibilities of AI that we currently want to and will it grow with us as we grow?
Meaningful technology integration is a journey, not a destination. The Campfire session recordings below cover this guide with other school leaders, who share what their own pilots were like.
Additional resources
- Campfire session recording on Flint pilots #1
- Campfire session recording on Flint pilots #2
- AI policy library
- AI literacy course for students
- AI literacy course for teachers
- Communicating with parents about AI guide
- Shareable activities for teacher use:
- Flint community — ask questions, share what has worked, and troubleshoot with other schools