1-to-1 coaching on AI tools in education: from chaos to opportunities

Last Monday I had another inspiring 1-to-1 coaching session at my wooden kitchen table in the morning sun. We sat amid a whiteboard, Open WebUI installations, prompt schemes, Bolt iterations and strong coffee. And all of it revolved around one central question:

“How do I get AI tools to work together in a way that is safe, didactically sound and technically feasible in education?”

From rabbit hole to direction

As so often in the AI world, it starts with wonder, curiosity and… getting a little lost. Before you know it, you click from Supabase to Azure Functions, via n8n to LLMs in Ollama, and end up in the world of FlutterFlow or Bolt.new. No wonder it quickly feels like a maze.

In the session we chose an approach that works:

• Defining two concrete projects (such as “secure LLM pipeline” and “prototype for a discussion app”)
• Creating structure with a whiteboard: which tools do you use for what?
• Trying to get one thing working at a time, instead of understanding everything at once

What did we cover?

• Running Open WebUI locally with Ollama for local LLMs
• Connecting to Azure OpenAI via a secure backend
• Using n8n to link flows together
• Prompt design as a powerful steering tool for low-code tools such as Bolt.new
• Integration questions: How do you host securely? What does a good architecture look like?

The role of coaching

What strikes me in sessions like this is how much there is to gain from:

• Thinking together in building blocks instead of end products
• Normalising doubt and confusion when pioneering with tech
• Encouraging people to make choices, without having to understand everything straight away
• Making room for critical thinking, including about AI itself (think of terms such as “bluewashing”)

A powerful combination

As a coach I love working with people who are curious, dare to think critically and find their own way through complex innovation questions. AI in education is not simple, but it is exciting and relevant. And when you get to unpick that complexity together with someone at a big table, flip chart at hand, that is educational innovation at its best for me.

Would you also like to bounce ideas around about your project or choice of tools? Or would you like to learn how to use AI tools smartly in your teaching practice?

Let me know via pascal@onderwijsorakel.nl or visit www.onderwijsorakel.nl for workshops, coaching and training.